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quinaraHad a good afternoon in London today, with both the satisfaction of finding something I'd wanted for a while and of finding something shiny I'd never thought about before. They were both, strangely, that weird mustardy/orangey/yellowy "gold" colour. It turns out the 80s fever currently afflicting fashion everywhere has affected me with a taste for sportswear, because, building on my ownership of trainers for the first time in years, I now have a very nice vintage Adidas track jacket (Made in Yugoslavia, apparently): the sort of jacket I've been wanting for ages (don't judge me!). I also found some rather amazing shoes in the Topshop sale, which are, er, high-heel peep-toe platforms made out of rubber/plastic... They're amazing!!
In the past my shopping trips have been compared to hikes (though I resent this - wandering down Oxford Street from Bond Street to Tottenham Court Road and then on to Covent Garden is a perfectly sensible way to shop), so it's perhaps not surprising that I made a detour to the British Museum en route (<3 free museum entry). Yet I have a rather odd relationship with the British Museum, because I am what is probably known as a Bad Classicist: I have very little time for pots and sculptures of most descriptions (there are exceptions, obviously, like the Warren Cup, which is actually fascinating - unlike the Wiki article I link to, which I'm not entirely happy with, but comment if you care and I'll ramble), and even less for the Rah Rah, Up WithAthens Greece, Down With Rome attitude that gets everywhere and means that I'm not sure Rome has a single dedicated room in the whole place.
But, and this is a big but, there is one room in the British Museum that fills me with utter glee, and is completely worth skipping past all the smelly tourists and their cameras. That room is Room 69: Greek and Roman Life.
In concept, I'm pretty sure the stuff inside the room is all the crap the Victorians didn't know what to do with. The website copy says it gives a "cross cultural look" at things, then apologises with pictures of the same sort of thing you get everywhere. It's full of display cabinets headed up with unassuming titles such as "Water Supply" and the pots are all plain, the collection of them entitled "Storage Amphorae" (or possibly "Travelling Amphorae"). People walk around it with a rather miserable looks on their faces, then head to either the fountain or the case on goldsmiths, but they are all fools. Look what's in there (I try to take photos that keep the labels):
This must have been so cute with the little wheels and the man intact - can't you just imagine a little Athenian child sticking crap in the amphorae and dragging it round with them?
The figs still look like figs!! Pompeii does have a lot more shiny things to show for itself than this, but that there's a Roman fig!
I should have got the label for this, because I can't remember where it's from - possibly Pompeii again? I love how whimsical the little sheep is.
Yes, it's eggs in a bowl, but this is the sort of funerary offering you never hear about - I love thinking about more casual ceremony.
One of the boring amphorae "probably for wine" (it's amusing sometimes how much superciliousness an anonymised card can convey). Most things in museums are spruced up to a point where you almost forget that it was in the ground - I love that this piece not only shows a very handsome, useful amphora but is also a testament to the centuries of archaeological work that have gone into producing Classical exhibits.
This is the Water Supply cabinet - the pipe is a terracotta water pipe from Bulgaria, with two sections sealed together with lead (the card notes this is unusual; more often slaked lime was used), while the large rectangular thing is a bronze drain cover (from, IIRC, the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos). Who knew there were drain covers? Freaking bronze ones?
The Romans had funky pumps to get water out of places!
This is a random iron bloom. (All right, so I think smelting iron is cool for some reason.)
Ack, another one I didn't get the card for - I think this is a dedication (it's either that or an advert...) to Asclepius and Hygeia for the healing of someone's leg. A nice bit of stone-carving that isn't 'high art'.
The stone at the top of the images has carving round all four sides, to produce each of the stamps shown below it - it was for marking which type of eye ointment something was. Very neat, I think.
Everyone's seen a krater (pot for mixing wine and water, can sometimes be massive), but when do you get to see a wine strainer and a ladle?? (Because, of course, Greek wine? Full of crap like sticks and leaves.)
Libations are so often skimmed over, so it's nice just to look at a bowl for a bit (apparently handles were a Roman thing, but everyone had the bump (omphalos - same word as the boss of a shield or a belly button) in the middle.
Why don't you get to see sacrificial knives more often?? It's such a brutal shape. Love that lion's head.
Apologies for a quick diagram, but this shows how slaves turning waterwheels could raise water out of the Rio Tinto copper mines in Spain (one of the most ooky-yet-fascinating things about the Roman Empire is how intrinsic slaves were to its structure and existence - without slaves the whole thing would have been unrecognisable, IMO anyway).
It looks like it belongs in Frontier Land... This photo doesn't quite capture how this wheel-section dominates the back corner of the room and the bottom of the staircase leading to the mezzanine. It's fantastic.
The whole jury-picking system in Athens was bizarre, with random machines and tickets and Minority-Report-style balls - but nevertheless it happened, and here's some Aristophon's ticket to prove it.
Who doesn't find bits of rotten wood interesting?
We all know that the Greeks had lyres, but did we know the soundboxes could be tortoise shells? It's all the little things you don't really think about...
In the past my shopping trips have been compared to hikes (though I resent this - wandering down Oxford Street from Bond Street to Tottenham Court Road and then on to Covent Garden is a perfectly sensible way to shop), so it's perhaps not surprising that I made a detour to the British Museum en route (<3 free museum entry). Yet I have a rather odd relationship with the British Museum, because I am what is probably known as a Bad Classicist: I have very little time for pots and sculptures of most descriptions (there are exceptions, obviously, like the Warren Cup, which is actually fascinating - unlike the Wiki article I link to, which I'm not entirely happy with, but comment if you care and I'll ramble), and even less for the Rah Rah, Up With
But, and this is a big but, there is one room in the British Museum that fills me with utter glee, and is completely worth skipping past all the smelly tourists and their cameras. That room is Room 69: Greek and Roman Life.
In concept, I'm pretty sure the stuff inside the room is all the crap the Victorians didn't know what to do with. The website copy says it gives a "cross cultural look" at things, then apologises with pictures of the same sort of thing you get everywhere. It's full of display cabinets headed up with unassuming titles such as "Water Supply" and the pots are all plain, the collection of them entitled "Storage Amphorae" (or possibly "Travelling Amphorae"). People walk around it with a rather miserable looks on their faces, then head to either the fountain or the case on goldsmiths, but they are all fools. Look what's in there (I try to take photos that keep the labels):
This must have been so cute with the little wheels and the man intact - can't you just imagine a little Athenian child sticking crap in the amphorae and dragging it round with them?
The figs still look like figs!! Pompeii does have a lot more shiny things to show for itself than this, but that there's a Roman fig!
I should have got the label for this, because I can't remember where it's from - possibly Pompeii again? I love how whimsical the little sheep is.
Yes, it's eggs in a bowl, but this is the sort of funerary offering you never hear about - I love thinking about more casual ceremony.
One of the boring amphorae "probably for wine" (it's amusing sometimes how much superciliousness an anonymised card can convey). Most things in museums are spruced up to a point where you almost forget that it was in the ground - I love that this piece not only shows a very handsome, useful amphora but is also a testament to the centuries of archaeological work that have gone into producing Classical exhibits.
This is the Water Supply cabinet - the pipe is a terracotta water pipe from Bulgaria, with two sections sealed together with lead (the card notes this is unusual; more often slaked lime was used), while the large rectangular thing is a bronze drain cover (from, IIRC, the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos). Who knew there were drain covers? Freaking bronze ones?
The Romans had funky pumps to get water out of places!
This is a random iron bloom. (All right, so I think smelting iron is cool for some reason.)
Ack, another one I didn't get the card for - I think this is a dedication (it's either that or an advert...) to Asclepius and Hygeia for the healing of someone's leg. A nice bit of stone-carving that isn't 'high art'.
The stone at the top of the images has carving round all four sides, to produce each of the stamps shown below it - it was for marking which type of eye ointment something was. Very neat, I think.
Everyone's seen a krater (pot for mixing wine and water, can sometimes be massive), but when do you get to see a wine strainer and a ladle?? (Because, of course, Greek wine? Full of crap like sticks and leaves.)
Libations are so often skimmed over, so it's nice just to look at a bowl for a bit (apparently handles were a Roman thing, but everyone had the bump (omphalos - same word as the boss of a shield or a belly button) in the middle.
Why don't you get to see sacrificial knives more often?? It's such a brutal shape. Love that lion's head.
Apologies for a quick diagram, but this shows how slaves turning waterwheels could raise water out of the Rio Tinto copper mines in Spain (one of the most ooky-yet-fascinating things about the Roman Empire is how intrinsic slaves were to its structure and existence - without slaves the whole thing would have been unrecognisable, IMO anyway).
It looks like it belongs in Frontier Land... This photo doesn't quite capture how this wheel-section dominates the back corner of the room and the bottom of the staircase leading to the mezzanine. It's fantastic.
The whole jury-picking system in Athens was bizarre, with random machines and tickets and Minority-Report-style balls - but nevertheless it happened, and here's some Aristophon's ticket to prove it.
Who doesn't find bits of rotten wood interesting?
We all know that the Greeks had lyres, but did we know the soundboxes could be tortoise shells? It's all the little things you don't really think about...
(no subject)
Date: 25/07/2009 10:49 (UTC)You're completely welcome!