Philip J Jones: Illustrating the Pitt Rivers

'Crafty Networking' returns to Pitt Rivers Museum this week on Thursday 24th October - a chance for craftspeople and artists to meet, share ideas and network over a glass of wine in the inspirational surroundings of the galleries. Guest speaker at this event is illustrator Philip J Jones who will be talking about his career and practice. Here, he gives us a little insight into his current work...

Illustrator’s studios are busy in autumn. My personal workspace, to set the scene, is a non-weather proof, half pint-sized room in an attic which comprises of a rickety wooden desk, pen, paper and an antiquated Mac Computer which mostly serves now as a coffee table. The various houseplants have claimed most of the room as their own. Illustrators these days have the benefit of being able to work from nearly anywhere. Christmas is on the horizon, designs need redesigning, promotion events need promoting, networks need networking, and requests for robin drawings are flocking in.

One illustration project in particular has got me excited. One of Oxford’s finest establishments and one of my favourite hangouts has tasked me with some work. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, one of the world’s finest collections of anthropology and world archaeology, has asked me to deliver a talk on freelance illustration as part of their Crafty Networking series, teaming up with the O3 Gallery and Darn It and Stitch. They have also invited me to work with the VERVE: Need / Make / Use project to produce an illustration in response to the collections in the museum.

Phase one: research. Armed with my small armada of sharpened pencils, my trusted notepad and a camera, I began my expedition into the heart of the Pitt Rivers. An awesome hunting ground for inspiration and ideas, the institution was bursting with treasures. After a full day of trekking though the museum and carefully laying my plans I had barely scratched the surface of the illustrative potential of this archive of wonders.

Resisting the urge to go straight to those shrunken heads, there were several artefacts that stood out for me. Those delightful rhinoceros hornbills: a fusion of the ornate and fauna, as well as the history of how they had been viewed in the past, peaked my interest. 

Rhinoceros hornbill, Malaysia, collected 1920s PRM 1970.17.1

© Pitt Rivers Museum

I came up with several potential drafts of what to produce and a few key themes emerged including Japanese masked gods, Native American fertility dolls and ghostly, ghoulish figures which had derived from a rain coat. 

'Cow Kachina' doll, Hopi people, Arizona, USA
PRM 2001.66.4 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Furnished now in the studio with my modest dip pen and a well of ink I have been (between preparing for the Christmas season of redesigning, promoting and networking) focusing my energies on working on the final piece, each night pondering whether or not my illustrations will give justice to the beautiful and mystifying items of antiquity found at the Pitt Rivers Museum....

Philip J Jones

http://phillipjjones.wordpress.com

From Shelf to Showcase: how Pitt Rivers staff create a new display

UPDATE: read more about the work of the Technical Services staff here

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The installation of our new high level displays on the south wall of the Court (ground floor) of the Museum is now really beginning to take off. Two cases of Melanesian carving and a display of Balinese masks are finished, and displays of African and Asian masks are up next for installation.

Creating new displays here at the Museum is a team effort. Deciding what objects should be included involves the VERVE curator, conservators and technicians, with everyone looking at the objects in different ways:

• Curatorial staff look for visually engaging objects with great stories to tell and ensure that culturally sensitive objects are only displayed if appropriate. 

• Technical staff design the display and so look for objects that will make a visually interesting group that complement each other in terms of size, colour and shape. Too keep the Pitt Rivers style, technicians seek to create displays that are 'busy' but still 'clean' and balanced to look at.

• Conservation staff look to remove objects that are too fragile, too susceptible to damage (for example by pests or exposure to light) to be displayed. 

Selection often means retrieving material from storage, which may never have been on public display before. Once the selected objects have been catalogued and conserved they are taken to the Technical Services department and the display starts to be designed.

First, the technician works on the layout, which replicates the case dimensions on a flat table surface, and involves moving objects around so we know they fit and until the arrangement looks at its best.

Layout for the new display of Balinese masks and figurative sculpture
© Pitt Rivers Museum

PRM technician Ady laying out the new displays of masks from Sri Lanka (including 18 'Demons of Disease'), Tibet and China.
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Once the technicians are happy with the layout, they create a three-dimensional mock-up of the case. This enables them to test the display layout properly and make sure all the objects fit well and can be clearly seen by visitors. Suitable mounts and fixings for each object are made, as well as the internal case boards or 'cladding' that the mounts will be attached to. 

Mock-up for new display of West African masks © Pitt Rivers Museum

Complementary colours for the new cases are chosen. For the new displays we've tried to match the colours used in existing cases nearby to tie geographical regions together - so for example displays from Oceanic cultures have a bright blue background, whereas those from Asian cultures use green. Many of the African masks are made of dark-coloured woods or painted with earth-tone pigments, so we opted for a soft 'mushroom' colour to offer contrast. 

Upper cases left ajar to 'gas off', showing colour schemes © Pitt Rivers Museum

Once painted, the cases are left open to 'gas off' fully, before the objects are installed. As all the new VERVE displays in the Court of the Museum are high up, objects are installed using a scaffolding tower. We try to do this early in the morning when the Museum is closed to avoid any inconvenience to visitors, but some days you might spot one of our team high up, putting the finishing touches to cases.

Assembling the scaffold tower needed to install the displays
in our high-level cases © Pitt Rivers Museum

The completed case of Balinese masks and carvings © Pitt Rivers Museum

The final stage is to add interpretation which might include text panels, labels, audio tour entries, maps or diagrams. Because these cases are high up, they offer specific interpretation challenges so this is something we will have to test.

Once everything is completed, the cycle can start again with a new set of objects....

Sian, VERVE Curatorial Assistant

How to Sort your Stuff: Writing a play about Museums

One of the main aims of VERVE is to think about how both the collections and the Museum space can be used to inspire new work, new ideas, and new activity. Since 'performance' is the theme for the project's first phase, the opportunity to work with a contemporary theatre company seemed like a fitting collaboration. Here, Isabel Quinzaños from the group reflects on the experience:

Over a few days in August 2013, a group of budding writers, performing and directors got together at the Pitt Rivers Museum to produce a script about both the Pitt Rivers and the Ashmolean museums.

It all started simply enough. Touring theatre company Out of Joint, based in London, set out to organise an education workshop that would focus on a devising/writing technique called verbatim, which means to create a play out of people’s words. Examples of this kind of plays are The Laramie Project by Tectonic Theater Project, London Road by Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork, The Permanent Way by David Hare and Talking to Terrorists by Robin Soans. The process of writing such plays typically involves conducting a series of interviews to people interested and involved with the topic you have chosen and recording their words in order to use them later on in a play. It is like the theatre version of documentary film.

© Pitt Rivers Museum

The group consisted of ten participants from a wide array of geographical locations and professional backgrounds: an academic in the course of her Architecture PhD, mature and starting performers, a Literary PhD student from Aberystwyth, a professional writer, a budding director, multi-taskers, and people looking to start a company. Under the lead of Naomi Jones they set off to interview staff, volunteers and punters at the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean museums to find out what goes on behind the scenes there. It took a lot of hard work and dedication from the course participants to make the play happen - finding people to interview, recording their exact words and then transcribing them. Then, the whole material was put together and decisions had to be made about what story they could tell. Naomi did the first official edit, but all participants had an input afterwards about what they felt should be in or not. On the final day, they rehearsed the play and put on a little ‘private’ viewing of it for museum staff and invited guests.

 

Sample of the script from 'How to Sort Your Stuff'  © Pitt Rivers Museum

The result was a moving and quirky piece of theatre that gave the group a real insight into how museum staff create the environment that we - the visitors - experience, let alone their perspective on their favourite pieces, the ones they dislike the most and what they think of their work.

© Pitt Rivers Museum

For the participants the best thing was meeting the fascinating personalities that we never meet on our normal museum visits, plus learning about the thought process behind the placement of every single object in the museum -what is written about those objects to tell us a story. In the end, the work museum staff do is as much about us as visitors as it is about the objects they safeguard.

Everyone involved in this course had a great time and was really pleased with the final script which the Pitt Rivers has taken to keep in their archive... maybe they’ll even let you have a read of it if you ask nicely.

Some feedback on the course:

“Naomi was brilliant as course leader. She was practical, energetic, engaging and inspiring. It was easy to trust her and she was happy to share experiences she had with the type of work we created.”

“...it (the course) was led by a professional director - of course that meant that what was learned was of high quality - but also the logistics of completing the course; researching, writing, editing, actioning, rehearsing and performing a new piece of theatre. That we managed to do so is very much thanks to Naomi for directing the whole process.”

Isabel Quinzaños, PA to Artistic Director and Education Administrator, Out of Joint