MISS ELAINEOUS VISITS SIR JOHN SOANE'S MUSEUM (AGAIN!)...

Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was considered to be the finest English architect of his time, specialising in the Neo-Classical style.  Soane was responsible for such imposing buildings as the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street (now largely destroyed) and Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The museum is situated at numbers 12, 13 and 14 Lincoln's Inn Fields, Holborn, London, and Soane both resided and worked here.  He remodelled his three houses and turned them into a co-joining living museum, designed to display his collection of unusual artefacts.

The museum was established in Soane's lifetime.

Here's the front of the museum.  It's the second time I've been here, but the first that photography's been allowed; albeit without a flash.

The first room we ventured into was the Library-Dining Room, and generally speaking it was quite gloomy indoors.

 

This room is so called as the Dining Room is attached to the Library...

This astronomical clock- also known as an orrery- is French and dates from c.1800.  There is also a Vain Old Tart in the photo...

Urns and intricate stained glass...

Before he died, Soane negotiated an Act of Parliament, which allowed his collection to be preserved in exactly the same way it as it had been displayed in his lifetime.

View outside onto a grille...

A Vain Old Tart, and there are a couple of small, repressed rooms along this corridor...

The items on show are not labelled- as per the instructions of Sir John Soane- but you can buy an explanatory guidebook or look online for clarification, as I did with some items.

In the Art Gallery, which has moving planes (like cupboard doors lined with paintings- allowing more than one collection to be displayed at intervals) are works by one of my favourite artists, William Hogarth.  I always find his contemporary satirical depictions highly amusing.

  They are only displayed on certain days, however, and alas, this was not one of them!  Oh well, I saw them the last time I was here.

The collection also contains works by Canaletto and Turner.

The Dome Area, and the collection is both bizarre and spectacular, and includes this central statue: Cast of the Apollo Belvedere. 

 Looking down onto the sarcophagus of Egyptian King, Seti I, who was thought to rule from around 1290 or 1294 to 1279 BC.

Looking up into the skylight...

As well as statues, part-statues, busts, urns and gargoyles abound...

You will find that you keep walking back on yourself.  

Here's a view down through an oddly-shaped rectagular hole... 

We moved upwards to the No.13 Breakfast Room, with mirrors on each corner and north/ south/ east/ west labelling.

Breakfast Room ceiling, and this room actually contains over 100 mirrors.

It was possibly my favourite room in the museum.

The view outside onto a small courtyard...

In the Foyle Space is an art collection by Lina Iris Viktor.

This statue, Web Weaver speaks of female creative power and African sculptural traditions.

This is a SuperDean photograph- mine didn't come out half as well!

These gold and black canvases evoke the night sky.

 I loved these glittering, gold artworks.  I would- I'm like a magpie when it comes to sparkly things!😁

Beautiful stained glass; yet in its own way it's quite freaky!  Maybe it's that juxtaposition with the light reflecting through the general gloomth of the museum...

The Monk's Parlour was freaky, with stained glass windows and gargoyles standing sentinel on the wall, but the light was soooo low it was hard to get a decent picture...

Grainy Monk's Chamber view...

Handsome, aren't they?!  It looks like a rogues' gallery of my ex-boyfriends!

I moved down into Crypt.

The way this is set out springs to mind a macabre game of chess!

On both of my visits here, whilst walking through this structured maze, I kept coming eyeball to eye-hole with this skull on a shelf. 

The way I kept ending up next to the skull was disconcerting, to say the least.  But he's actually a plaster model- possibly cast- of a human skull, and not the real thing.

The Sepulchral Chamber and, down on this level, you can walk right up to the sarcophagus of Egyptian pharaoh, Seti I...

...You can even step up and peer inside at the hieroglyphics...

This place was like a labyrinth with elements of halls of mirrors...

 It is very important to look up and down, as all the levels are interlinked and you can get a different view of something you walked past five minutes ago...

There's more art by Lina Iris Viktor down in the basement.

Situated between two plaster casts of the Venus de Medici is the statue Nbiru, and she constrast sharply with traditional representations of the female form.

Ritual Thrones flanking a statue of Britannia.  This speaks of the way in which objects embody power.

Kitchen sink, and the kitchens are also down here in the basement...

Kitchen range...

This old kitchen was "normal" in comparison to what I'd seen so far!

Second kitchen range...

Models of Soane's work are secreted in the museum.  This wooden model is for Butterton Hall, Staffordshire; which was never built.

Downstairs courtyard view...

50 casts from ancient gems, made by Nathanial Marchant (1739-1816).  He was a prolific gem engraver, and these are c.1792/3.

 Up into the North and South Drawing Rooms; all spaces previously used by John Soane, on the top floor...

This area is elegant, and certainly looks more habitable than the rooms housing the majority of the collection!

The museum was free to enter, and this area was once only accessible via a tour.

More Lina Iris Viktor artworks are on display upstairs in the Front Gallery...

The collection contains sculpture, painting, photography and gilding...

It uses mixed media: bronze, wood, silk and ceramic.

The collection unearths connections across time and culture...

The exhibition is called Mythical Time/ Tens of Thousands of Rememberings, and is well worth a visit.

I'll finish with this photo of the Soane family tomb, in the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church, Camden.

It's also home to the Hardy Tree (or rather what's left of it!) and I've blogged about it, link:-

http://elainerockett.blogspot.com/2017/09/miss-elaineous-visits-st-pancras-old.html

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Sir John Soane's Museum, and now want to go and see Dulwich Picture Gallery!

All in good time...

Ta ta for now,

Miss Elaineous

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXX
X

THE MUSEUM OF THE HOME YOUTUBE VLOG NOW LIVE...

My Museum of the Home YouTube vlog is now live!

Link:-

https://youtu.be/WbG_oqWpvCE

 The Museum of the Home used to be called the Geffrye Museum and is in Hoxton, London.  It sits inside former almshouses- charitable housing provided to a particular community; especially representing the poor.

The building dates from 1714 and it has been a museum since 1914.  Refurbishment took place between 2019-2021, and the change of name occured with its relaunch.  It's meant to represent homes and home life from the 1600s to the present day.

Come and take a walk in my shoes through Gardens Through Time, then there are the new basement galleries, called the Home Galleries.  They describe the concept of home through people's lived experiences.  The Rooms Through Time interiors are designed to reveal rich and unique stories, rather than be about the artefacts themselves.  They take you into living rooms from the 17th century right up into 2049, with the Innovo Home of the Future.  There is also a moving art installation to look at plus a 300-year-old chapel, but my favourite section has to be the Garden Reading Room with its gentle, relaxing mural.  

As you know, I will always be a writer before anything else, and my recent Museum of the Home blog is much more detailed, link:-

http://elainerockett.blogspot.com/2024/11/miss-elaineous-visits-museum-of-home.html

Remember to like and subscribe, and don't forget to follow my blog as well!

TTFN

The Miss Elaineous

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXX
X

MISS ELAINEOUS VISITS THE BRITISH MUSEUM (AGAIN!)

You have to hone in on certain things when you visit here as the place is so vast.  On this occasion we made a point of seeking out the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles.  On my previous visit I ventured into the Egyptology section alone, and here's my blog link to that:

https://elainerockett.blogspot.com/2018/05/miss-elaineous-visits-british-museum.html

The queueing system here nowadays is horrendous.  There is one queue for pre-booked (free) tickets and another- around the corner from the main entrance- for those who haven't booked.  What's that all about?  Either make it pre-booked only, or unbooked only; not both.  Also, the way the security guard conducting bag searches spoke to the SuperDean was truly horrendous.  I know that anyone can have a bad day, and that dealing with the general public can be stressful, but he was just obnoxious (hence the two star review I put on Tripadvisor- one point each for the Stone and the Marbles).

Back to the job at hand, and here is the Rosetta Stone, with an explanation next to it.

The Rosetta Stone is a stone of black granodiorite (coarse grained igneous rock) bearing three inscriptions which are key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.  The stone itself is known as a stele (a stone or wooden slab generally longer than it is wide) and the top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts.  Hieroglyphics were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, and consist of syllabic and alphabetic elements, and contain more than 1,000 distinct characters.  Demotic is derived from northern types of heiratic (abridged heiroglyphics adhering to early methods as laid down by religious tradition) used in the Nile Delta.  The bottom section is written in Ancient Greek, which was used from 1500 BC to 300 BC.

The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period (this period in history is after Classic Greece, and sits between the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC and before the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC.

The three versions of text are called the Rosetta Stone decree, or the Decree of Memphis.  The decree was issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty (the longest and last dynasty of ancient Egypt).

It was found in the town of Rashid (Rosetta) by the French in 1799.  When the British defeated the French, in 1801, they took possession of the stone and, since 1802, it has been on display in the British Museum.  It is the most visited object here.

We then headed a couple of galleries further in to view the Elgin Marbles.  They are a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other stuctures in the Acropolis of Athens.

Heres a view of the friezes- high relief Pentelic (fine grained calcitic marble from the quarries at Penteli, north of Athens) marble sculptures- down the main gallery.  Metopes (carved plaques) and pediments (3D statues) sit on their own at each end. 

Agents of Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, removed the marbles and placed them in the British Museum between 1801 to 1812.

There are a couple of information boards and no, the Elgin Marbles is not a game played by boys way up on the east coast of Scotland...😉 

The Parthenon is a former temple, and the marbles are held in various collections, but mostly here in the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum in Athens. 

Elgin stated that he had permission to remove the sculptures from the Ottoman officials, but the legality of his actions has since been disputed. 

Elgin sold the sculptures to the British government in 1816.  Although, that year, it was decreed that he had acquired them legally, his actions have been described as vandalism or looting. 

In 1983 the Greek government formally asked that the British government to return them to Greece...

Metopes in the end room... 

A closer view, and here's a man with...  I'm not sure if he's a satyr (half man half goat) or a centaur (half man half horse)... 

This is likely to be a satyr, as they're often represented as being lecherous, and this one appears to have an erection... 

The pediments consist of humans and beasts...

This was my favourite part of this collection...

Honing in, and there were seats where you could rest awhile.  This whole gallery is spacious and quiet, and I found the peace and subdued lighting very therapeutic.

The view from one end of the pedestal, and the dispute regarding where the Parthenon Marbles belong is ongoing.

More pediments at the other end of the main room...

The Parthenon was built on the Acropolis of Athens, from 447 BC, as a temple to the goddess Athena.

Before leaving the museum I just had to take a photo of their wonderful library; which contains between 170 and 200 million items from around the world.  It is a major research library.

Ceiling view, and the British Museum was established in 1753.

We chilled out for a while in nearby Russell Square.  It's such a shame that this traffic cone is marring my photograph, but I've no one to blame but myself!

This precarious-looking sculpture is called Echo, and is by Joe Duggan.  It is recent-2024- and, according to the accompanying plaque "invites us to contemplate the fleeing nature of idealogies and the unseen forces shaping our world."

I do hope the British Museum manages to sort out it's ticketing system by the time I next care to visit.  I also hope they teach their security guards how to deal with the general public properly- that particular guy is lucky he did not end up with a punch on the snout.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll return.

Until then...

TTFN

Miss Elaineous

XXXXX
XXX
X