Category: Modern(ish)

Glencoe hoard linked to massacre finds home in the Highlands

Modern(ish), Museums

The Glencoe coin hoard, linked to the brutal 1692 massacre of the Glencoe MacDonald clan and maybe even buried by one of its victims, is going on permanent display at the Glencoe Folk Museum in the Scottish Highlands near where it was found.

The hoard was discovered in 2023 during an excavation of a summerhouse in a glen near the Pass of Glencoe that was used as a hunting lodge or feasting hall by chief Alasdair Ruadh “MacIain” MacDonald of the Glencoe MacDonald clan. The coins had been placed in a pot and covered with a pebble before burial under the hearth of a grand stone fireplace.

The pot contained silver and bronze coins from the 16th and 17th centuries. Most of them were British coins, minted by Elizabeth I, James VI of Scotland/James I of Britain, Charles I, the Commonwealth, Charles II. However, it also contained a bronze coin of Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621-1665), a brass coin of Louis XIII of France (r. 1610-1643) and a rare quattrino of Pope Clement VIII (r. 1592-1605). Other objects discovered in the excavation of the hoard include: musket shot, a powder measure, spindle whorls, and high-status pottery from England, France and Germany, including a large fragment from a “beardman” jug produced in workshops on the Rhine.

None of the coins found in the hoard were minted after the 1680s, which indicates they were hidden right before or even during the massacre. Since nobody ever returned to retrieve this valuable treasure, it’s possible the person who buried it was one of the killed. Another possibility is that it was buried there by a survivor fleeing the massacre who never had the opportunity to return. The presence of English coins is expected in a Scottish hoard, but the European coins and pottery fragments suggest some of the coins may have been collected by Maclain himself who was known to have traveled widely on the continent.

Dr Eddie Stewart, senior archaeology lecturer at Glasgow University, said of the project: “The excavations at the summerhouse site, and our surveys and excavations in the wider landscape, paint a vivid picture of the world of the Macdonald of Glencoe chiefs. Instead of wild and savage clansmen in a remote glen, they were highly educated, well-travelled and better connected with access to continental educations, imported wine and tobacco, and fine dining wares from Germany, France, and England.

“The coins from the hoard highlight these connections which surely played a part in how the chiefs presented themselves and performed their status and worldliness to their clan, kin, and guests.”

The Glencoe Folk Museum is the ideal location to tell this story, as it combines the charm of authentic 1800s thatched croft cottages with a new fully accessible exhibition space and a remote engagement program that makes the museum’s collections and events available worldwide via the internet. It is currently closed for construction and will reopen early next year.

Catriona Davidson, the Curator of Glencoe Folk Museum, said: “We are so excited to be adding these artefacts to our collection. One of the aims of our current redevelopment project is to create exhibition spaces with the environmental conditions and security to allow us to acquire more significant objects – and we’re thrilled that this has already paid off.

“Items such as these give us a tangible connection to the people who lived here in the past and can tell us so much about everyday life in the Glen. We can’t wait to work with the archaeology team to interpret the artefacts for the Museum and share their stories in the place where they were discovered.”

Wreck of Danish flagship blown up by Nelson found

Modern(ish)

The remains of the Danish–Norwegian flagship Dannebroge, destroyed by the British Navy under the command of then Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson during the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, have been discovered by maritime archaeologists from the Danish Viking Ship Museum.

The blockship Dannebroge was at anchor in the harbor of Copenhagen, serving as a central command ship of the Danish–Norwegian fleet as it was under heavy attack by the Royal British Navy. In the early morning of April 2, 1801, Dannebroge was bombarded by two British ships and hit with incendiary shells. The crew had to fight the fires that had broken out all over the ship while still dodging artillery. The battle raged for hours, the Danish fleet steadily weakening, until at 4:00 PM a ceasefire was declared and fighting stopped.

Dannebroge, adrift and aflame, exploded at 4:30 PM. What was left of the ship and its contents sank onto the seabed. Out of the crew of 357, 53 died on the ship and another three were wounded so severely they died from their injuries in the hospital. There were 48 wounded who survived, and 19 were lost, their bodies never recovered.

Archaeologists began exploring the seabed of Copenhagen harbor over the past few weeks in advance of the planned construction of the new artificial island of Lynetteholm. The site is 50 feet below the surface, dark, cold and silty. Visibility is almost zero, so divers had to move slowly and deliberately. The excavation has so far revealed ship timbers, a ballast pile, cannon and objects belonging to the crew — uniform badges, shoes, clay pipes, weapons. A fragment of a jawbone of one of 19 missing was found.

Archaeological materials form the Battle of Copenhagen have never been excavated or even sought out before now, despite the significance of the battle in Danish history.

The Battle of Copenhagen is part of our national narrative, written into books, painted on canvases, and embedded in our culture. For that reason, every single find is—according to Otto Uldum—an important source for understanding our shared history. And this means that the excavation of Dannebroge is not only about archaeology, but about an event that has shaped Denmark’s history and self‑understanding:

“Every time we say even a little something about a shoe or a bone, it matters just a bit more, because this is actually the Battle of Copenhagen.”

According to the archaeologist, the archaeological finds contribute a dimension that written sources and the museums’ collections of prestigious objects do not contain. These are not objects created to commemorate or impress. They are the remains of the majority, offering broader perspectives and new sources for a history we may think we already know:

“Statistically, it is easier for us to find something that belonged to the ordinary sailor. We have found more remains of shoes from common gunners than of the officers’ fine boots—and you have to be lucky to find those, because there weren’t many such boots on board, but there were an awful lot of those gunner’s shoes. In that sense, what we find is probably more representative—socially speaking,” Otto Uldum concludes.

Dali’s largest work acquired by Dalí Museum in Florida

Modern(ish), Museums

An unique assemblage from a theatrical set designed and painted by Salvador Dalí for a 1939 ballet has been acquired by the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The auction lot included the backdrop curtain that is the largest work of art ever made by the surrealist master, plus four friezes and fours wings, for a total of 13 canvases. It is almost the complete set from the original staging, missing only the giant wooden swan which no longer survives. It sold at Bonhams Paris for €254,400 ($292,000).

In March 1939, Dalí was contracted to design the sets for the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo’s production of Venusberg, a one-act ballet that used the Venusberg Bacchanale from the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser as the score. It was a perfect commission for a surrealist. Dalí wrote the libretto, a Freudian flight of fantasy wherein King Ludwig II of Bavaria encounters Venus in the form of a fish-headed mermaid and then a dragon. He stabs the goddess, and she splashes him with her “libidinous poison” which drives his mad. He then hallucinates, among other things, a dancer emerging from a giant wooden swan from the Leda myth, his lover, famed courtesan Lola Montez, and the Three Graces as dressmakers’ mannequins.

Dalí was in New York at that time, so he created a scale model of the set and had it shipped to Monaco. Under Dalí’s supervision, Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo’s set designer Oreste Allegri and Prince Alexandre Schervachidze, head of the workshops, would execute his vision. The massive scenic backdrops for the mad king’s dreamscapes were laid out flat on the floor of the workshop and hand painted.

The backdrop constitutes the central and monumental element of this set imagined by Salvador Dalí. Over nine metres [30 feet] high and nearly eighteen metres [59 feet] wide, it unfolds a landscape that is at once mysterious and dreamlike, crossed by mythological, artistic and psychoanalytical references. At the centre rises majestically Mount Venus, occupying almost the entire height of the curtain. At its base, on the left, a waterfall flows into a calm pond. This presence of water, rare within this mineral and arid environment, introduces a pause in the landscape: it evokes both the source of life and the flow of time, elusive and continuous.

The symbolic mountain is pierced at its heart, revealing a tempietto and figures from the Italian Renaissance that reproduce the composition of Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, itself inspired by the architecture of Donato Bramante. Yet here the scene seems emptied of its original meaning: there is neither union nor true celebration. Love is absent. This absence may be linked to the figure of the swan spreading its wings, once placed in front of the mountain, which referred to the myth of Leda and evoked both desire, temptation and the guilt associated with feminine sin.

To the left of the mountain, the carcass of a wrecked boat bears witness to an ancient drama that time seems gradually to erase. Nearby, a figure stands with an arm raised in an ambiguous posture: a call for help, a gesture of despair, or a final attempt at communication? To the right, in the distance, a desert stretches to the horizon line, punctuated by immense enigmatic rocks. This arid space intensifies the feeling of solitude and infinity so characteristic of Dalí’s landscapes.

The friezes and wings framed the spaces that transition from the stage to the backstage. Dalí employed a cabinet of curiosities motif, painting drawers, some open, some closed, and cubbies, some empty, some with figures including busts, skulls, ewers, his wife Gala, a reclining nude and more. The wings are an abstract, organic line design that suggests musical notes dancing in space.

In September of that year, with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and the world about to plunge into war, the ballet’s name was changed from the Wagnerian Venusberg to the decidedly less German sounding Bacchanale. Dalí and Gala were in France then, and were unable to get to New York City for the premiere of the ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House on November 9, 1939, where it was a huge hit and of course caused many pearls to be clutched.

The company would perform Bacchanale with Dalí’s set for the next two years, then for one-off productions in 1945 and the last one in 1967. When the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo disbanded in 1968, the set was donated to the Ballet Foundation in New York. They donated it to Butler University in Indianapolis where it remained from 1970 until 2018 when it was sold at Sotheby’s New York for a private collection in Spain which loaned it out for display three times in Spain and Italy.

Now that it has been acquired by the Dalí Museum, the Bacchanale backdrop and wings will have a new home where they can be exhibited surrounded by thousands of other works by Dalí. The museum is embarking on a major expansion this year. Construction begins in the fall on an addition that will add 35,000 square feet to the existing building. The timing could not be better for them to figure out an ideal space to display such a monumental testament to Dalí’s work on the stage.

Section of Eiffel Tower staircase goes under the hammer

Modern(ish)

A section of the helical staircase trod by millions of visitors to reach the summit of the Eiffel Tower is going under the hammer at Artcurial in Paris in May.

Eiffel Tower staircase sections have been sold at auction before. There are 24 of them from when the top two floors of the helical staircase were removed to install an elevator in 1983. There’s one exhibited on the first floor of the Tower today and three more in French museums. The remaining 20 sections, ranging in size from 6.5 to 30 feet high, were sold at auction in December 1983.

The one on sale at Artcurial now is lot no. 1 of the 1983 staircase auction. It is 2.75 meters (9 feet) high with 14 steps spiraling around a riveted sheet metal cylinder mounted on a cross-shaped base. It has been in the same private collection since the sale, and has been restored by the workshops charged with the continuing maintenance of the Eiffel Tower. It is painted brown to match the color it was when the staircase was removed.

Of the twenty sections sold in 1983, few have remained in France and are still in the possession of their original buyers. Several elements have joined prestigious collections and sites around the world. One of them can be seen in the gardens of the Yoishii Foundation in Yamanashi, Japan, another near the Statue of Liberty in New York, and even at Disneyland. Others now belong to major international private collections.

The pre-sale estimate is €40,000 – 50,000 ($46,000-58,000), but it’s sure to go for much more than that. The last time Artcurial sold an Eiffel stair section in 2020, the pre-sale estimate was €30,000-40,000 and it ended up selling for €274,475. It also holds the record for the most expensive set ever sold, section no. 17 which sold in 2016 for €523,800.

The Eiffel Tower took only two years and 200 men to build. The finished structure was 300 meters (984 feet) high and had 1,710 stairs from bottom to top. It was built for the Exposition Universelle, the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. It was intended to be demolished after the Exhibition just like all the other pavilions, but Gustave Eiffel managed to convince the government to let it stand on the grounds that it was a great lookout tower in wartime and the ideal meteorological station in peacetime. Thus the “temporary” showpiece launched a new era in engineering and iron construction and became the forever icon of the city of Paris.

Intact 17th c. storage barrels found in Norway

Modern(ish)

Three intact wooden storage barrels and a large wood rammer from the 17th century have been unearthed in the medieval center of Skien, Norway. They were covered in moist soil and trash fill which preserved the wood in excellent condition for 400 years.

Skien was one of only eight towns that existed in Norway during the Middle Ages. It was founded, perhaps as a small trading post, in the 9th century and grew into a thriving market town. Located on the lowest point of the Skien River system, it was conveniently located for trade and shipping, receiving goods like grain, whetstones and lumber from the northern parts of Telemark county and then exporting them to England and northern continental Europe.

Archaeological surveys have been conducted in the city center due to upgrades in the water and sewage systems. It is the largest excavation of the medieval city since the 1970s. The barrels were found in the excavation of Torggata, one of the main streets of the city whose current level overlays previous iterations. (Sections of the 18th century wooden street were uncovered in the excavation; it had a slightly different orientation, running almost exactly north-south.) They were on the west side of the 17th century road in an area that had been subject to extensive land reclamation.

The barrels were made of oak with bands of wood (hazel or beech) wrapped around the circumference. Those slim bands are now as soft as cheese. Unlike other wooden remains like road planks, the barrels and rammer were untouched by the many fires that ravaged the city (documented in 1671, 1732, 1766, 1777, 1779 and 1886).

The barrels and the ram were dug down to the ground level of the time from the 17th century. Around them was a layer of lime. Inside the barrels, cakes of lime were found at the bottom and some demolition material at the top.

The fact that the barrels are buried may indicate that they were used for safe and frost-free storage of finished slaked lime, before it was mixed with sand and water to make lime mortar. The barrels and pestle have probably been used for storing building lime over a long period of time.

Each time the barrels have been emptied, a little lime has been left at the bottom. The lime around the barrels tells archaeologists that they have been completely buried.

The find provides insight into the city’s construction activity and craft community, and is an indication of urban growth, infrastructure and business. Lime mortar was a key building material during the period, both for masonry and plaster, and was probably used in the reconstruction of stone buildings in the city center after a city fire.

The barrels and rammer have been dismantled and removed before the site is altered by the infrastructure work. Archaeologists hope they can be reassembled and placed on public display in the future.