Archive for category: News Story

By Josefin Jimenez

Conservator Ciaran Lavelle mused in an earlier post Life is like a box of Chocolates about the Fry & Son’s Caracas Chocolate box and the randomness of life, and I can here add another random little piece. As the paper conservator, I worked with repairing the paper components of the box, two exterior labels and the remains of a white interior paper lining with a stamped doily pattern.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Caracas is the capital of Venezuela, perched atop the northern coast of the South American continent, the country known for its oil, its cocoa, and political unrest. Curiously, it is also where my father was born and lived until his early twenties.

Emilia Bergmark-Jimenez

The sprawl of Caracas at night

To me and my siblings, growing up in Sweden; almost as far away from Venezuela as it is from New Zealand, it was a place both endlessly distant and strangely present. It was where my paternal grandmother, my abuela Vicenta lived, it was there my dad had once fallen from a wall and cracked his head open (bending down he would let us run our hands along his head to feel the scar), it was where my tios and tias and primitos lived. It was where my dad once had kept a baby caiman as a living pet in his bath tub. Dad would tell us stories about his family, about funerals, his school friends, about rich people and poor people, about drunks and strangers and about his mother’s house in Los Rosales. Dad came to Sweden by chance (on his way to study engineering in Soviet Russia) and decided to stay, eventually having five kids there. J.S Fry’ & Sons was established in 1822 and became the largest commercial producer of chocolate in Britain, the factory located in Union Street in Bristol. It was also the first company in England to produce eating chocolate, the Perl chocolate bar and Caracas Chocolate. Fry & Sons imported their cocoa beans from Venezuela, where at the time there was only one factory for domestic production and the bulk of the raw beans were exported. The beans would be transported to the factory in Bristol where they would be roasted, ground and shaped into chocolate bars. The bars were packed into boxes or tins and transported, and this particular box all the way to Antarctica with Borchgrevink and the first British Antarctic Expedition, 1898 ̶ 1900, to be found and taken to New Zealand where it would meet a genetic descendant, a stranger from home.

Emilia Bergmark-Jimenez

The view from my grandmother’s house

My dad didn’t return to Caracas for 20 years until he accompanied my brother there in 2002 and came there regularly after. My abuela died in October 2015 in her house, the last time he saw her was three years earlier as the political situation prevented travel. I have later come to doubt the veracity of the story of the baby caiman.

By Josefin Jimenez

This week I have been working on half a piece of card, identified only as “Game: Card” in the collection database, with no further information on what kind of game, or how to play it.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

‘Who Knows?’ board game

In his account of the British Antarctica Expedition 1898-1900 Borchgrevink talks about playing chess, cards and draughts to pass the time. He also mentions that the two Sámi members of the expedition, Persen Savio and Ole Must, played Sákhuu, a board game particular to Sámi culture.

So what kind of game does this particular board come from? After conservation treatment, two pieces of information were revealed: the title of the game, ‘Who Knows?’ and the name of the distributor, J Jaques & Sons.

John Jaques is a London firm, established 1756, which still exists today. They were the makers of such Victorian hits as Snap, Halma, and Ludo, not to mention the classics Tiddlywinks and Happy Families. “Who Knows?” is a lesser known game and could be considered an early version of Trivial Pursuit.

This vintage edition of the game, charmingly describes the rules as follows:

1. Six Players and 1 Crier
2. The Crier calls the questions, and the Players in turn must answer correctly; whoever does so gains the Ticket, which is placed on one of the divisions of the Card.
3. The player who fills his card first wins.
4. If no one can answer the questions, the Crier must read it aloud so that, when called again, the Players may have a chance at gaining it.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

‘Who Knows?’ rules

A description of the game can be found in the V&A collections catalogue where we can learn more about the categories of the games tickets.

The subject of the cards are as follows:

47 geography
16 grammar
21 spelling
34 mental arithmetic
71 history
63 general knowledge

So far we haven’t seen any trace of either the other game boards or the tickets but as we are approximately half way through the Cape Adare objects I hope that the tickets will soon cross the treatment table.

By Stefanie White

20 unused tea towels from Cape Adare are currently undergoing conservation treatment. They are all of white linen material with a red border along the top and bottom with words reading ‘TEA CLOTH’ and a delicate leaf damask in white. Interestingly, the towel is has been stamped with bright blue ink reading ‘Hemmed and ready for use’. Traditionally, a tea towel was a luxury item that often the lady of the house would embroider, use to polish precious crockery or to cover food baskets with. These towels would came unhemmed and were typically hemstitched by servants or house maids. However, with the industrial revolution, tea towels became to be mass produced and even ‘hemmed and ready for use’. Among the collection of Tea towels found at Cape Adare, we see a nice example of this 19th/20th century new style of tea towel.

I wonder why they were not used…

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Before treatment of tea towel

After treatment of tea towel

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Hemmed, ready for use

By Josefin Jimenez

In most cases the historic food that comes off the ice is interesting, rather than appetizing. Even if it had not been 100 years old and come from a tin covered in corrosion and penguin remains the names ‘Bloaters’ and ‘Lunch Tongue’ are not something that would make most people reach for their knife and fork. Not in this day and age, anyway!

There have been a few exceptions though, such as tablets of compressed coffee that still smelled like the fresh beans, mango chutney from the Indian Condiment Manufacturer and, in one notable case, lard so white and fresh it might as well have been a tub of ice cream.

And, of course, the Lime Juice Nodules. The nodules came in square tins wrapped in paper and string, and were found underneath a bunk in the Southern Cross hut (first British Antarctic Expedition, 1898 ̶ 1900), believed to be stashed there as part of an emergency cache.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

A tin of Lime Juice Nodules, before treatment.

During conservation it was discovered that one of the tins was leaking and it had to be opened as part of its treatment. The nodules, previously believed to be either dried fruit or sachets of powder, turned out to be in fact chocolate-coated. Each was a square of dark chocolate individually wrapped in parchment paper, around a delicious filling of lime sugar-syrup, much like a modern sweet treat. Their smell was rich and strong and still quite tempting.

After extensive lab discussions we believe that the consistency would be similar to one of the Strawberry flavoured Cadbury Roses. To us it was quite mystifying why the expeditions would have left so many of these tins uneaten.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Cross section of a sampled Lime Juice Nodule, retained for analysis.

The Lime Juice Nodules were supplied by the Bovril Food Company, of British Beef Tea fame, and would have been intended as a remedy for scurvy, an antiscorbutic, but it is doubtful whether they would have worked effectively as such.Previously the remedy for scurvy would have been casually referred to as ‘lime juice’ although actually made from lemons, but a shift in production of antiscorbutics around this time likely meant actual limes were used, in the belief that the higher acidity would be a more effective cure. Unfortunately lime juice contains a considerably smaller amount of Vitamin C and is actually less effective. And as it was all referred to as ‘lime juice’, whether made with limes or lemons, these particular ones could be either.

Scott, for instance, some years later, did not believe that lemon juice would prevent scurvy, instead relying on fresh meat.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Repacking the Lime Juice Nodules into the tin after treatment ̶ as the chocolate threatened to melt at room temperature, treatment had to be carried out in short bursts between periods of cold storage.

And, as the Bovril Food Company also made Fluid Beef and Bovril enriched chocolate containing Albumen and Fibrine, maybe the taste was doubtful too.

By Sue Bassett

Conserving artefacts from the early British Antarctic expedition huts whilst actually living in Antarctica is without doubt a unique, ultimately challenging and wonderful experience for any conservator. Truth be known, it’s life-changing.

The Trust’s current artefacts conservation team, working on the contents of the earliest and most remote British hut in Antarctica, is based in Christchurch. This is because it was logistically simpler to transport frozen artefacts from Antarctica’s Cape Adare to New Zealand for treatment, and then refreeze them and take them back. The Christchurch location offers the team a different set of opportunities, such as weekends to explore NZ’s spectacular South Island and a workplace in the centre of one of the biggest rebuilding projects in the Southern Hemisphere. Following the demolition of about 75 per cent of Christchurch’s CBD in the aftermath of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, the $40b rebuild of the city is now in full swing … on every street and on every corner, it seems.

As part of the inner city reinvigoration plan there is a Friday street-food market in Cathedral Square, alongside the tumbled ruins of the once majestic cathedral, so the team makes a point of going along for a coffee and a spot of lunch. We listen to the buskers and sometimes join the other clientele, mainly high-vis-clad construction workers and tradies, in reviving the community spirit with a leisurely round of quoits.

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Quoits on a Friday in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square

And then it’s back to the lab to conserve … hang on … some century-old coffee, luncheon meat and quoits!  

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Packets of historic coffee, 1899

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Tin of historic preserved lunch tongues, before treatment

Antarctic Heritage Trust

Handmade rope quoit, after treatment