What is this object?

Tags

bench end, Berkshire, Corinna Wagner, Cornwall, Cumnor, Harry Hems, Medieval Studies, Naomi Howell, Passion, St Chad Church, The Five Wounds of Christ, trade symbols, Victoria and Albert Museum

I have had numerous requests for further information regarding this object, and so I started by asking my colleague Dr Corinna Wagner, who already helped us with finding out more about Harry Hems, if she knew anything about it.

According to Corinna, this is a bench end which refers to the Passion. The symbols on it – heart, feet, hands – refer to ‘The Five Wounds of Christ’. This was a really helpful piece of advice which inspired me to look further.

We can compare our bench end with another one from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (above), which also seems to come from Devon or Cornwall, dating 1500-1520, by an unknown artist. The Victoria and Albert Museum website dedicated to it suggests that the motifs on the shields also refer to the Passion, but this time they were identified as the instruments of the Passion through the inclusion of what looks like a book or wrist-gard, which indicates that they may have been the craftsman’s trade symbols.

I then asked my colleague Dr Naomi Howell, Associate Research Fellow in Medieval Studies in the Department of English at Exeter, if she was familiar with this image.  She immediately sent me a set of other images, such as the one above titled Cumnor, Berkshire, originally uploaded by Vitrearum (Allan Barton), with the line: ‘a double-sided poppy head decorated with instruments of the Passion on one side and the cross, a sacred monogram and the five wounds on the other’.

She also sent this image (above), again posted by Allan Barton, with the title ‘Medieval benchends (one decorated with the five wounds)’ at St. Chad’s Church, Harpswell, Lincolnshire, and the image below titled ‘Five wounds of Christ’ and showing a detail one of eight carved oak panels made for Cardinal David Beaton at some point before his assassination in 1546, National Museum of Scotland, suggesting that ‘The Five Wounds, like the Holy Name, were the object of wide popular devotion in Britain immediately before the Reformation.’

These images all differ from one another, because of the choice and/or position of the symbols representing the Five Wounds of Christ. Notice the different positioning of the feet, the presence, or absence of the cross, symbols relating to trade, and general shape of the image.

Dr Naomi Howell is an expert in this field. Together with Professor Philip Schwyzer, she is working on two projects, the Leverhulme-funded Speaking with the Dead: Histories of Memory in Sacred Space and the EU-funded The Past in its Place: Histories of Memory in English and Welsh Locates, which investigate changing attitudes to memory and commemoration in English cathedrals, from the middle ages to the modern Era.

We asked her for further clarification on our object. She said: ‘these Five Wounds of Christ were a very popular image, or set of images, throughout the Middle Ages which were used in devotion and contemplation’. ‘If you do a search on the web for “medieval + five + wounds +Christ”, she notes, ‘you will see how numerous and varied these representations are, whether in manuscripts, larger paintings, stained glass, and, later in block prints.’

Perhaps most crucially for us, she points out, ‘the interesting thing about the representation on pews seems to be that they are on shields, like heraldic devices. The reason for this could be interesting to think about. What does it mean for those bodily fragments to be positioned as signs of personal identity, origin, and genealogical purpose? This motif makes me think of all the past hands and feet brushing or shuffling past them over the ages. These carvings might have often been touched in passing before they were seen or looked at attentively. Did the designers and artisans have this bodily proximity in mind when they chose a motif which emphasises the body? Touching the “hands” of Christ would have been unavoidable, and could have been an unconscious or semiconscious act of piety, as the seat became more and more familiar to its occupants during the course of their lifetimes.’

This insight Naomi has given us into the ‘performativity’ of this object, what it has been affording us to do, what relationships it prompted over centuries (i.e., the act of touching Naomi refers to, and the way this would have evolved over the years, as one would become more familiar with the object), is what we think Moor Stories is about.

if you have seen this image, or anything similar to this image, anywhere on Dartmoor, or further afield, wherever this may be, please get in touch.

NB some images are from creative commons sites. Please contact us if you wish to your name or image to be cited in any other way.

 

Working up the website

Tags

Andy Chapman, Dartmoor, evaluation, map, web design, wireframes

Earlier posts have described what we are trying to achieve with the website. This week we worked with Andy Chapman from 1010Media to develop some wireframes for the website.

Wire what?

Wireframing is an essential part of the website building process. It provides the structure for the website before a design is created for the site’s finished look and feel. A wireframe gives the shape of a page showing where images, text, navigation and any other elements that users need will go. Having a series of wireframes allows developers and project team members to test ideas and check if the navigation makes sense.

Simple black and white wireframe

Building on the basics

Once a basic structure is in place we add more wireframe pages to check our ideas about how the site works are correct. This usually involves some rethinking since actually trying to work through a series of pages flushes out any problems. We also start adding visuals to the wireframes to test ideas around the look and feel of the site.

Wireframe with visuals added

Getting more complex

Our last stage is to add in wireframes for pages that will have quite a lot of interactivity in them. For this site this is the map and object information. The actual functionality is not included at this stage. This is because we want to make sure the underlying structure and navigation works before spending time on coding. It also allows us to evaluate concepts around functions within pages with the wider project team.

The result of this is a more complex wireframe where functionality is represented visually. The project team now have time to assess the wireframes and to agree or amend them at our next project meeting.

Complex wireframe showing functionality

Where’s the game?

We are working on the game too but that’s a subject for another post!

Trajectories through user experiences

Tags

Blast Theory, CHI, Dartmoor, game, Ghostwriter, Harry Hems, history, human computer interaction, interfaces, map, mixed reality, mobile phones, performance, RAMM, role, space, Steve Benford, time, trajectories, Uncle Roy All Around You, Victorian

In 2009, Steve Benford, Tom Rodden, Boriana Koleva and I published a paper at CHI, the most influential conference on human computer interaction, which attracts over 2000 attendees per year from the commercial (Microsoft, Google, Intel etc) and academic sectors from over 84 countries. The paper aimed to offer a conceptual framework in which trajectories explain user experiences that extend over space and time and involve multiple roles and interfaces. The paper won two awards: at CHI, where it received a best paper award, and back in the UK, where it received the best 2009 UK research in human computer interaction award.

In short, the paper, which combines performance studies and human computer interaction methodologies, uses trajectories to explain user experiences as journeys through hybrid structures, which can be analysed in terms of: space; time; roles and interfaces. Our research, which was furthered in our book Performing Mixed Reality (2011), presents strategies for the design of these hybrid structures. In terms of space, it looks at how physical and digital environments can be juxtaposed and how users’ journeys can be orchestrated through them. As for hybrid time, it proposes ways of combining story time, plot time, schedule time, interaction time and perceived time. As far as hybrid roles are concerned, it shows how individuals involved in such experiences may be acting as spectators, participants, bystanders or a combination of multiple roles. Finally, interfaces are looked at as interconnected ecologies. The image above shows a user in Blast Theory’s Uncle Royal All Around You (2003) walking through London whilst playing the game, which asks of them that they find the mysterious figure of Uncle Roy by following a series of clues received via a handheld device. Online participants were able to track their progress in a parallel online virtual model of the city. The work was a hybrid experience merging aspects of computer games with live performance. Below, again by Blast Theory, is an image from Ghostwriter (2011) at RAMM. This is an audio tour for mobile phones, which guides users through the museum though a number of possible trails, mixing facts and fiction, and overlaying the physical spaces at RAMM with imaginary and historical spaces.

In Moor Stories, we have chosen to utilise a game, an archive and a map to encourage users to explore the Dartmoor materials in the RAMM collections from different perspectives. Space-wise, they can encounter these materials in the museum, where they can view the physical objects guided by museum interpretation; online, where they can experience a broader selection of them digitally, guided by museum interpretation; and in situ, on Dartmoor, through a game and a map, where hybrid physical and digital environments are intersected. Temporally, users can experience these materials chronologically, by exploring Victorian Dartmoor, for example, or geographically, which means objects from different periods in time can be seen concurrently. Users will be able to embrace different roles, the detective (in the game) and the explorer (in the map) and encounter different characters in the game (Hems, a curator and a mouse). This will hopefully encourage users to adopt different roles, which may be more or less explorative (archive, game and map); reflexive (archive and map); playful (game); interactive (game), etc. At our development meeting next week we hope to see how some of these ideas are being utilised concretely in the game and map components of the project.

References

Benford, S., Giannachi, G., Koleva, B. and Rodden, T. (2009) ‘From Interaction to Trajectories: Designing Coherent Journeys Through User Experiences’, Proceedings ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), Boston, MA, April 5-9, 2009, ACM Press.

Benford, S. and Giannachi, G. (2011) Performing Mixed Reality, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Development

Tags

1010media, Andy Chapman, archive, Art Maps, Bronze Age, Dartmoor, detective, East Dartmoor, Gabriella Giannachi, game, Harry Hems, Helen Burbage, Kate Squires, map, Rick Lawrence, South Dartmoor, Tate, Tom Cadbury, trajectories, Victorian

The core components of our project are an archive, a game and a map. At our first development meeting, we discussed all three components, brainstorming different possibilities of user engagement and planning our work over the next three months. By we, I mean: the developer Andy Chapman from 1010media; RAMM’s curator for antiquities Tom Cadbury; RAMM’s digital media officer Rick Lawrence; the documentation assistant Helen Burbage; our volunteer helper Kate Squires, and myself.

Following on from my research on trajectories through user experiences, I always felt that the three components should remain distinct, although Moor Stories would be constituted by all of them. This is in order to facilitate different types of journeys through RAMM’s collections on Dartmoor (inside the Museum, on Dartmoor, and online).

The archive should act as a digital library. Users could browse it; gain knowledge over the RAMM collection; find parallels between artefacts; and explore the development of art in Dartmoor chronologically by looking at Bronze Age Dartmoor, Victorian Dartmoor, etc. Andy (with Helen and Tom below) pointed out how it was important that free exploration should be facilitated in this context, just like in a real library and that the design of the website should be uncluttered, though perhaps entailing a Victorian theme of some kind.

The game, on the other hand, would be structured around the theme of the church detective. Helen noted that it should be playful and we all feel that it should use the theme of the detective to encourage users to explore churches on Dartmoor and help us to locate the objects that Hems worked on in Dartmoor. From a learning point of view, the game would encourage users to look at churches, find objects, search for parallels between them, and develop knowledge. In fact in a sense, our game users would act as Moor Stories researchers.

Finally, the map, aims to attract the curiosity of the Dartmoor explorer (walkers, tourists, families) prompting them to juxtapose a physical exploration of Dartmoor with the viewing of the artefacts in RAMM’s collection that are connected to specific sites on the Moor. The map may not be the terrain, but in our case the design of the map is rendered more complex by the overlap of a number of factors. Tom noted that most artefacts in the RAMM collection stem from East and Southern Dartmoor, but we don’t always know exactly where they are from. A number of areas in Dartmoor have no connectivity, so we will need to start by looking at overlaps between areas which have connectivity and locations which are related to objects in the RAMM collection. Rick also noted that we can’t go into the areas covered by the military and, to be more inclusive, we shouldn’t adventure too far from car parks, although to attract walkers we may have the odd long trail.

At one level we hope this project will take the Museum out of itself, and another we hope that users who will have experienced objects on Dartmoor may wish to go back to RAMM to look at the physical artefacts themselves. To this extent we are considering a view on demand option in case a certain number of users wish to view a particular object in the museum as a direct consequence of participating in Moor Stories.  This of course would only be possible if the object could be safely displayed (i.e. if there was no risk of deterioration), so we are not sure about the feasibility of this idea. However, as is the case of other digital projects, such as Art Maps at Tate, we feel that it is critical that more relationships are built between the objects in these ‘national’ collections and the people themselves, ‘the nation’ to whom these objects belong.

Harry Hems according to Dr Corinna Wagner

Tags

antiquity, Bosses, bricoleur, community, Corinna Wagner, global, Gothic, Gothic Revival, Harry Hems, John Ruskin, local, neo-gothic, sensus communis, University of Exeter, Victorian, Victorian Medievalism, William Morris

To throw more light on Harry Hems, we have asked Dr Corinna Wagner, Senior Lecturer in English at University of Exeter, a series of questions that aim to locate Hems within the broader context of Victorian culture and history. Dr Wagner, together with Dr Joanne Parker, also from the English Department at University of Exeter, hold a large AHRC grant to study Identity, Community and Victorian Medievalism, exploring ‘how communities have turned to their regional histories and local landscapes in response to economic, technological and social change’. The project specifically looks into how Victorian artists like Hems ‘borrowed’ from the literary and visual artefacts of their region’s medieval past in order to ‘forge an aesthetic that they thought capable of inspiring “sensus communis” – that is a shared sensibility about what it means for a community to flourish

What do we know about Harry Hems?

Although not a native Exonian, Harry Hems became a well-known figure in the South West, and a significant member of late Victorian Exeter society. He was something of a celebrity for several reasons. First, he was an incredibly talented wood and stone carver, who collected a vast collection of medieval woodwork and sculpture, mostly gathered from churches he visited. He used these collected pieces as examples for his own designs, but interpreting them in a way that combined past and present. Quite wonderfully, he developed a meticulous understanding of medieval design but then creatively adapted traditional forms to reflect the tastes and priorities of modern Victorians.

There is also a second reason for his renown: Hems was a flamboyant character, and something of a self-promoter. He was passionate about what he did and he was a driven, disciplined craftsman. He expected much from his workers and was known for his fiery temper, which resulted in not a few lawsuits! Having said that, he could also be characterized as an old-school Victorian paternalist, who treated Exeter’s elderly poor to a Christmas meal each year.

Why is the Hems collection significant and distinctive?

The Hems collection, held at the RAMM, is significant for its sheer size, diversity and antiquity. There are hundreds of fifteenth-century carvings and architectural fragments, gathered from restoration projects in a variety of locations. These pieces could tell us much about the landscape, culture and social configurations of the communities that produced them, but alas, we don’t know where many of the pieces come from.

How would you describe Hems’ use of gothic?

To be honest, I’m not sure – yet – how I would describe Hems’ particular brand of gothic. This is one of the questions I want to answer in my project. What I can say is that he was something of a ‘bricoleur’ – that is, he is someone who borrowed from a wide variety of sources, and brought things together in new combinations. Clearly his carvings are traditional and religious, and use established symbols and designs. In addition, my research reveals his keen interest in recovering old methods of craftsmanship and in using time-honoured, local materials (like Beer limestone). Yet, he would re-interpret and experiment with the old in new ways, as can be seen in his award-winning neo-gothic furniture, which thrilled the judges at world exhibitions in Paris and America. The gothic became a brand of neo-gothic that combined the local with the global.

What do we know about how his art relates to other aesthetic movements?

Hems was part of the Gothic Revival, a much wider, international movement, which celebrated the aesthetics and social structures associated with the European Middle Ages. That he was extremely busy with commissions as far away as Africa, indicates the significance of this movement. There is also a political aspect to his aesthetics. Like William Morris, Hems related his art to his political philosophy (though he didn’t share Morris’ socialist leanings). Like Morris and John Ruskin, Hems saw the honest labour of craftsmanship as a deeply ethical enterprise; gothic design communicated important human values like vitality and honour. Hems identified a continuity between his aesthetics, his business, his participation in charitable organizations and his position as an Exeter city councillor.

How should we look at his bosses, what was the significance of these objects in situ?

I think we should attempt to read his bosses, to try to determine what it is they expressed and what they express to us now. We should ask ourselves:

• How do these wonderfully detailed, meticulously carved ornaments affect us as viewers?
• What values do they promote?
• What do they tell us, if anything, about local identities?
• What about changes in these identities, over time?
• What are the differences between Devon bosses and say, Norfolk bosses?
• People have observed that the bosses in the church at Honiton, Devon are among the most beautiful. Why?
• What did the artist want to express?
• Did he express something specific about that community?

As you can see, I have answered the question with yet more questions. I don’t have an answer, except to say that we must look at his bosses and when we do, we should work to understand what it is they say to us.