Tag Archives for National Museum Cardiff

The Big Moss Makeover

Written by Hannah Jenkins, Assistant Curator, Natural Sciences, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.

The botany collection at National Museum Cardiff, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, contains approximately 726,000 botanical specimens from across the world, including around 310,000 bryophytes (mosses, liverworts and hornworts).

Most of our moss specimens (approximately 225,000) are stored in conservation grade packets, however unlike some herbaria, these packets are not mounted on to herbarium sheets but instead are filed directly into drawers within our herbarium.

Large divided wooden drawers housing individual specimen packets © Amgueddfa Cymru

However, tucked away, we also have a small number of outsized bryophyte specimens, the majority of which are mosses, mounted directly on herbarium sheets. This is in a similar vein to some of the historical exsiccatae they are stored with but is a technique more commonly associated with vascular plant herbaria.

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How to Foster Empathy with Endangered Animals: Developing a Creative Writing and Drawing Workshop Toolkit

Written by Dr Christina Thatcher, Lecturer in Creative Writing & Dr Lisa El Refaie, Reader in Language and Communication, Cardiff University.

With biodiversity declining at an alarming rate, we need to find ways of encouraging people to care about all endangered animal species, not just the ones with the most obvious appeal, such as pandas and polar bears, for example. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s ‘Red List of Threatened Species’, 27% of mammals are threatened with extinction, but so are 44% of reef corals, 41% of amphibians, 37% of sharks and rays, 21% of reptiles, and 12% of birds.

In 2023, we—Dr Christina Thatcher and Dr Lisa El Refaie from Cardiff University—met and discovered our shared interest in the expressive arts, metaphor, empathy and nature. We then designed a project which aimed to use the power of creativity to increase public awareness of, and empathy for, endangered animals, focusing on species that have few or no obvious human-like features. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account and ran from November 2023 until the autumn 2024, in collaboration with Natural History curators at the National Museum Cardiff. Continue reading →

Conservation Matters in Wales – Christmas Conference 2023

Written by Sebastien Lherondel-Davies, 2nd year BSc student, Swansea University, whilst on placement at National Museum Cardiff and Swansea Museum.

On Wednesday 13th December 2023, conservators and curators from all over Wales gathered in Swansea for the first in-person Conservation Matters Wales Christmas Conference since the pandemic. Conservation Matters Wales is a collaboration between Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, the Federation of Museums and Art Galleries in Wales, and Cardiff University. The event, hosted by the delightful Swansea Museum, was an opportunity for professionals in the museum collections conservation sector to come together and share the wide range of projects they have been working on. The conference provided us with the chance to present our research project on a historic Lepidoptera collection. 

Swansea Museum
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Mary De La Beche: Lady Lepidopterist

Written by Kanchi Mehta, 2nd year BSc student, Swansea University, whilst on placement at National Museum Cardiff and Swansea Museum.

Born in Swansea in June 1839, the young Mary grew up in a house where she had every freedom. Taught in politics, photography, languages, art and science, young Mary was a smart, outspoken, and opinionated girl. As she grew up, she learnt from her father, Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn, in the forests and beaches around Swansea. Over the years, she took a particular interest in the biology around her family home and kept that interest throughout her life.

She married in Sketty Church to John Cole Nicholl in 1860. He shared her adoration for the outdoors and over the course of their honeymoon the couple went all over Europe seeing the sights, scaling every mountain they could and documenting it all in their diaries. Mary alone filled roughly six diaries with her thoughts on the nature she saw, the people she met and the languages she learnt all accompanied by her sketches. By the Christmas of 1860, the pair made it home with two puppies in tow, brought for Mary by John, and a baby on the way.

© Grandmother Extraordinary by Hilary M. Thomas
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NatSCA Digital Digest – December

Compiled by Jennifer Gallichan, NatSCA Blog Editor; Curator at Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd – National Museum Cardiff.

Welcome to the December edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

This month’s Digest dispenses with the usual format and focuses on all things Christmas. Apologies to all those Scrooges out there, but all things considered, this year needs as much sparkle and fairy lights as we can throw at it people!

There are some super virtual advent calendars going on. I am off course recommending my very own institutions @CardiffCurator account. This year our annual #MuseumAdvent calendar meets #NatureOnYourDoorstep. We launched our nature #WinterBingo challenge on the 1st December. Find all 24 things before Christmas, tag them in and they’ll retweet your finds.

Then there is the wonderful Leeds Discovery Centre Video Advent Calendar. Every day, open a door to see what object their curators and staff have found in the Store. Also an excellent opportunity for a virtual nose around their stores.

And this year, Manchester Museum are bringing you a #Caring Christmas advent calendar. Each day their gift to you is a little story of wonder, celebrating how we care for our world and each other.

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