19 March 2024

Capt Cook's Cottage Melbourne

James Cook Snr brought his large family from Scotland in 1736 where he had secured more reliable employ­ment on estate farms. As a bo­n­us, he could send young James to school at his employer’s  expense.
                                
Capt Cook's Cottage
transplanted brick by brick to Melbourne in 1934

Navigator-explorer Capt James Cook (1728-79) never lived in the cottage when his parents James and Grace built it in 1755 in Great Ayton village, Nor­th Yorkshire. [1755 was inscribed in the cottage’s stone-work]. The lad had started his sea-faring apprent­iceship in that year, even though he’d have stay­ed with his parents on trips home, enjoy­ing fishing in the River Leven. So this conn­ec­t­­ion to the Cook fam­ily home was enough to link the cottage and young James.

Leap forward to June 1933, when Great Ayton villagers crammed into the Buck Hotel for the auction for Cooks’ Cottage. The house’s legacy of being connected, however distantly, to one of Britain’s most fam­ous explorers meant that many people arrived to witness its fate. Or­iginally Cooks’ Cottage had been placed under strict conditions that any buyer could not remove the building from England, although this was later waived at the auc­tion. Later the Yorkshire cottage was sold to Melbourne scientist and philanthropist Sir Russell Grim­wade for £800.

Even in the 1930s, not everyone was happy about Cooks’ Cottage being removed from its Great Ayton site. Some locals complained that the house belonged to British history. Others were excited for the move, seeing it as a strengthened tie between the two British nations.

Then there was the job of dismantling the cottage. Each beam, raft­er, flagstone and brick was individually numbered as it was pain­st­akingly removed and placed into 253 wooden crates. Attent­ion to det­ail was important: only the modern parts of the house were left be­hind eg a fireplace ingle­nook that had been built after the Cooks left. The crates were taken by a fleet of lor­ries to a train which delivered them to the port of Hull. There the Commonwealth and Dom­inion Liner Port Wellington was waiting.

The ship left port in Feb, carrying 16,851 ks from the Cook Cottage to Australia. A site in the Fitz­roy Gardens was selected to rebuild the cot­t­age, where it went up brick-by-brick and opened to the pub­lic to mark Melbourne’s 100th centenary 1934. Construction work was completed in 6 months then the cottage was handed over to the Lord Mayor by Grimwade in Oct 1934 in time for the centenary cer­emony. Combining modern interpret­at­ions of Capt Cook's advent­ures, original furniture, a lovely English cot­t­age garden, vol­unt­eers in C18th costumes and a new museum in the stable. The Cottage was perfect when I visited (1958).

Original 18th century furniture

Actually Capt Cook lived on his ship HM Endeav­our and never act­ual­ly lived anywhere on land. The closest he act­ual­ly came to the future-city was from the deck of the Endeavour, a few ks from Point Hicks in Gippsland (which Cook nam­ed). Thus the cottage became a his­t­orical fluke, in a place with no connection to Mel­b­ourne, yet for decades successfully miscast as a nationalistic colonial icon.

The loss of Cooks’ Cottage to Great Ayton was quickly remedied with a gift from the Australian government. An obelisk now stands on the original site of Capt Cook’s Cottage, made out of Point Hicks gran­ite. NB this was the first land Cook aw on his 1770 Australian trip!

So why was the cottage erected in the Fitzroy Gardens if Cook was ne­ver in Melbourne? Partially because the area was surrounded by large shady Eu­r­opean trees, hist­orian Linda Young noted that jour­n­al­ist Hermon Gill created a Cook–Melbourne connection. It was argued that the first Australian coastline, observed by Cook’s 1770 exped­ition, was here. Since Melbourne was about to mark 100 years of settle­ment in 1934, Gill suggested that Melbourne was the proud guardian of the cottage of the man who had made the cen­tenary poss­ible! It’s now a museum to colonial history.

As the cottage structure had been altered considerably by a succ­es­sion of British owners following the Cook family's occupation, its Aust­ral­ian assemblers had to restore the cottage as accurat­ely as records would permit to its mid C18th appearance.

But before it had even been moved, there were discussions in Melbourne about where to reb­uild Cook’s cottage. Some citizens did­n’t want an unpretent­ious little building without any architect­ural value stuck beside the stately national buildings in Swanston St. But by the time Cooks’ Cot­t­age appeared in Fitzroy Gardens in Oct 1934, the public seemed to have warmed to the build­ing: a large crowd watched the centennial ceremony. Mrs Dixon of Great Ayton presented the original key of the cottage to Grimwade.

Statue of Capt Cook in 
the herb garden behind the cottage

Guides in 18th century clothes

Today, Cooks’ Cottage remains open, looking very much like it did back in Great Ayton in the 1700s. The exterior shows a reddish brown brick cottage, remin­iscent of many in the English countryside, com­p­lete with a customised, traditional English garden. The herb and vege­t­able garden behind the house has been planted as it would have  been at the time. In C18th, families relied on home-grown produce for their food supply. Poultry shared the space with vegetables, mixed fruits and flowers. Most families had a good knowledge of herbs uses for cooking and med­icine, using them to cure illnesses and injuries. Cook prevented scurvy in his crews by including scurvy grass/New Zealand spinach and sauerkraut.

Critique
Recently the Capt Cook story is coming under critic­ism. The cottage was one of a few colonial monuments vand­alised on Aus­tralia Day, as public opinion of the once leg­endary Capt Cook changed; more details of his interact­ions with First Nations peo­ple have em­erged. Some First Nations people described the cott­age as an opp­ressive sp­ace with a lack of inf­ormation about the illegal treatment of Indig­enous Australians by white settlers. Opponents pulled down statues of Capt Cook because the statues presented an image of heroism within the colonial narrative, without recognising the colonial violence that these men promoted and committed.

The English garden that accompanies Capt Cook’s House was designed before the cottage’s reconstruction here, and the sweet peas, holly­hocks, mignon­ett­es and other English flowers were NOT grown in York­shire. Rather they came from nur­series in Melb­our­ne. Only the ivy that climbs on the exterior walls was brought from Great Ayton along with the dismantled house, still living in the warm soil.

Fortunately the cottage has undergone two restorations. The first was in the late 1950s and the second in 1978, when a thorough effort was made to investigate and restore the building, furnish it with contempor­ary C18th materials, and surround it with an C18th garden.

Photo credits: ralwaightravel




16 March 2024

magnificent Res­ur­rection of Jesus Christ Church, St Petersburg

Czar Alexander II (ruled1855-81) was a great Russian royal, one of his suc­c­esses was emancipating serfs in 1861, ending the obscene sl­av­ery of Russian peasantry. This was before the US finally ended its obscene slavery in 1865.


Alexander II was writing a national constit­ution, and just before he announced his ref­orms, young revolution­aries who op­posed the changes threw a bomb at his roy­al car­riage, Mar 1881. His success­or, son Czar Alexander III (ruled1881–94), ch­ose instead to pur­sue more severe policies. Still, Alexander III plan­ned to im­mediately erect a church on the site of the assass­inat­ion by bomb, in his fath­er's mem­ory: Church of the Res­ur­rection of Jesus Christ, St Petersburg.

This Russian Byzantine Revival style ch­urch was to be very dif­f­erent architectur­ally from St Pet­ersburg's other struct­ures. The cit­y's architecture was mainly Bar­oque & Neo-classical, but this church referred back to Russ­­ian Byzantine arch­it­ecture in the spirit of traditional nationalism.
  
Beginning in 1883, and locally referred to as the Ch­urch of the Saviour on the Sp­illed Blood, architects were asked to plan the building in tr­ad­itional Russian style. After Alexander had re­jected several archit­ec­ts' designs, the job was ev­en­t­ually given to Alfred Par­land.

Finished by 1907, the building’s 16th and C17th Russ­ian taste was larg­ely funded by the Imperial family and rich donors. It resembled the C17th Volga-city of Yaroslavl churches and had a sim­ilar façade to Moscow’s famous St Basil's Cathedral and Kiev’s Vladimir Cathed­ral. Its special multicoloured exter­ior made the church differ from the city’s strict ar­ch­itectural proportions and colour mixes, shar­ply cont­ras­ting to nearby Baroque, Classical and Modernist ar­chitect­ure.

An elaborate shrine was built on the spot where Alexander II lay, still a special place within the church's inter­ior, with col­umns of grey vio­let jasper as the shrine’s base. Ris­ing up the shrine, small rect­ang­ul­ar columns united the carved stone awn­ing and the decorated mosaic ic­ons with images of the Romanovs’ patron saints. The columns were supported by a frieze, cor­nice and a stone-carved pediment with vases of jasper to the corners.

Intricate mosaics of biblical scenes or figures
with fine patterned borders around each picture.

stone carving art were represented by the iconostasis
St Petersburg Guide

The highlight of the interior and exterior of the Cathedral were its mosaic decorations designed and created by prom­in­ent Russian art­ists then: Mikhail Vrubel, (d1910) Viktor Vasnetsov (d1926) and Mikhail Nesterov (d1942). The huge area made it one of the largest mos­aic coll­ect­ions in Europe, emphasising the church’s very obviously Russian aspect. The church has an outstanding and varied collection of mosaic icons. Several icons were completed in the traditions of academic painting, modernist style and Byzantine icon painting. The large icon of the medieval St Alexander Nevsky was created to a design by Nesterov. The icons of the main iconostasis Mother of God with Child and The Sav­iour were painted to designs by Vasnetsov. The mosaic panel depicted Christ, blessing with his right hand and holding the gospels in his left. It was on the platform of the central cupola, painted to a des­ign by N Kharlamov. Parland completed the framed icon mosaic ornaments.

The Cathedral was decorated with Ital­ian lime­stone and semi-precious stones eg jas­per, moun­t­ain crys­tal and topaz. The exterior displayed 20 gran­ite pl­ates which told the most important events of Alexander II's reign.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 broke out only 10 years after the compl­etion of the Church on Sp­illed Blood when the Cathedral was loot­ed, lost its funding, was plund­ered for its valuables and its staff was arrest­ed. In Oct 1930 the Cent­ral Executive Committee ordered the chur­ch’s closure and it was left to rot. Incredibly the church was declared to be of no historical or architectural value so its demol­it­ion was pl­anned. This was int­er­rupted only when the thugs were conscript­ed, given the Nazi invasion of Russia in mid 1941. 1944's catastrophic Siege of Leningrad damage is still seen on the ch­urch's walls.

Restoration
After WW2 the church was used by the Small Opera Thea­tre warehouse. The valuable shrine was very largely destroyed. 4 jasper columns with mos­aic mountings in them, and a part of the bal­ustrade were all that remained. The Church in St Pet­er­sburg looks amazing from the out­side but it’s even more impressive in­side. Its interior walls are covered with 7 sq km of mosaic! These mosaics covers the cathed­ral’s interior, created by the workshop of Vladimir Frolov. The artwork depicts religious narrat­ives and figures as well as nat­ural motifs, the first time mosaics provided the primary déc­or­ation of a Russian church. Designed to be viewed from a distance and using an incred­ib­ly rich array of shades, some of the mosaics are very realistic, captur­ing light, colour & emotion of the depicted scenes.

Management of the church was handed to St Isaac's Cath­ed­ral so it could be used as a museum of mosaics. If fact 80% of the church's restoration in July 1970 was funded by profits from St Isaac's. The decades of deterioration and then res­t­oration culminat­ed in an episodic use of the church in Aug 1997, when thousands of visit­ors gathered around. The projected cost had been c3.6 mill rubles, but ended up costing 4.6 mill rubles, due to the mosaics’ over­run. The mosaics linked Alexander II's murder with the crucifixion.

Onion domes
 
People admire the 5 onion domes, vibrantly coloured and enamel covered. They were popularly believed to symbolise burning candles, often app­earing in 3s, representing the Holy Trinity. Or 5 repres­enting Jesus Christ and the Four Evangelists. A dome standing alone stood for Jesus.

It took c24 years to construct a majestic structure like this Church and, after early Soviet vandalism, another 27 years to restore. Rec­on­struct­ion ended in 1991, just as the Communist regime ended.

Grand Choral Synagogue, St Petersburg
built in Moorish style in 1880-88 by
architects Shaposhnikov, Bakhman, Shreter





12 March 2024

1000 years of Hebrew books, Melbourne

Jews, Christians and Muslims, Peoples of the Book, shared a common basis of their religious beliefs in the Jewish Bible aka the Old Testam­ent. Recognising the two older systems as precur­sors to their own, Muslims grant­ed free­dom of worship to Jews and Ch­ristians within their dominions. The importance of canon­ic scriptures within these three related traditions set them apart from all cultures (Christopher Allen, The Australian 7/3/24). 

Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, 
Spain, 1325-74
British Library

ALL civilisations had books of religious doctrine, scripture, wis­dom and mythology. The Greeks had a body of Hom­eric and other hymns, but Greek religious belief was always evolving. The Indians had many sacred books, from several related relig­ious traditions. The Chinese had the ancient divinatory texts, plus the different teachings of Confucius and Lao Tzu. But only the 3 Peoples of the Book developed a strict canon in which every sacrosanct word was credited to divine revelation. Such a strict approach to scripture favoured continuity, but also promoted orthodox thinking.

The role of the Book in ensuring the continuity of tr­adition was central. In the centuries after the Ro­man Empire fell, the Bible bec­ame the veh­icle for cult­ure and coh­es­ion AND largely the only ve­hicle for calligraphy and ill­umination. In the Jewish and Islamic wor­lds there was an even great­er emphasis on the writing of the word, since images were limited by the 2nd Commandment.

All books were portable, but the Bible was the one sacred text carried across the world. Pre-lit­er­ate cultures were often tied to sp­ec­if­ic locat­ions; but books allowed culture to be carried and established wherever people settled. The portability of culture was important in the history of Jews. Considering the centrality of the Pr­omised Land in their tradition, they survived for a lot of their hist­ory in exile, un­t­il their return to their ancestral home­land. Being exiled from Israel seemed to have strengthened Jewish identity!

But even in Israel itself, Jews lived largely un­der fo­r­eign colonialisation: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs or Turks. After the Temple’s destruction by Titus in 70 AD, the Jews spread across the Roman Emp­ire. There were already large commun­ities in cit­ies like Alex­andria where the Bible had been translated from Hebrew to Greek 250 BC. Life under these foreign masters was difficult, and Jews had to maintain their own identity and strict code of laws, while comply­ing with local laws.

Jewish commun­ities also faced persecutions, riots and ex­pul­sions. Christ­ians knew that their religion was founded on Judaism, as was their Old Testament. But they believed that Christ’s birth led to a new honour, and that the Jews were persisting in obsolete be­liefs. Many Chr­istians blamed Jews for executing Christ, alth­ough in strict Christian theology the dea­th was necessary to bring salv­ation into the world. Other ancient peop­les lost their identity via inter­marriage with other ethnic groups; only the Jews remained sub­st­ant­ially the same people they’d been in antiquity.

Luminous: Thousand years of Hebrew manuscripts was a cool exhibition in Melbourne using 37 volumes lent by the British Library, illustrating the beauty and importance of Hebrew texts related to life, culture, science, religion, philosophy, music & magic. They were part of its Hebrew Manuscripts: Journ­eys of the Written Word Exhibition, 2020. Plus there were loans from the Jewish Museum of Australia, private collections and State Lib­rary’s Rare Books.

The biblical scriptures were represented by a handsome Torah scroll which spoke of the global spread of Jewish culture: it was copied in the C17th in Kaifeng China, where a C10th Jewish community migrated from the Middle East. There were no images, but several displays showed how the sac­red scriptures were used in everyday life.

Torah scroll, 
Kaifeng China, 17th century, 
British Library
 
The exhibition also showed that marginal ill­ustrations-micrography could be acceptable if they took the form of fig­ures composed of tiny words, of textual commentary. In an C18th collection of prayers books, less sacred than the Torah itself, some remark­able illuminations included a view of Moses bring­ing Tablets of the Law from Mt Sinai.

The exhibition offered insights into the complex cultural int­eractions and exchanges between the Jews and others among whom they liv­ed, often in the East. Thus there were stories and poems in Judaeo-Persian, Judaeo-Arabic and Judaeo-Urdu, all written in Hebrew.

A maths treatise was written in Judaeo-Arabic and annotated in the mar­gin in Arabic, showing the importance of linguistic and cult­ural exchange here. Hebrew itself had only been read by scholars since Hellen­istic times, but the translation of Avicenna’s Canon medic­inae into Heb­rew endowed the language with a new medical and scientific vocabulary.

 Astronomical tables, 
Southern France or Spain, C15th, 
British Library 

All of these Sephardic texts were from Oriental, North African and Ib­er­ian au­thors. But after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, the texts were later relocated to England and Holland. The central and eastern European Jewish tradition was called Ash­kenazi. One Ashkenazi book was written in Hebrew letters but used Yiddish-German words.

There were works by the clever medieval Jewish philosopher, Maimonides. But Jew­ish intellectual life leant more to legalistic commentary than to philosophy, and over time commentaries accum­ulated. But unlike the Mus­l­ims, the Jews embraced printing when it was invented (C15th) and one dis­play showed the ingenious way that the main commentaries were laid out around the sacred text itself.

In this exhibition several Jew­ish books were on mystical kab­bala which fascinated Ch­ristian intellectuals. And there were import­ant texts that bore witness to the Hebrew texts being subject to censors’ exam­ination; they made sure the texts did not contain any anti-Christian ideas. Ce­n­sorship was usually carried out by Jews who’d con­verted to Christ­ianity, since reading Hebrew was diffic­ult for Christ­ians. See some Hebrew texts annot­ated with censors’ signatures.

Sloan Haggadah for Passover
Germany, 1740
State Library Victoria

image created from micrography
quirkbooks

Micrography was an art form unique to Judaism that developed during the Middle Ages, when illuminations were frowned up. Here reading, writing, and imagery come together in one, particularly in Spain and Portugal. Each letter might have been only 1 mm high.

Many thanks to Christopher Allen in The Australian and Vic­torian State Library.



09 March 2024

Lednice Castle, Liechten­steins, Czech heritage - guest writer

I left Czechoslovakia at 3.5 years old, and remembered almost nothing. But my mother thought her homeland was the most beautiful country anywhere. So tours back home as an adult were very impressive, starting with Lednice

Lednice, in English Tudor neo-Gothic style 

Lednice traced its Czech history back to a 1222 document of Bishop Rob­ert when it was a Gothic fort. The Gothic fortress stood ab­ove the town of Dyjí which guarded the river crossing and the trade route. Later Led­nice manor be­came the pr­op­er­ty of the noble Licht­enst­ein family from Styria in SE Aus­tria; it stayed in their ownership for until 1945, when Lednice castle became a state prop­erty. In the SE corner of the Czech Republic, it is visited by c400,000 guests annually. La­ter the Liech­tenst­eins also built Valtice Chat­eau, 8 ks away on a fine road. The two chateaus area is a very large land­scape c300+ square ks.

During the C16th, Lednice became a Renaissance chateau. Karel Liechten­stein served as the representative leader of Moravia in the early C17th and was given the title of Prince. When the Czech Protestant nobility rebelled against the Catholic Habsburgs, the Liecht­ensteins supported the monarchy, so they were not punished when the Protestants lost. The family became very wealthy via planned marriages and the careful pur­chase of confiscated prop­erty after the Battle of Bílá Hora 1620, becoming the richest noble clan in all of Moravia.

The family demol­ished the original medieval water fortress and ord­er­ed a rebuilt Ren­aissance castle in its place, which was later mod­ified in the Baroque style, and a large park. The current neo-Gothic design was from 1846–58, designed by court architect Jiří Wingelmül­l­er and used as the Liechtensteins’ summer residence.

Spindle shaped staircase, leading from the library
built in 1840s. Facebook

Library
Histouring

The castle’s most fascinating part is the spindle-shaped stair­case. It came from a single oak tree, comm­issioned by Liech­tenstein’s Prince Alois II, a fan of English Gothic, and was created by the Viennese firm of Karl Leister during the castle’s neo-Gothic recons­truction, 1851. The car­v­ed det­ails of the spiral stairs have plant and animal mot­ifs, based on Bur­gun­d­ian and En­glish Gothic. The staircase goes up to the castle library where the wood panelling is very special, accompanied by dark blue wall­paper. Even the woodwork on the door is exquisite.

The Chinese Lounge is a delight, with royal blue furn­ishings and a Ch­inese lantern. Its walls are covered with ear­ly C18th hand-painted wall­paper made from Chinese pap­er, showing an idyllic landscape with bright fig­ures. The Red Smoking Lounge has wine-red wallpaper and lavish furn­ishings, including stunning chandeliers. The Family Hall displays simple elegance, including a fine porcel­ain col­lection. See the elegant desk in Princess Frances’ Bedroom and great Neo-Gothic chairs with complex back pat­terns. The Tur­quoise Hall, named for its turquoise wall­paper, feat­ures carved wood décor as well as a superb chandelier. The Liecht­en­st­einers loved to travel, to Italy, France and Africa, as seen in the ob­jects they brought back. Bec­ause the family rem­oved many furn­ish­ings in WW2, most of the original interior décor was sal­vag­ed.

 Tur­quoise Hall with wallpaper and carved wooden decor

Blue Room
Histouring

Around the castle and in the Chateau Park, the family commis­s­ioned many romantic buildings that fitted into the landscape, including Temple of Three Graces, Temple of Apollo, a romantic 1817 chateau; Reis­tna and Ch­apel of St Hub­ert. The 92 ms long, cast-iron green­house with arched roof was progressive when it was built in the mid C19th and still tourable. Valtice’s chapel is a fine example of Central European Baroque design.

Another park highlight is a Moorish-style Minaret (1797-1804), designed by Josef Hardtmuth and dec­orated with Arabic inscript­ions. It includes lower arcades, 8 oriental rooms on the upper floor, and a 3-storey tower and gallery serving as a site for the Lie­chtenst­einer coll­ect­ions from their trav­els. A helmet and half-moon crown the breath­­taking structure, the ?oldest pres­erved observ­ation tower in the Czech Repub­lic. Steps lead up 3 storeys, making it possible to look right round from the Mina­ret top, en­joying the beauty of the park and lakes with remote is­lets.

Sailing through the Lednice estate was noted with the disc­ov­ery of gondola drawings on which the Liechtensteiners once sailed on the Dyja River. After the modernising of the channel, the first ships could sail. A modern com­pany has now continued the gondola legacy of the Liechtensteiners. Travel the Dyja River on 2 routes: one fr­om the Moorish Water­works to the Minaret (25 mins) and one from the Min­aret to Jan Castle (40 mins). Jan’s Castle is a romantic castle whose artif­ic­ial ruins were created in the early C19th to Josef Hardt­­muth’s plans. 

Greenhouse and gardens

Minaret across the park and lake
Visit World Heritage

Lednice was recognised in 1996 by UNESCO on its World Cultural and National Heritage List. The basic tour goes around the Representative rooms while further options are the Private Princely apartments, Children's room & Museum of marionettes. All tours offer visitors a great experience.

Czech Republic map
with Lednice on the southern border near Austria
CZ Euro Tour

By Czech born Joseph