Life & Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum with Dr. Paul Roberts | Behind the Glass Lecture

I have to say it's absolutely fabulous to see this room so full that we actually have people up in the balcony too that's absolutely wonderful good evening welcome to you all to the Corning Museum of Glass I'm Carol white the executive director of the museum and I'd like to thank you very much for coming out tonight especially after last night's weather this is wonderful that it's not snowing tonight tonight's lecture is part of our new series called behind the glass that takes place on the second Thursday of every month excluding our busy summer months of course the series is very varied and will include presentations like our popular meet the artist lectures as well as other scholarly and popular lectures by specialists in the fields of art Science History and technology and you can find a list of the upcoming programs on our website seog cog.org tonight's lecture by Dr Paul Roberts serves as the keynote to our seminar a life in archaeology and glass honoring David White House the next two days will be filled with lectures reminiscences and quality time with many of David's colleagues and friends as we celebrate David's scholarship in glass Ceramics and archaeology the seminar will conclude with a dinner for participants on Saturday evening and with that reminder can you please all silence your cell phones so we don't have any more interruptions this evening we are very pleased we are honored to welcome Dr Paul Roberts who is the senior curator and head of the Roman collections in the Greek and Roman department at the British museum Dr Roberts studied at Cambridge University and then lived and studied in Italy for 6 years before returning to the UK to complete his studies at the universities of Sheffield and Oxford he joined the British museum in January 1994 Paul is a specialist in the ancient Romans in the Mediterranean and has taken part in excavations in Greece Libya and turkey he's also excavated widely in Italy and is particularly interested in the history and archaeology of Rome the Bay of Naples and Sicily including Roman glass pottery and bronzes trade Pompei and herculanum and the mummy port of Roman Egypt so pretty much everything I would say his research focuses on material culture and the day-to-day lives of Ordinary People a few years ago Paul assumed responsibility for the Magnificent collection of ancient glass at the British Museum and with David White House and William gudenrath published a catalog of the British Museum's Roman Cameo glass it's sitting on my shelf in my office and I pull it down regularly Paul tonight Paul will be speaking to us on theme related to his Blockbuster exhibition last year at the British museum life and death in Pompei and herculanum he will focus on the daily lives of the people who populated the campanian cities destroyed by the eruption of Mount basius in ad79 please join me in welcoming Dr Paul Roberts good evening everyone it's wonderful to be back here in Corning um in the snow isn't it fun um thank you so much it's it's such a a a huge privilege and a very very great pleasure to to be able to help launch this weekend uh in in celebration of David um thank you Carol so much thank you to the uh Corney museum for inviting me and thank you particularly to my very good friends Amy Schwarz Bill Goodra thank you for everything for everything what I'd like to do tonight is to give a flavor of the exhibition what it was about what were the main themes what were the star pieces but also what went into making it because we all enjoy exhibitions we don't always see what goes on behind it those of us who work in museums do but those of us who don't don't so um I'll also be weaving in a few things that uh I know David was interested in uh memories of David that I have things that I think he he would like to be uh in the talk and life and death in Pompei and herculanum it's very much the two cities because we all know Pompei Pompei is very famous but you need herculanum you need Pomp's little sister to really complete the picture and here life and death yes life of course we celebrate life in the exhibition but life is only possible because of the death of the cities in ad79 when they were buried and here's the villain of the peace or the hero of the peace depending on how you look at it Mount vvus if it hadn't erupted in ad79 both the cities would have meandered their way through the Middle Ages we'd have a church surviving uh converted from a temple we'd have a curve of houses that used to be the amphitheater but we wouldn't have the urban Landscapes that are Pompei and herculanum and they were buried in ad79 and they slept pretty much uninterruptedly herculanum was discovered first and there is the theater at herculanum still buried it was discovered by accident in 1709 a peasant was digging a well and he came down onto the marble floor of the theater in herculanum what a discovery tunnels started to be dug to get the beautiful Marbles and the sculptures it was not a stratag graphic archaeological excavation it was tunnels getting to the goodies and pulling the goodies up uh herculanum is first herculanum you needed tunnels because the different position of the Cities meant that they were buried in different ways during the eruption at different times during and even at different temperatures and all of that affected what was left in the archaeological record herculan was buried up to 80 ft deep hence the need for tunnels but the good thing was because it was buried so deep the Romans didn't get to it after the eruption whereas Pompei was only bued 20 ft deep so after the eruption those rascally Romans went back to Pompei and salvaged everything it was a recycling moment they took the columns they took the statues they took the marbles that's why Pompei can look a bit like a bomb site unless you go in the private houses the form of Pompei looks terrible because the Romans themselves after the eruption went back to it dug through the leil not the solid volcanic mud that solidified into stone that buried herculanum but the stones that fell from the cloud over Pompei and there we have a scene from the 1770s there almost certainly in the middle wearing red is Sir William Hamilton our British man in Naples Harrah watching the excavation of the Temple of Isis the Egyptian goddess remember the Roman Empire is an international it's a common market of people goods and ideas No Boundaries so there is the Temple of the Egyptian goddess being excavated and move forward two centuries and you have the beginning of the project because in 1976 a rather gawky young man and his wonderful mother went to Pompei yes there I am at the age of 14 we were actually having a fantastic time but you can't be jolly when you're surrounded by the body casts of Pompei and so there we saw Pompei and we saw herculanum and it showed me the differences between the two and what each one can tell us it was very important so I went back thoroughly inspired by this I started volunteering to dig in my local city which was Gloucester lots of Roman things lots of Saxon things lots of Norman things and I volunteered to pot wash I sat there with a bowl and a nail brush and a toothbrush and I washed the pottery but I couldn't help starting to put them together and they told me off because I was wasting time putting but I love putting them together and I studied Latin at school I had a wonderful teacher who was a Spitfire pilot during the war we are talking about 1974 they were still around and I did Classics and I went up to the University of Cambridge where I had a great time enjoyed life and uh this was down in college and I asked whether I could do a degree a a doctorate and was told that I hadn't got good enough grades so I thought fine I'll go and live in Italy so I did I went to live in Italy and I taught English and I learned Italian little did I know how useful that would be and I lived in the Alps or near the Alps in a city called novada and just for fun I went down to a dig in the south of Italy and on this dig they'd found loads of Roman pottery and guess what they needed a volunteer to start putting it together so I started putting it together and at the end of the excavation John Lloyd bless him no longer with us said oh you're quite good at this why didn't you do a PhD and I said uh Cambridge didn't think it was a good idea he said forget Cambridge you're coming to the Great Northern University of Sheffield so I went to Sheffield my department actually was just about there and I started a doctorate and during the course of that doctorate I came Oh Glory to the British school at Rome a wonderful place place a luchin building this beautiful facade a School of Art archaeology and ancient history and the archaeology particularly interest I was studying these broken pots from this Villa in the south of Italy I was a newcomer very much like I was when Bill and David started studying the The Cameo glass with me and I was flailing around for things to do I heard all the time of this mythical legendary director that had just left I was there in 1984 five and in 1984 this man had left the wonderful David with Princess Alexandra the cousin of the queen who's the president of the British school at Rome I heard so much about David all the time and then I started to read about him because he had written on Pottery I didn't know David as a glass man I knew him as a pot man and he'd written wonderful articles that told you how to use Pottery Pottery wasn't just bits of pot it's people it's the things that people do throw that pot away how they use it how they make it how they break it and reading his works the skola ponum in particular late Roman huge dump of pottery it really excited me about the possibilities and then uh I heard about this now this wonderful nobbly glazed ah glass coming in here glazed wear glazed wear um this stuff helped redate the Early Middle Ages because this is pottery that was found in large quantities in Rome in the Forum it's called Forum where thanks to David it didn't stop there because David realized that hey if this stuff's appearing in Rome then maybe it's being found on the sites outside previously everyone thought everyone ran away at the end of the Roman period everyone died or sold into slavery or got the plague or whatever it was but there weren't any sites left anymore rubbish of course they were there but we couldn't identify the pottery and it was thanks to David's work on Forum where suddenly a whole mass of sites sprung up all around Rome so David helped to repopulate the Early Middle Ages so I loved this pop I hadn't met him and I wouldn't meet him for nearly 20 years but I loved him because he was a pop man who showed me the kind of things that I could do with my pots and when I went to the British museum in 1994 I started to get involved in exhibitions very early on one on the Roman mummy portraits one on Gladiators and I rapidly thought well it would be nice to do one of my own not as assistant curator but as curator and Pompei and herculanum were there in my mind we'd never done one on the British museum uh in the British Museum on pompe and herculanum before never this was a first British Academy had done one we hadn't so it was time we did and there was lots going on in the Press films books TV lots of things coming out so oh and by the way it doesn't stop because of course on a screen near you at the moment no warning No Escape in 3D don't sit in the front seats so the climate was right also things were going on in the Italian superintendencies the archaeological authorities there was a lot of collaboration going on and so it was the right time to launch it so 2008 2009 I started going to the absolute mecca for romanist the archaeological Museum in Naples it is filled with the treasure that came from the sites of Pompei herculanum other little sites like stabi and bosar Al and here I saw the galleries which are wonderful obviously but I also saw the stor rooms the stor rooms these this is one3 of one of the four Fresco stores in Naples museum this is one of 27 trays of silverware that I was able to examine this is just one tiny part of one of the Gated cells underneath the roof in Naples is a wonderful series of stor rooms and it comes off a gated Corridor and in fact looks so much like a prison the Italians call it Sing Sing you go up to sing sing to have a look at the vases and the so there are the bronzes and there's the glass and that's only one tiny part of the glass and in fact Bill and David were visiting the museum and they were looking at various things and the wonderful as Bill tells me the Armani suited doesa who was in charge suddenly got very excited ran off and came back carrying a box of fragments of this this beautiful Patera this dish in Cameo glass the two- layer glass which we'll see again in this talk and and this was a new discovery thanks to Bill and David it provided the impetus to do that and in fact that Pat is now traveling the world as part of one of the many exhibitions from Naples and of course bits are still important these are bits that came from the drain in herculanum the archaeologist excavated a drain and found loads of refuges from the last 5 years before the eruption Ordinary People you and me throwing away stuff it's the most normal human thing you can do and there it was and one of our curators from the museum the wonderful Denise Ling stuck together loads of bits that later appeared in the rubbish case in the British Museum's Kitchen in the exhibition I love the rubbish case now something that David didn't see completed sadly but which we are going to share with you now as a world premiere um three small boxes which were taken to conservation about a year and a half ago found in Egypt um lots and lots of small shirts I think David and Bill had seen them as shirts what they didn't see were how they finished because these are quite unusual they're painted glass plates and we have two here is the first and this is a glass that's been painted on the inside and it's a bird you see the bird's tail you can see its head we are looking at the painted surface we are looking inside so you don't get the full effect I'm sorry it wasn't photographed from the outside where you would see fully but you can see still the bird surrounding Ed by these trees uh by these flowers and leaves here but there's the bird's head the tail and the feet the second piece this is painted on the interior the second piece painted on the exterior like your Paris plate here in Corning is this now I will I will take you through this one um there is a cupid there you can just see the body of the Cupid and a bit of a Wing there are wings here an eagle Eagle a young man semi naked this is gamed gamed being taken by the eagle to Mount Olympus um it's it's not a common uh scene in so but these two painted vessels were boxes of shirts uh I think when Bill and David last saw them they were beginning to come together in little groups but here they are and these will be made much more public in the future but you saw it here first and there is Julia Barton one of the two curators who actually helped to put it all together so important that we give credit to these wonderful people who work behind the scenes and make the nice exhibitions that the curators say oh yes I did that but actually they do it it's very important to remember that they are the people and other important people the photographers the British museum photographers that went out and photographed everything for the exhibition and my wonderful assistant the The Marvelous the wonderful assistant uh who helped me uh put together the exhibition and she just finished University she was 22 years old uh Vanessa Baldwin I'll say her name she's wonderful um straight from Oxford and just jumped in and did a wonderful job and photographing in the houses in the museums photographing everywhere and then the wonderful moment it was the 14th of February uh last year Valentine's Day dalala Kore from Italy with love these great trucks arrive and everything comes out and starts heading for the round reading room of the British museum the last exhibition we'll have there sadly uh we've got a new spanking new exhibition space built in the northwest corner but it was rather lovely having it in the round reading room you can see a piece being hoisted into place part of the Garden Room which we'll see later the Dome of the museum in the background there and all the work that goes into putting the objects into place our Italian friends here the senior curator here uh from herculanum and our chief technician uh pinning a set of doctor's instruments that were found on the beach in herculanum so a whole mass of objects because what I wanted with this exhibition was the idea of the home Gladiators the baths the theater it's all been done it's been done very well this was going to be the house ordinary activities in the house looking at Ordinary People through their objects that gives you an idea of one of the rooms people walked through the rooms with the objects that we believe as as much as possible we can know were used in that type of room in the Roman time so there is the atrium awful lot of interest from the press press from all over the countries of the world nationally internationally and some of it was quite interesting uh are there any Rolling Stones fans in the audience okay well the satirical magazine private ey had its own take on Pompei and the exhibition developed uh we were suddenly told in January that the exhibition was opening in March so you're up to there with work already we were told that there would be a live broadcast from the exhibition so oh God okay fine and the live broadcast took on a life of its own including Mumbai we actually went to India to publicize this film on Pompei started off with one screening for adults one for kids they had to put on five more of each such was the interest in Mumbai in India in Pompei and thinking of press a special photo here starbridge in the Midlands last year uh sorry two years ago um it was the launch of the replica of the Portland vs and The aljo Jug and there was a marvelous occasion in Hagley Hall in the Midlands in starbridge um and there was David with all the people around the lady Mayes you can see and you know glass royalty the king of glass studies is there and it was just marvelous to see D it was just relaxed and calm and chatting with everybody as usual chatting with the people who are making the te's as much as the people who were doing the studies it was great to see it's a wonderful memory of David my last memory of David and a very very happy one very happy one the exhibition itself Pompei here's the urban center of Pompei The Forum um Civic industrial Financial Center you're thinking about 20,000 15 20,000 people not many more vvus looming over everything in the distance as it always was and let's orientate ourselves Rome Campania Mount vvus herculanum much closer to the to the volcano Pompei further away therefore herculanum does get buried more deeply more quickly and at a hotter temperature and all of this affects what's there herculanum is smaller much smaller maybe a third the size of Pompei only four 5,000 people may be and it has erano sitting on top of it so if you want to excavate herculanum you've got to excavate ercolano when people came into the exhibition they were greeted by this man from herculanum from the theater his name is Lucius mamus Maximus he looks a typical Roman toga making a speech couldn't get much more Roman than that but he's a member of a college that was populated entirely by EXs slaves this man was born a slave yet he rose to be one of the highest in the city building buildings dedicating statues and being honored by the people with a bronze statue in the theater next to the empress next to the emperor so people could rise it was a very mobile it was a society of opportunities women were not equal in the Roman world we must never think that but on the other hand they were less unequal than they had in other societies this woman used her own money to build the largest building in the Forum of Pompei uh her name is yumia we have an inscription with her name and this shows that women could be visible in Roman society they were not equal we mustn't delude ourselves but they were less unequal than in many other societies trade and commerce were no Stigma in the Roman World on the front of even the finest houses you have shops like like this one in herculanum bars and taverns like this one in pompe and notice by the way the gods the gods are always there we've no idea how much the Romans believed in their gods whether they believed in them as people today have a faith but if you gauge it by how often they appear then they are everywhere the gods are omnipresent what about the houses well not everyone lived in the nice houses some lived in apartments like these reconstru ConEd in herculanum cut out of or set above or set into the larger houses if you're looking for the poor people and you don't have big tenement blocks like you've got in osta and Rome then look in the rich houses that's where the poor people are as shop workers as slaves as EXs slaves as dependents that's where they are this is a rather nice house with a a faux masonry facade little benches on the front so that you can wait for your audience appointment to see the master of the house because if you have a house like this you've got social commitments and you let people in you remind them that they're there under suffering you know keep your nose clean when you're in my house this is reminder for that I should say that everything movable you can see was in the exhibition at the British museum uh everything that that that is clearly movable um this is actually the atrium of that house that we saw just now uh nice columned Atrium and what do you do in the atrium you impress your visitors you have political and economic inde dependents who look to you so you wow them you wow them with your Gods your money your Origins your your ancestry a shrine to the gods and by the way it didn't matter how you made your money didn't matter at all this was a mosaic panel one of four set into the floor of the atrium of a man called umus scarus he made his money by selling fish Source fish Source he made so much fish Source money that his son went on to be the the mayor of Pompei the chief magistrate so if the aristocrats came along and said oh I say it's a bit undignified selling fish Source he doesn't care because his his son's the mayor so that's where money could get you in pompe it's a very mobile society and you show you've got that money you demonstrate it you put it out on display this is a table just for displaying silver and what's more it had never been seen before the exhibition it lived in the sto rooms until the exhibition it's also the place to show how cultured you are that you are literate that you are learned this lovely couple they owned a bakery on the front of their house he's called torus Nao sadly we don't know her name but they're equals the way that the woman is shown with her shoulders forward of the man means something in Roman portraiture these are not she is not subservient to him in any way shape or form they are running the business together and she's actually holding the Reckoning tablets the wooden writing tablets so this is a side of Roman society that if we just read the Roman writers we might not necessarily pick up on the archaeology can tell us a lot more and there are different types of literacy this young man has won a contest wearing a wreath he's been reading a scroll and on that label is the written the word homos Homer he's been reading The Iliad and the Odyssey because if you a good Roman you had to have your Greek so you had to know Greek literature Greek mythology very much part of being a cultured Roman now there's one area I haven't covered yet private life of the Romans I'll give you a warning if there's anything remotely fruity about to appear on the screen I shall say brace brace like on an airplane then you can choose whether you look or not okay brace brace around the atrium and around the garden as well are small dark private rooms that we would call bedrooms but actually are much much more and Brace brace we have a wonderful painting here lovers on a bed but look behind there's the slave slaves were everywhere they were the engine of the house the engine of the economy and it's very difficult for us today to imagine perhaps even if we look back 150 years and see household servants we can't imagine the degree to which slaves played a role in Roman Life they underpinned everything in these bedrooms sleep obviously this is a cot a child's cot made of wood carbonized by the heat of the eruption in herculanum 400° Centigrade necessary to carbonize that cot and it's real it's it's a Roman cot in which there was a baby and where do you put your clothes in a linen chest this is a Roman linen chest when they broke it open there were carbonized Roman clothes inside so this is something that herculanum can give us that even pompe can't now you see why we need the two adornment jewelry dressing undressing all of these things take place in these small rooms these cubicula and it was really quite important to have jewelry adornment because it's an upwardly mobile Society the lady on the left had a lot more money so she had gold the lady on the right I'm sorry I've got that wrong I can't do left and right the lady on the right had gold the lady on the left didn't but instead she wore bronze which when it was new and buffed up could look like from a distance gold the important thing was to be giving the effect of being part of this new club Roman society was all about how you appeared in some ways in some ways it's similar to the Italian idea of LaBella figura it's how you present yourself it's how you dress your family and the car you drive well in the Roman period it's the house you have the clothes you wear the jewelry you wear that is all very much a part of how you're perceived the garden the garden was the heart of the Roman home the Romans didn't invent Gardens of course they didn't the Egyptians the Mesopotamians but they did invent the idea of bringing the garden into the home and they surrounded it if possible if space allowed with beautiful Greek style colonades and then they filled it with plants and trees and fountains and statues it became a little bit of paradise a little bit of the countryside and in the exhibition we had this it's a very large pan of glass from herculanum and at least four Villas including the one that this came from had a glassed in area in their colonade it was a conservatory so that you could keep warm in the winter and still get the views into the garden quite extraordinary but the Romans had thought of it already they're aiming at this they're aiming at The Rustic idil Flora bringing flowers bringing the spring it's a bit of the countryside brought into the home that's what the Romans are really yearning for and here is that lovely Garden Room taken from a house called The House of the golden bracelet for a piece of jewelry was found in the house it is an entire Suite of frescos that covered the whole space in the 60s they were removed when they were discovered and thank goodness they were because the other rooms in the house have now deteriorated to a point where they're almost illegible so these were detached put on to board so that they could travel and they traveled to London and we set up the whole thing in Washington there was a wonderful exhibition called Washington and the Roman villa a beautiful exhibition but only one of the panels appeared it was just this one it is the best panel when I approached dressa Stephanie the director at Pompei and said I'd like the Garden Room please she mean do you mean the Washington panel and I said no no I want the whole room and she said ah un archo she said an archaeologist and she was right I wanted the whole thing but this is lovely the birds the trees the flowers Vanessa spent a long time decoding it checking all the birds and the trees and it really is beautiful you don't know whether you're sitting inside or outside and the painter has achieved his aim art is meeting nature virtually indivisible it's a beautiful beautiful place and in The Gardens staty staty of bronze like this beautiful piece and Carol will be so familiar with this because of course the Getty Villa has the full Suite of the sculptures in their right places in a building that is so gorgeous approximating to the Villa of the papy in herculanum notice the eyes the Bronze Statues are a rare survival the eyes are even rarer it's a beautiful haunting piece now I mentioned that it's the countryside brought into the home well when you bring the countryside into the home the gods of the countryside come as well so if you've not braced before please brace now because one of the main Gods that comes in is bacus of course bacus is the god of wine the god of fertility the god of greenery it's natural that he comes in but also comes His companion the great God Pan the goat God and here discovered in 1750 and imagine what they made of it then is a statue of pan having an awful lot of fun with a nanny goat there we are the king having discovered this locked it in the basement of the Royal Palace at ptoy and it was only accessible on a special permit you have no idea how many special permits were issued to see this statue no idea but let's look through Roman eyes always look through Roman eyes um he's a goat God he's making love with a goat well nothing wrong there he's in a garden well the garden is the countryside brought into the home so again nothing wrong there and ladies and gentlemen the goat is on her back it just doesn't happen it's a fantasy it's a piece of humor that's how it was meant to be seen by the Romans how we see it of course is colored by our later history the Romans would have seen a bit of fun but if it's still too difficult for you then the English newspaper The Daily Mail is on hand to help you Parental Guidance wonderful things with water when the Romans bring Aqueduct water to the Garden where do they put it in the bedrooms no in the kitchens no they put it in the gardens because in the gardens you impress your guests with pools and fountains so this little frog water spout would have been gurgling water and here's part of the hydraulic system that ran a big system of pools and fountains under one of the big houses in Pompei and around the garden were the loveliest rooms of the house the living rooms the dining rooms often with the finest mosaics and wall paintings this beautiful Mosaic showing Seafood made of Tess Mosaic cubes that are so small they can be used to pick out individual scales of the fish that is how detailed this piece is and Fresco wall paintings often of Greek mythological scenes this one of Theus having killed the minor Greek mythology so popular in the houses of Pompei and herculanum and not always mythological here you've got a a a scene of uh visual effects you've got paintings set back into the wall and you've got a statue a Herm a protective statue standing forward from the wall but it's all done obviously with flat paint it's an optical illusion it's high art but guess what the kids who lived in the house couldn't care less about the high art what they did was take sharp sticks and draw all over the lower part of the wall and what I love so much about this piece is it reminds us the Romans are not on pedestals they're Ordinary People there you and me and the kids draw on the walls and here's the proof drinking also in these rooms they private drink going on here well not that private because as always there's the slave in the background they're always there notice the table because thanks to herculanum we've got the table in carbonized wood on the table glasses well sorry cups made of silver again with mythology made of pottery and the pottery can be from all over the Roman Empire from France from Northern Italy from Northwest turkey all filled up with an aora from North Africa the Roman Empire is a common market Market this is nothing unusual and then you do get some unusual pieces this lovely piece a jug in that beautiful Cameo glass Again The aljo Jug this is the little sister the Lesser known sister of our beloved Portland vas and it's got quite an interesting history which includes uh um an Italian Prince a doctor and an English aess it sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke but actually it's an amazing story um this piece obviously was included in the catalog that I had the privilege of working with Bill and with David finishing off the work that Bill had started with the late and much Miss Veronica taten Brown and it was a catalog of the Roman Cameo pieces in the British Museum and obviously The aljo Jug was part of that um it was discovered in the house of the for in Pompei In 1832 um it's not the only piece of Cameo glass we've seen the P there's a gorgeous piece the blue vases that was found in a tomb outside Pompei and then there are two wall plaques Cameo glass plaques that were also discovered so five pieces but the aljo is in some ways the most intriguing this is actually a pen and ink drawing done by my friend Kate Morton in the Greek and Roman Department which shows actually better don't tell the photographers this it shows better the detail than the photograph does um there's the house of the form 1832 it was discovered and by the way the jug came to the British museum in two bits um in 1840 and in 1859 1840 a doctor Dr hog sells us the bottom 1859 meline Alo the ays bequeathed US the top why were they separated found in 1832 and In 1832 lots of things are going on the uh Scottish poet s Walter Scott is visiting Naples he's acclaimed like a king like royalty he's given presents he's given honors he's mobbed in the the museum and the Academia in Naples um Naples at the time of course is a separate Kingdom it's the kingdom of the two sicilies with Naples Sicily and southern Italy and the King King Ferdinand II has a rather idiosyncratic brother called Carlo Carlo Ferdinando Charles Ferdinand there he is wonderful character with his lovely wife his lovely wife was Penelope Smith Penelope Smith was an Irish girl that he fell in love with wasn't allowed to marry because the king his brother said you can't marry her so believe it or not he eloped to Greta Green in Scotland married her in Greta Green in 1836 the king never forgave him but he didn't care he was was in love and so that was very nice um however his brother the king had no interest in pompe he had loads and one of the many expat Brits uh John aljo In 1832 there's that date again wrote a book about Pompei about vvus and its eruptions and the lava flows this is one of the plates from that and he dedicated it to Charles the brother of the king now interestingly in 1833 there's an entry in the catalog that says that the Prince Charles went to the store rooms in Pompei and he took the neck and the handle of a jug of blue glass with white enamel decoration and guess what a year later we have a German academic saying the vase is in two parts the present owner he has part of it the rest is in the hands of a lady and I quote a lady who was given it by a high up person so I think we're beginning to solve our problem she the AL Joe family have this jug um what about the base The aljo Jug comes to us the top comes in 185 what about the Bas well Dr John hog who was this Dr hog guess what he turns out to be the personal physician of Walter Scott so it's very likely that the prince gave the other half to Walter Scott Walter Scott wanted it not at all gave it to his physician John hog who had a collection of Roman and Egyptian Antiquities and who sold it to us in 1840 so the two bits of The Jug finally came together and there's a PS because there's the back of the jug it's all missing there di mentions of fragments insignificant fragments that couldn't be found or weren't bothered with and we thought that's the end of that when I was going through the collections in Toledo in the Glass Museum in Toledo we found that that is a piece with the same type of decoration the same thickness the same angle of the glass as The aljo Jug and it could just be that it might work but the trouble is all the Cameo glass comes from Rome it doesn't come from anywhere near mate Naples well guess what this is part of the collection of glass that was bequeathed by Charles Carol Coleman and he had his Studio on the aisle of Capri in the Bay of Naples that's a view of vus from his Studio it's very possible that he has picked up one of the pieces of the old joj well the dinner part is in full swing and our guest there woman and men dining together no problem at all all make yourself comfortable boys cuz I'm going to sing she really says that in Latin and he says EST which can only be translated as you go for it girl she did but but carp DM sees the day this is part of a dining room floor now you wouldn't have it as your first choice would you really but for the Romans it's actually quite appropriate because death they have this attitude to death death is there you can't do anything about it death is coming but he's bringing the wine jugs we're going to have a great time before we go that's the Roman attitude and of course even more poignant when you think where the floor was and we as the owners or the guests don't see the kitchen and hey that's just as well because the kitchen is not as estate agents would say nowadays the room that sells the house kitchens are dark dingy out of the way this is unusual it's got not one but two windows this is really unusual but it's very usual in the sense that there's the cooking platform and there is the toilet this is absolutely standard for Roman houses because you throw all the waste into one room they had no conception whatsoever of hygiene they knew about wash Wasing but they didn't know why washing did any good so cross infection germs were totally alien to them and that's why the kitchen the toilet side by side from herculanum we've even got the food there's a loaf of bread a loaf of bread that went into the oven in ad79 and came out in 1932 it's stamped with the name of the slave who made it his name was kellerer speedy speedy made this Loaf and he says specifically s serus he was a slave stated quite clearly and we don't only have the food we have beans and peas and all manner of different foods that were preserved in jars on cooking pots that were on the stove at the time that are filled up with leil and there at the bottom are the remains of pomegranate and things it's it's just extraordinary utensils this is a colander a colander with a difference it's a superb colander made of pierced bronze and so proud was the slave who made it he put his name ardas now no master or mistress would ever have seen this they would never have gone shopping for it certainly and you'd never have had it at table you did all the cooking out the back so why because slave leaves are the ones who very often are going to be literate so when the housekeeper goes shopping she's going to look for a ardas colander as opposed to somebody else's colander it's a piece of marketing it's an early piece of marketing and you can't have a Roman talk without having this it's a jar for rearing dor I yes they really did eat them they are recipes for them we've even got the jars they used to cook them under little ramp so it can get to the little pots for acorns and water get nice and fat and then you cook them in horrible ways and the other end of the food chain of course the toilets and the drains when the archaeologists excavated the drains in the middle 2000s they found a a meter and sorry four feet of waste now 750 sacks were human waste but this was a treasure Trove absolute Treasure Trove we know far more about Roman diet now than we ever did before all the bits of Pips and seeds and meat bones and Fishbones all crushed up some of which went through the body some of which was plate waste some of which was table waste all ended up down the drain why because the toilet was also the waste disposal unit for the Roman H you Chuck your rubbish down the toilet and then the slaves would empty it at regular intervals well thank goodness they hadn't emptied this drain just before the eruption otherwise we wouldn't have have all this in the drain the human waste the food remains even pepper pepper from India this is from an Oxford Supermarket 2009 and that's from herculanum ad79 so the amount of information is incredible and of course my beloved rubbish case David's skolar ponum made flesh this is all the rubbish that was chucked away and my goodness if you could have seen the expression on the face of the head of exhibitions when she saw that case this isn't a pretty Fresco this isn't a nice statue it's a load of rubbish yes that's the intention it's rubbish that people were throwing away it gives you that moment that snapshot and it was amazing stuff um even this lovely little figurine the Madonna of the drain as she was nicknamed nursing her baby we don't know why it ended up down the drain we don't know what these terracotta a four but we do know that whoever lost it threw it down was one of the people living in the area in the last 4 to 5 years may even have been caught up in that terrible eruption and when it comes it is truly terrible uh there hadn't been any eruption so the volcanologists say for about 6 to 700 years beforehand so it was a powder keg it's an explosive eruption when it does happen it's not effusive with lots of nice rivers of lava you can outrun lava you can't outrun what happens here this is a Mount St Helen's it's an explosive eruption it sends up that deadly cloud and as long as that cloud stays up there you're fine that's your window to escape when that cloud comes down it creates what's known as pyroclastic surges and these are superheated Avalanches if you like of gas and Ash and stones that hurtle down the slopes of vus and that is what kills the people and buries the cities almost immediately it's pitch black people are stumbling round with lanterns and lamps because the great cloud has filled the sky the cloud is blowing to the South the predominant wind of the time herculanum is in the dark but nothing more okay the noxious gases and the earthquakes but nothing falling Pompei is in a living hell within a few minutes the leil the heavier Ash the stones from the cloud start to fall on pompe like rain you remember the the the image of uh William Hamilton watching the excavation they're shoveling this leil it's Stones it's a rain of stones down on the beach in herculanum and we have by the way I should say an eyewitness to the eruption the volcanologists can fill in all the modern technical stuff and we have an ancient source we have Pliny a young man who was writing at the top of the bay watching what happened his uncle also confusingly called plenny headed off down the bay to try and rescue people and also to have a good look at the volcano he dies in the eruption but the nephew survives and two letters that gave the account of the eruption survive for us we know it starts about midday we know it finishes about 8:00 the next day in the morning and the vcan just sort of fill in everything else down on the beach in herculanum a lot of people get away by the sea but many don't about 300 people are sitting on the beach huddled in families on their own we don't know what they're doing praying singing They we don't know but there they are and about midnight on the first day of the eruption the cloud collapses for the first time and you get one of these pyroclastic surges 70 mph 400° Centigrade 400° Centigrade the people on the beach are incinerated instantly but what they were carrying a soldier had his sword and his ceremonial belt a little girl had this incredible uh charm bracelet or bracelets with things from all over the Empire and even some antiques this is a very early ring seal that was hundreds of years old by the time it was buried on the beach herculanum therefore at midnight ceases to exist buried by flows and flows and flows coming down from the volcano 80 ft eventually by the end of the eruption it's gone the sea has been pushed out by half a kilometer that's how far that's how much the volcano is emitting Pompei dies the next morning about 8:00 there's the famous dog in Pompei when the surges hit Pompei about 8:00 they less hot they're not 400° 400° basically desiccates you sucks all the moisture out there's nothing left but skin and bone 300° which was the temperature in Pompei I'm afraid Cooks you it Cooks you solid and that's why in Pompei you have these amazing body casts because the body was cooked solid the ash forms around it and then as the body rots away the ash keeps the form that's why when the archaeologists started pouring plaster of Paris into the bodies in the last century they uncovered these amazing cast and imagine their surprise and an amazement when they uncovered a dog as opposed to a person by a rather strange coincidence this dog was found in the same house as the Mosaic of the dog that we saw earlier only about three yards away from that Mosaic was he the dog in the Mosaic we can't say but maybe the people in pompe also had their Treasures this is a a collection of jewelry emeralds from Egypt or perhaps from India pearls from the Indian Ocean gold a huge quantity of gold and silver coins an amazing Hall of gold that shows the wealth of these cities and these are provincial cities the weird thing is this is not Rome or Naples or Alexandria it's two provincial centers they're nothing special but yet they have things like this gives you an idea of how wealthy the Roman world was and very sadly the family a family father mother with a child on her lap another child by the side discovered Under the Stairs of a house in Pompei The House of the golden bracelet where that beautiful garden room was almost certainly the owners of that house and that's the amazing thing about pompe and herculanum lots of cities preserve a theater uh baths an Amphitheater but only Pompei and herculanum give you all of those and the houses and the shops and the contents of those houses and shops and sometimes even the people who lived in those houses and shops that's why they enable us to get I believe so close to the Romans and I one thing I really wanted the exhibition to do was to make the Romans seem ordinary I didn't want them to be the Gladiators and and the Emperors and the people that are always standing out I wanted them to be us in Roman times and as it was being packed up it was it was really sad my little baby panther being packed up there if there was one object that I could have slipped under my desk in the museum it would have been that one but it just shows the things that turn up and in fact I want to finish with things turning up because in 2009 some thing incredible turned up in London uh it came through an auction house called bonom and as a result it was nicknamed the bonom vas and Bill and David I knew were going to be in London a particular time so I organized with bonom that we should bring over their vase and exhibit it next to the Portland vase and The aljo Jug and there they are and Bill and David and lots of other wonderful glass people Jenny who sadly can't be here David and Mark who can't be here um and it was very interesting to see them together this is not the place or the time to talk about these at any great length and I'm not going to but it is an interesting thing to see and I like this photo because it's Bill and David and I I have no uh no qualms at all about saying these are my glass Godfathers before embarking on the Cameo Glass Project I really knew very little about glass I still know very little about glass but what little I do know is largely thanks to Bill and to David and the opportunity to to be together and look at these things was just incredible and may I say at the risk of embarrassing you Bill I don't care I'm going to embarrass you anyway I'm going to embarrass you anyway um it's it's the mark of a good teacher to have infinite quantities in equal measures of of wisdom patience and good humor and you had all of that um I can thank you in person um I will thank Elizabeth and the family here on David's behalf because it really was an amazing experience I didn't know David for very long but when I did meet him I suddenly realized what everyone had been talking about he was wonderful um so pop man glass man Museum man archaeologist man Family Man obviously but just can I say just generally very very nice man in the most wonderful sense of the word nice and I'd like to finish with a picture of the wonderful David with his Portland vas thank you very much [Music] thank you so much thank you so much Paul that was a a fabulous Glimpse back a couple thousand years to one of my favorite two cities as well um Bay herculan but what a great picture to end with thank you very much we have a few moments for questions if you're willing to answer some oh very I won't ask you any questions about the bonum Cameo I promise but uh does anyone in the audience have any questions we've got a couple of mics at the side of the room so raise your hand please wait for a mic so we can hear you and Elizabeth wants to say something at the front too so we can get a mic up front car one of the interesting things about Archaeology is that it involves exposing the past to the present and from what we understand although it allows us to study what used to be it also exposes these artifacts to the elements particularly when they're Outdoors yeah and as I understand it there's still a substantial part of herculanum that has not been excavated I'm just wondering about your attitude toward the idea that maybe it shouldn't be maybe it should be preserved for a 100 or 200 years from now the 14-year-old kid inside me screams dig it all up but the responsible archaeologist a museum person says um we've got to perfect ways of looking after what we've already got exposed um to give you an example the torrential rains that have recently affected the Bay of Naples have caused a lot of damage in Pompei and this is nothing to do with incompetence can I just say I'm going to fly the flag for the Italians here as I know David would have done too um the working with the neapolitans the neapolitans were the best organized and most professional people that I have ever worked with um present company excluded they were incredible um 95% of the material came from Naples Pompei and herculanum we never had any glitches so if there are problems with collapses and things like that it's certainly not due to the lack of Goodwill on the part of the Italians who are there but the problem is the huge extent of the Cities you've got large towns by modern standards abandoned and left to the elements if you're lucky they've got roofs but then again those roofs aren't maintained so you start to have all sorts of problems and when rain comes when excessive drought comes when a hail storm comes when pigeons find a way through the netting pigeon poop I'm afraid is one of the most corrosive things for a wall painting so it really is a NeverEnding battle so I think in herculanum for example there is the herculanum conservation project funded by Packard um which is a wonderful example of the Italians coll collaborating with the foreign institutions and actually conserving and in the course of that conservation they uncover the things from the drain the reason they found the things in the drain is not because they wanted to dig the drain willy-nilly it was because they had a real problem of water and therefore damp coming up and ruining the building and the Fresco so they thought how on Earth do we drain a Roman city that is 80 foot down answer you reactivate the Roman drainage system and that's what they were doing when they uncovered all that stuff in the drains so the answer is definitely conservation and of course in the course of that conservation you'll find you'll have discoveries but we already have far too much exposed than can be taken care of um so I think for the moment no more excavation that's certainly the view of the Italians themselves but an emphasis very much on conservation and increasingly coll collaboration with with foreign institutions who can help as as we are seeing with the gy and lots of other institutions yourselves we're seeing um the Italians being given a helping hand and that's what they desperately need um I'll let you into a little secret I don't know if I should but I will um the exhibition was made possible because the superintendency that covers Naples and the superintendency that covers Pompei and herculanum who previously didn't talk to each other were merged under one wonderful man called professor gutel in 2008 they became a special superintendency that meant they were able to keep proceeds from ticket sales just this year they divorced again so Naples is separate from pompe and herri pompe and herri remain a superintendent speal they're still special they can keep ticket receipts Naples museum is now a normal superintendency all its money goes straight back to Rome so what they need is helping kind they need knoow they need a new exhibition case if you borrow objects from them give them a new case in return or or send the case that you displayed the object in back with the objects they'll thank you because that's the way that we can help them but with the sites themselves lots more conservation lots more collaboration but sad ly very little more excavation I think I hope that answers the question thank you you you showed this wonderful slide of jewelry um and I can understand how the the gold and the stones were preserved but how on Earth did pearls get through ah river pearls river pearls perish Sea pearls one of them perishes once of vies um in terms of the other materials it's quite extraordinary they're all quite feisty they'll all survive the exceptions are um lead solder that sometimes uh dissolves and therefore the handles of things drop off um and Organics which become carbonized otherwise everything else survives uh doesn't seem to be affected but some pearls don't survive because you find jewelry where you've just got the little spigot where the Pearl used to be but those as you see beautiful pearls are survived yeah quite extraordinary take two more questions um I'm trying to sum this up in a few words um there a discovery that there's something there excavation collection conservation interpretation along that Spectrum some things you're obliged to do when some once you know something is is going to be lost you really want to preserve it how many of the things that are actually uh safely conserved now have been taken to the next level and been in properly interpreted is there a huge back log at the British Museum and elsewhere or um is that another everything's cataloged everything everything um I mean it seems that there are many levels of interpretation beyond that there are there are and the thing is there are some wonderful cataloges that were written in 1908 and they're a marvelous guide as to what is there but of course the interpretation of the objects has has changed completely um with Naples for example I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that every single thing is on a database they know where everything is um so it it's it is very important I I think as we've seen in in the um the Middle East in Iraq and place like that it's very important first of all to have your hand list of what you have the Italians certainly have that and I think all of us in museums we have at least that but there is always always more that we could add and we're all guilty I think of not updating our records enough um it's been a big theme of of of our current director Neil McGregor um the online database uh putting as much information on that as possible a lot of resources have gone into that with the result that I I think I think I'm writing saying we we we do have everything on now um but it's certainly something that is a NeverEnding task because every time for example you do an exhibition you do more research you find new things out um you find new objects that have never maybe got one line in the catalog and suddenly you can write a page about it well it's your duty to put that page on the online information and the next person can can add to it still so um yes there's a lot going on but it's never enough I think that's why we have a a program of wonderful volunteers and interns who come in and do wonderful work putting information on that we in our day-to-day jobs don't sadly have the time to do but um yes we should always do more definitely Mr C did you have just com answer microphone I ju I just had really a comment to answer um Elizabeth's uh question about the the pearls is actually I worked at herculanum in in 19 uh 1982 we actually helped to rescue the um the skeletons on the on the beach on the beach so actually I was doing bones back in those days instead of glass but um it was an interesting experience but the the preservation has to do more with the locality and where it was the like on the beach everything was still wet as we excavated it even in 1982 and that's critical because as you know Paul when that mud dries out it's cement I mean it truly cement it's rock and then trying to get through it is impossible but cleaning it off and once it was wet was easy to do in the preservation was remarkable but in in Pompei on the other side you're looking at Ash in the burial Ash is alkaline L and therefore that's probably why your pearls preserve best because they would preserve better in an alkaline environment burial than an acidic environment thank you thanks okay I'm I'm going to take you off the hook now and and please ask everyone I'll ask you all please join me and and thanking Dr Roberts for a fabulous lecture I hope to see many of you of the over the next 48 hours at our two-day conference with more es to David and his work and thank you all very much for coming tonight [Music]

Channel: Corning Museum of Glass

Views: 49,683

Keywords: Corning Museum of Glass, British Museum (Museum), Pompeii (City/Town/Village), Herculaneum (City/Town/Village), Roman Empire (Country)

Id: FlOx_UNtyZc

Length: 70min 16sec (4216 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 03 2014