The Post Office in Pictures exhibition opens in London

Our fantastic photo exhibition The Post Office in Pictures is opening tomorrow evening, Friday, 18 May 2012, at its brand new London venue – The Lumen Church. The Post Office in Pictures showcases a selection of inspiring images sourced from the vast photographic collections of The British Postal Museum & Archive. From strange creatures sent through the post, to the daily deliveries by land, sea and air… the photos feature a fascinating series of windows on Britain from the 1930s to 1980s – including the unusual, the unseen and the quite unexpected.

Belfast – Post Office Exhibition: A group of telegram boys holding letters, May 1935 (Post 118/331)

After the opening night on Friday the exhibition will be open until 31 August 2012– right through the summer – and throughout the exhibition run we are hosting a programme of brand new events for everyone. To celebrate the exhibition’s opening night and in conjunction with the Museums At Night weekend, we have an exciting evening of activities on Friday 18 May, from 7.30pm till 10.00pm, followed by a completely free family fun day on Saturday, 19 May from 10.00am to 5.00pm.

We spent the beginning of this week installing the exhibition: BPMA Education & Events Officer Laura Dixon aligns the images correctly along the wall. Hours of measuring and using spirit levels have paid off as the exhibition begins to take shape!

Throughout Friday evening the exhibition will be available to preview. Artist and writer Guy Atkins will give a talk on The Forgotten Art of Writing Postcards. Guy will be asking if you are tired of texting, or bored of Facebook? Or if you want to make your life a bit less virtual? We promise after Guy’s talk you’ll never look at a postcard again in the same way. The postcard and stamp are free… but Guy will be writing your message. What will you make him write? And to whom will you send your card?

Also available on the night will be a ‘ludicrously brilliant photo booth’, supplied by The Mighty Booth. This bespoke photo booth fits up to nine people at a time, and with a pile of postal uniforms available to try on to create fantastic photo opportunities – the photos can be as imaginative as you would like!
We will also be screening Night Mail throughout the evening – with its iconic soundtrack from Benjamin Britten running to the mesmerising poem of W.H. Auden. – Surely a night to remember!

Great Yarmouth – Fish Wharf Post Office, Nov 1936 (Post 118/598)

Join us again on Saturday, 19 May 2012, for a fantastic family day full of fun hands on activities with Artist Lorna Giézot : story hand printing, interpreting difficult and dangerous deliveries, and creating your own image using the power of the sun.  Come along and create your own on Saturday in the beautiful garden space of The Lumen. If it’s raining we will be doing just as much but under cover instead!

Preview to the Family Fun Day: how to make ‘solar-powered images’ – leave in the sun and soak in cold water…

The iconic images from The Post Office in Pictures exhibition are available from our online Print-on-Demand service. Many of the black/white photographs also feature on our beautiful greetings cards and postcards. Buy them from our online shop, at the exhibition venue or at our Search Room.

Reaching milestones in our documentation and cataloguing work

At the end of February, we reached some significant milestones in the documentation work carried out on our museum and archive collections.

Stamp Artwork design for the Olympic Games 1948, submitted by G. Knipe of Harrison & Sons Oct. 1947. (POST 150/GVI/11/018) It was one of the five designs selected by the Council of Industrial Design and was held as a reserve for the 2 1/2d stamp. In preparing essays Harrisons were to be told "to make sure that the features of the jumper ... cannot be recognised."

The first milestone reached was the completion of an audit of material contained within the museum collection. What this means is that we have entry and location data for every object inherited by BPMA when it was formed in 2004 and for every object subsequently deposited with us. This includes objects held in our Freeling House repository and in our stores in Debden and at Christie’s.

Documentation of collections is a core part of any museum’s activity. Without details such as provenance, custodial history, physical condition and the terms and conditions relating to deposit, a museum cannot be assured of its responsibility and rights to preserve, display, digitise or even dispose (should the item not meet the museum’s collecting policy) of objects in its custody. Furthermore, precise information about an object’s location in our repository and stores means that we can carry out collections review work more efficiently and better prepare for our forthcoming move from our site here at Freeling House to the new postal museum.

This has been a significant amount of work and has taken seven years to complete. Very few museums have achieved a full audit of their holdings and it means that we can now concentrate our efforts in reviewing object collections, creating descriptive catalogues for the online catalogue and also plan our digitisation programmes accordingly. The completion of this work is due to the hard work and discipline of our museum cataloguers past and present, and we congratulate them all for doing such a great job!

Stamp Artwork, Olympic Games 1948, submitted on 29 July 1948 (POST 150/GVI/11/037)

The second milestone is that we’ve passed the 100,000 mark of records available to view on our online catalogue. We now have 100,703 records published. Our most recently published records include:
• King George VI London Olympic Games 1948 stamp artwork
• Uniforms
• Handstamps
• Posters
• Photographic stills from Post Office films, c.1969-1986
Finally, at the beginning of each year, we also open files that have been closed for 30 years. You can read in the blog by my colleague Gavin McGuffie how we process these. This year, we’ve opened approximately 100 files and the descriptions of these can be viewed via our online catalogue here.

Martin Devereux – Acting Catalogue Manager

Who Do You Think You Are? Live

On 24-26 February we will be attending Who Do You Think You Are? Live at London Olympia. This is the largest family history show in the world and is a great opportunity to meet lots of family history organisations under one roof.

BPMA at Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2011

This will be the sixth year that the BPMA has attended this event and we have always enjoyed meeting new people and telling them about our family history sources. Last year we had over 550 people visit our stand over the weekend and this year we would love to meet even more.

BPMA resources at Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2011

As well as having our usual stand in the Society of Genealogists section of the show (tables 116-117), we will also be participating in the new ‘Our Working Past’ area. This area examines the working lives of people in the past. We will have historic uniforms, photographs of postal workers on duty, and staff magazines available for handling and consultation. The staff magazines, in particular, provide a fascinating insight into life in the Post Office and include accounts of social events, stories and jokes.

We look forward to seeing you there!

- Helen Dafter, Archivist

See the Family History Research section of our website to find out how we can help you search for your postal ancestors.

BPMA Open Afternoon

Join the staff and Friends of the British Postal Museum & Archive at our annual Open Afternoon on Tuesday 6 December 2011.

Interior of Travelling Post Office, 1935 (POST 109/375)

See a showcase of our fascinating collections, take part in a range of activities, talks and tours, and find out more about who we are, what we do and what we’ve been up to in the last year. Events will run from 1pm until 8pm, and everyone is welcome to drop in at any time and share a mince pie with us!

Activities include…

Hands-On Family Research: Was your ancestor a postie? Our Archive Search Room Team will show you how to research your family tree.

The Post Office in Pictures exhibition - for the first time in London! View the iconic photographs of the Post Office at work in the community sourced from the BPMA Archive.

Behind the Scenes Tours: Discover the treasures of the Archive – from GPO Posters to philatelic gems – led by our Archive & Curatorial Teams.

Tour of our Archive collections which fill over 2.5 miles of shelving and cover social, postal and design history from 1636 to today – at 2pm, 4pm and 5.30pm.

Tour of the Philatelic Studio led my our Curator, Philately at 3.30pm.

Booking welcome; subject to availability.

The History of the Christmas Card: Learn more about the origin of this custom with material provided by our Cataloguing team.

Preservation Surgery: Ask for advice from our conservator on caring for your own collection of family history records, postal history, stamps or photographs – bookings welcome!

Learning Activities Sample Sessions: Find out how our Access & Learning team engage school children and young people in our postal heritage with a range of activities and resources.

Mail Trains: Watch the classic Auden-Britten film production Night Mail (1936), talk to our curators about the Travelling Post Office and join a talk about the history of delivering the mail by rail at 7pm.

Still from Night Mail

For more information and for booking a place on a tour or the Preservation Surgery, please call 020 7239 2037.

The Post Office in Pictures opens

Our photo exhibition The Post Office in Pictures is now open! It showcases a selection of inspiring images sourced from our vast collections.

Down Wapping Way, 1935 - Part of the Post Office Magazine series ‘The Postman Everywhere’, which demonstrated the wide ranging experiences of postmen across the country. Postman Mr J Anthony is shown here in an area of Wapping, East London. The author of the accompanying article described the area as ‘narrow, dirty and unsalubrious...’ (POST 118/252)

From strange creatures sent through the post, to the daily deliveries by land, sea and air to every corner of the country, the photos featured offer a fascinating series of windows on Britain from the 1930s to 1980s – including some of the more unusual, unexpected and unseen activities of the Post Office and its people.

Public House & Post Office, c. 1989 - A pint, a pie... and a pension at the Swan public house in Little Totham, near Maldon, Essex. Publican’s daughter Christine Baxter serving a postal customer in the bar of her parents’ pub. (010-018-002)

The exhibition is at The Post Modern Gallery in Swindon until 5 November. The Gallery is open from 11am to 5pm Monday to Saturday – for full details see our website.

Special drop-in events accompanying the exhibition include:

Explore The Post Office in Pictures
Wednesday 12 October, 6pm to 8pm
Craft Session & Late Opening
Join us for an evening exploring crafty connections between the photographs on display and a range of arts and crafts techniques. Enjoy a glass of wine, see practical demonstrations, and then have a go at something yourself, inspired by the fascinating images featured in The Post Office in Pictures.

The Post Office in Pictures Family Fun Days
Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 October, 11am to 4pm
Half-Term Activities
Come to The Post Office in Pictures during half-term for a host of free family activities:

• Put yourself in the Picture and create your own magazine front cover with you as the star! Use real post office uniforms for added authenticity.
• Create your own Finger Puppet Postman from felt, and make a cap badge or armband based on what you can see in the exhibition. Real objects will be available to handle for added inspiration.
• Why not bring along your camera to the fun day and take part in our Photographic Scavenger Hunt? Pick up the clues from the Post Modern, search Swindon for the postal items and snap as many as you can, and then return to the gallery to record your time – the fastest family over the two days will win a fantastic prize.

For more on The Post Office in Pictures see our online exhibition. Large versions of the images from the exhibition can be seen on Flickr. Photos from the exhibition are available to buy from our Print on Demand website.

Photography Competition Finalists

Entries in our photography competition closed recently and the 10 finalists have been selected. Photos by the finalists will be on display as part of our upcoming photo exhibition The Post Office in Pictures. The exhibition opens on 6 October at The Post Modern, Swindon, and will showcase a selection of inspiring images sourced from our vast collection.

The two winners of the photography competition will be announced soon. Each winner will receive a Nikon camera courtesy of audiovisual retailer Sight2Sound.

Under-16 Finalists

The Travels of a Postage Stamp by Esina Barber

Last in the Village by Eleanor Leonne Bennet

Country Life by Nik Gaskell

2nd Class Stamp by Sacha Onslow

Post Office in Lyme Regis by Lucy Steele

Over-16 Finalists

Jemimaville Post Office by Gail Johnson

Old World London by Helen Webb

The Ambassadors by Mark Massey

The Flying Bike by Sue Smith

The Post Office, Antarctica by Dominique Brand

You can also see the finalists’ photos on Flickr.

New records released on our online catalogue

Thankfully, our recent problems with the online catalogue appear to be resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience you may have suffered in recent weeks.

The online catalogue service began switching itself off when we upgraded the catalogue system software. We noticed that our web server was having problems with the new software almost immediately. Although we did test the system before we installed it on our web server, a bug in the system did not become apparent until the online catalogue interface began asking for data from the system database. We’ve now reverted to a stable version of the system so hopefully we will not have any more unplanned interruptions to the online catalogue service.

On a more positive note, we can reveal that 4752 records have been added to the online catalogue and these are now available to the public. These include:

POST 91: Buildings, Furniture and Fittings – over 3000 descriptions of plans, blueprints, photographs, illustrations and documents relating to Post Office sites and installations across the United Kingdom between c.1780 and 2002. We’ve digitised a small number of these records and we hope to attach these to their descriptions in the following months.

King Edward Building - two keyboard operators at Single Position Letter Sorting Machine (SPLSM), November 1971 (POST 118/6024)

POST 118: Post Office Photograph Library – 450 descriptions of photographs from 1967-1999. These images form part of a series of photographs compiled by library staff during the course of their work. They include many colour medium-format photographs of sorting offices, technical photographs of equipment and postmen and women on delivery. These records often include digital images of the photographs themselves. Further records from this series will be released in the future.

From the museum collection we have added an additional 450 detailed descriptions of textile and uniform, many of which include photographs of the uniforms. Other significant releases from the museum collection include an additional 114 prints and drawings, and a further 210 handstamps.

Coat Jacket - British Postal Agency (Tangier), c. 1950 (2011-0338)

From our philatelic collections, King George VI Overprints are now available, including postage due label overprints. This collection of definitives, commemoratives, high value definitive stamps and postage due label registration sheets include overprints relating to the official use of these stamps in various territories under British control, including the Gulf and former Italian colonies in Africa, occupied by British troops during Word War II.

KGVI 6d purple, overprinted 'B.M.A. TRIPOLITANIA 12 M.A.L.', registration sheet, perforated (POST 150/KGVI/O/BRA/ICL/0008)

Holding particular political and historical significance today, registration sheets overprinted for ‘British Military Administration’ and ‘British Administration’ in ‘Tripolitania’, a historic region in the former province of Libya are included in the collection. These stamps provide a reminder of British domination of this former Italian colony, both in terms of its military administration and also on a civilian basis. Tripolitania included Tripoli in the old system and these registration sheets document the fact that Britain actually set up the combined state of Libya. The British backed King Idris to become Emir of Tripolitania who also proclaimed an independent Emirate of Cyrenaica in 1949.

Various postal agencies in the Gulf used British overprinted stamps after 1948, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Muscat and Qatar.

- Martin Devereux, Acting Catalogue Manager

Search our online catalogue at www.postalheritage.org.uk/catalogue.

Photography Competition: the entries so far

There are less than three weeks to go until entries for our Photography Competition close. For those who are considering entering but haven’t submitted their photo yet, we thought we’d provide a little inspiration by giving you a taste of some of the images received so far.

Peter, who presumably works for Royal Mail, took this photo out of the back of a post van. You can see the famous Pashley Mailstar delivery bicycle leaning against the sorting office wall.

View from the Back of a Post Van by Peter

Letter boxes and telephone kiosks in picturesque settings have been a popular theme. This entry from Marfin shows a wall box in countryside.

Post Boxed in Stone by Marfin

We’ve also received several photographs of interesting rural Post Offices. Below is Gail’s photo of Jemimaville Post Office in the Scottish Highlands. Wikipedia tells us that the village of Jemimaville “has 18 houses and around 50 inhabitants, and a small Post Office which is open Mondays and Thursdays”.

Jemimaville Post Office by Gail

And finally, here’s an amusing entry from Jack, taken inside a Post Office.

Counter Revolutionary by Jack

Entries for our Photography Competition close at 5pm on 9 September 2011. To find out more and read the terms and conditions please visit http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/photocomp. Prizes courtesy of Sight2Sound.

Photography competition

We are offering amateur photographers the chance to win a superb camera, as well as the opportunity to be a part of our upcoming photography exhibition The Post Office in Pictures.

The theme for the competition is ‘the Post Office in the UK’. Entrants are invited to submit an image that illustrates the theme, inspires the viewer, and evokes curiosity to find out more about what is pictured in the photo.

Among the Oasthouses, Kent, 1935 (POST 118/1151)

Finalists in each of the two categories (under and over 16 years old) will be displayed on the BPMA website, in selected media outlets, and during The Post Office in Pictures photo exhibition.

A panel of judges will select a Winner in both categories, who will receive:

Under-16 Winner: a Nikon Coolpix P500 camera *

Over-16 Winner: a Nikon D3100 camera *

These amazing prizes are provided courtesy of audiovisual retailer Sight 2 Sound.

For full details of the competition including guidance on eligibility and instructions for submission of entries please visit http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/photocomp.

To find out more about The Post Office in Pictures exhibition, which is a collaboration between the BPMA and Swindon-based artists from Artsite Ltd, visit http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/inpictures.

* A voucher alternative to each camera will be available on request.

The Post Office in Pictures

In October our new exhibition, The Post Office in Pictures, will open in Swindon. The exhibition will showcase a selection of inspiring images sourced from our vast collections.

In 1933 Sir Stephen Tallents was appointed Public Relations Officer to the General Post Office (GPO), and so began a major project to promote the range of postal services to the British public. One initiative was the establishment of The Post Office Magazine, intended to give a sense of shared community, camaraderie and endeavour. In order to do this, the GPO employed photographers to create beautiful, informative and often humorous photographs of the Post Office at work.

From strange creatures sent through the post, to the daily deliveries by land, sea
and air to every corner of the country, the photos featured in The Post Office in Pictures offer a fascinating set of windows on Britain from the 1930s to 80s – including some of the more unusual, unexpected and unseen activities of The Post Office and its people.

One of the images to be featured is ‘Basket Delivery’, a striking image from 1938 showing a postman at Greenock Promenade in Scotland. The postman’s basket contained mail from the Canadian Pacific Railways liner, the Duchess of Bedford. Beginning its journey in places such as New Zealand and China, the mail once unloaded was then sorted in the open air ‘sorting office’ of the Princes Pier before being despatched for delivery across the United Kingdom. We love the composition of the image and the beautiful cloudy sky.

A postman pushes a hand cart with a large GPO basket on it along a promenade, Greenock. (POST 118/851)

To accompany the exhibition, the BPMA has produced a fantastic range of greetings cards featuring iconic black and white photographs from our archives, including ‘Basket Delivery’. The cards are now available from our online shop.

The Post Office in Pictures exhibition is open at the Post Modern in Swindon between 6 October and 5 November 2011. Find out more on our website.