Man, Myth and Museum - Iorwerth C. Peate and the Making of the Welsh Folk Museum — Iowerth C. Peate and the Making of the Welsh Folk Museum

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Dyma'r astudiaeth gyntaf o waith Iorwerth C. Peate, yr arloeswr ym maes amgueddfeydd awyr agored ym Mhrydain. Gosodir ei waith fel ysgolhaig a churadur yng nghyd-destun yr ugeinfed ganrif. Mae'r cyfieithiadau a'r crynodebau o destunau Cymraeg yn cynnig cyfle amheuthun i gynulleidfa gwbwl newydd ddysgu am waith Peate.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

The first study of the pioneer of open-air museums in Britain, putting his work as scholar and curator into the international context of the twentieth century. Extensive synopsis and translations from Welsh makes Peate's work accessible to an entirely new audience.

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Cynnwys / Table of Contents

Foreword Introduction The land of lost content: the developing academic and the rural dream The National Museum of Wales Trouble and strife The vanishing country craftsman The search for the Welsh house ‘A fair field full of folk’: Iorwerth Peate and folk life To dream the impossible dream...a folk museum for Wales? Planning for the move Developing the folk park Frustration and fulfilment Retrospects Select Bibliography Index

Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Eurwyn Wiliam is a retired scholar, and Emeritus Keeper at Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

Other than the relatively brief study by Catrin Stevens (Writers of Wales series, 1986), Dr Peate has been rather neglected by historians, so this study fills a gap in Welsh historiography. When Stevens prepared her work in the 1980s, Peate's papers had not become available and she was compelled to rely primarily on his published works, including his two volumes of selective autobiography. There is also a pictorial volume by R. Alun Evans in the Bro a Bywyd series (2003). Dr Eurwyn Wiliam, a respected authority on the buildings of Wales and Welsh vernacular architecture himself, is well placed to undertake this study as he is also Emeritus Keeper at the National Museum of Wales which he joined in 1971 after Peate's retirement. Far from simply relying on his subject's own reminiscences, Dr Wiliam has quarried thoroughly his personal papers at the National Library of Wales and the extensive archives of the National Museum of Wales. There are also many letters from him in the archives of other individuals. Dr Peate's role in setting up the Welsh Folk Museum in 1948, in the face of widespread opposition from his peers (notably the formidable figure of Sir Cyril Fox, the highly influential Director of the National Museum of Wales from 1926 until 1948, with whom Peate enjoyed an uneasy, even fractious relationship), is examined in detail here. The many individuals involved in this story come to life in the pages of this book. There are many other dimensions, too, as Iorwerth Peate was also an accomplished author and prolific poet whose literary output is dissected here and made accessible to non-Welsh readers for the first time. The study is also impressively honest and does not shy away from discussing the many flaws in Peate's character. The author, fully aware of his subject's heavily 'selective recollection' as revealed in his publications, describes Dr Peate as 'one of the twentieth century's most controversial Welsh figures'. One of the main defects of Peate's own writings was that he shied away almost totally from discussing his own personal life, including the tragic death of his only child Dafydd Peate as an adult. A concise introductory section precedes a chapter on Iorwerth Peate's upbringing at Llanbryn-mair in Montgomeryshire, and his undergraduate career as a geography student at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he sat at the feet of the revered Professor H. J. Fleure and developed a keen interest in archaeology. Chapter 3 provides an account of the establishment of the National Museum of Wales in 1907 and its development until the Second World War, while the next chapter takes as its theme the relationship between Dr Peate and Sir Cyril Fox which often led to a number of bitter clashes between the two headstrong individuals. Chapter 5 considers Dr Peate's many important early published works on crafts and craftsmen, and clock- and watchmakers, while chapter 6 focuses on the publication of his pioneering work The Welsh House in 1940, a scholarly publication which reflected its author’s newfound interest in traditional buildings and vernacular and domestic architecture. Its underlying research and writing are examined here. There was a marked change of emphasis in 1948, the year of the setting up of the Welsh Folk Museum, a process which inevitably reduced Dr Peate's scholarly output. Iorwerth Peate's preoccupation with folk life and folklore is discussed in chapter 7 which analyses the use of the terminology. His volume Diwylliant Gwerin Cymru, based on a course of lectures delivered at Aberystwyth and published in 1942, was well received, and was reprinted within a single year. But thirty years were to elapse before a similar study appeared in English, namely Tradition and Folk Life: a Welsh Life (1972). Attention then moves to the achievement of the so-called 'impossible dream', namely the setting up of the Welsh Folk Museum, as an offshoot of the National Museum, in 1948. Dr Peate always zealously portrayed this event as his own personal brain-child, but evidence here shows that this would have taken place even without his influence, and was in reality a long-term aspiration of the founding fathers of the National Museum. Attention is focused on the selection of a suitable site, the institution's early development, the 'devolution' of its government from the National Museum, the decision to set up a 'folk park', and the key acquisition of suitable buildings, a subject which led to some sharp clashes of views. These trends came to fruition by the 1960s, largely fulfilling Dr Peate's early dreams. Galleries were established and developed apace, and by the time of Dr Peate's retirement in 1971, he had also drafted a long-term stratagem for future development. A concluding section entitled 'Retrospects' discusses critically Iorwerth Peate's real legacy and focuses on those of his contemporaries who set up similar institutions to the Welsh Folk Museum in other countries, notably Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia. Attention is focused on the extent to which Peate's early dreams to create at St Fagans a 'Wales in miniature' were gradually fulfilled.