England 3: Sherlock Holmes
Oct. 25th, 2014 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsWednesday was spent mostly at the Victoria and Albert and Thursday was mostly spent haunting the area around Covent Garden (and speaking of hauntings, every night I wasn't in the theater I was taking a different ghost tour).
But Friday was the two biggest events: Sherlock Holmes and Poppies.
Lynne had been to the Sherlock Holmes exhibit the night before because she was one of the sponsors (The Other M has a photo of her pointing at her name on the "Thank you" board. And it's why I'm not bothering to anonymize her). So she had gotten to go to the big 'do the night before, tweeting things like "Standing next to Mark Gatiss. Ho, hum, another night in London" and not tweeting about wanting to lick either the exhibits or Ian McKellen.
The next day, we were the second group too, the rest of the group being rounded out by one of the 221B Concom and one of the Tin Boxers (both studying in London), a couple of Lynne's local friends and a couple of mine from the Staggering Stories podcast.
Bring a camera; although we all got busted for taking photos in the exhibit (which is prohibited) there are two things which you can take photos of, as shown below.
"Come here at once."
This is set up mid-exhibit. (Jean of Staggering Stories doing the pose)
You walk in through a set of bookshelves to a long hall. To your immediate left is a series of monitors showing clips of various Holmes adaptations from the silent era through Elementary. If you follow that panel around, there's a little niche with an original manuscript from The Murders at the Rue Morgue to show the evolution of the detective novel.
Following down, you pass movie posters through the ages.
Next up are Padgett illustrations and a Padgett painting of Doyle, plus part of the notes for Study in Scarlet (with the names Sherrinford and Ormond Sackler) and two Beetons Christmas Annuals.
But because this was at the Museum of London, the tone quickly shifted to London itself and its role in the stories. There were lots of maps and Victorian travel guides, but my favorite part of this section were the three panels each dedicated to a single story. At the top was a map of London, with Holmes' travel path marked in colored cords - one color for the paths walked, one for cab trips, one for train. Below were TV monitors showing high-speed versions of what it would look like to take each path in modern London.
There were costumes from the Granada and BBC shows - we were an early enough tour that were neither fingerprints nor lick marks on the glass case around the Belstaff coat. I plead the Fifth as to whether we left any. There was also a series of Victorian overcoats tagged with the names of apocryphal baddies - Wilson the Notorious Canary Trainer, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, etc. No, I don't know why.
The clothing room also had exhibits explaining shoes and shoe prints, and included interesting x-rays of Victoran footwear, although my favorite was the one with the hat in front of large pages from Blue Carbuncle, each paragraph of deduction leading by a red cord to the appropriate part of the hat.
... mind you, I will NEVER read or think about that scene without hearing Tony Lee shouting "I am so bored I will get high on cocaine and deduce this hat!" It's... a long story.
Mind you, for anyone who buys souvenirs - the ink on neither the tea towel nor the mug will last long without flaking. I was extremely disappointed by that; I like the motto "SHERLOCK HOLMES: the man who never lived and will never die" and planned on giving that mug hard use. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the deerstalker in the exclusive Cristy's "Sherlock" tweed was reasonably priced. Frankly, I expected it to be 100 pounds or more, and it's slightly less than 50.
But Friday was the two biggest events: Sherlock Holmes and Poppies.
Lynne had been to the Sherlock Holmes exhibit the night before because she was one of the sponsors (The Other M has a photo of her pointing at her name on the "Thank you" board. And it's why I'm not bothering to anonymize her). So she had gotten to go to the big 'do the night before, tweeting things like "Standing next to Mark Gatiss. Ho, hum, another night in London" and not tweeting about wanting to lick either the exhibits or Ian McKellen.
The next day, we were the second group too, the rest of the group being rounded out by one of the 221B Concom and one of the Tin Boxers (both studying in London), a couple of Lynne's local friends and a couple of mine from the Staggering Stories podcast.
Bring a camera; although we all got busted for taking photos in the exhibit (which is prohibited) there are two things which you can take photos of, as shown below.
"Come here at once."
This is set up mid-exhibit. (Jean of Staggering Stories doing the pose)
You walk in through a set of bookshelves to a long hall. To your immediate left is a series of monitors showing clips of various Holmes adaptations from the silent era through Elementary. If you follow that panel around, there's a little niche with an original manuscript from The Murders at the Rue Morgue to show the evolution of the detective novel.
Following down, you pass movie posters through the ages.
Next up are Padgett illustrations and a Padgett painting of Doyle, plus part of the notes for Study in Scarlet (with the names Sherrinford and Ormond Sackler) and two Beetons Christmas Annuals.
But because this was at the Museum of London, the tone quickly shifted to London itself and its role in the stories. There were lots of maps and Victorian travel guides, but my favorite part of this section were the three panels each dedicated to a single story. At the top was a map of London, with Holmes' travel path marked in colored cords - one color for the paths walked, one for cab trips, one for train. Below were TV monitors showing high-speed versions of what it would look like to take each path in modern London.
There were costumes from the Granada and BBC shows - we were an early enough tour that were neither fingerprints nor lick marks on the glass case around the Belstaff coat. I plead the Fifth as to whether we left any. There was also a series of Victorian overcoats tagged with the names of apocryphal baddies - Wilson the Notorious Canary Trainer, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, etc. No, I don't know why.
The clothing room also had exhibits explaining shoes and shoe prints, and included interesting x-rays of Victoran footwear, although my favorite was the one with the hat in front of large pages from Blue Carbuncle, each paragraph of deduction leading by a red cord to the appropriate part of the hat.
... mind you, I will NEVER read or think about that scene without hearing Tony Lee shouting "I am so bored I will get high on cocaine and deduce this hat!" It's... a long story.
Mind you, for anyone who buys souvenirs - the ink on neither the tea towel nor the mug will last long without flaking. I was extremely disappointed by that; I like the motto "SHERLOCK HOLMES: the man who never lived and will never die" and planned on giving that mug hard use. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the deerstalker in the exclusive Cristy's "Sherlock" tweed was reasonably priced. Frankly, I expected it to be 100 pounds or more, and it's slightly less than 50.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-10-25 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-26 02:43 am (UTC)http://www.geocachingtoolbox.com/index.php?lang=en&page=dancingMen
The figures with flags signal the end of a word.
Sorry to hear about the flaky souvenirs.
I assume you know that "who never lived and so can never die" is from Vincent Starrett's poem "221B"....
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8599039-221b-by-Vincent-Starrett
no subject
Date: 2014-10-26 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-26 10:26 am (UTC)