Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to series three of the Life of Letters. I'm Laura Edrilyn, your host and London based calligrapher. Curious about the history and future of letters. This season we're diving back into the rich world of scripts, letter forms and the stories behind the marks we make on paper and elsewhere.
A massive thank you to Speedball for sponsoring this season of the podcast. It really means so much to us. Not only do we have their Director of Product Marketing, Melissa, joining me for an episode this season, but I've been using Speedball tools since my very early days of calligraphy so their support truly means the world. Enjoy the episode and if you want to find out more about the guest, the podcast or me, please check out the show notes.
In this episode we visited the Royal Albert hall in London and recorded the episode in person, exploring lettering artefacts from the hall's history with Alicia and Hope from the Archive team. There you can find a video version of this episode on YouTube for the.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Full visual experience and see exactly what we're talking about.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: But for the fullest experience you can.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Actually visit the Royal Albert hall archives yourself.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Listen for all the details at the end of the episode and in the.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Show notes for those who might not know, the Royal Abbott hall this famous concert hall is an iconic landmark in London which opened its doors in 1871 by Queen Victoria and is perhaps known visually for its domed roof and large 9999 piped organ. That's hard to say, but also as home to the annual BBC Proms, Cirque du Soleil, rock, pop, classical, hip hop, comedy, ballets, musicals, spoken word, Christmas carols and the list goes on.
This is a huge venue, it's got a capacity of 5,000.
But this world famous venue has many many stories to tell.
I worked at the hall for 13 years and one of the most special places in the building, apart from the stunning auditorium, is the archives, a space where the stories throughout its history have been preserved, uncovered, discovered and shared. But of course, while the hall is perhaps sort of as a more portable art space, we're here to find out about the visual side that letters have played in the venue's 150year. 155. 45. Where are we now?
150ish year history and thankfully we've got just the people to help Elysian Hope, a huge welcome to the Life of Letters podcast.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: Thank you for coming here.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: It's so good to be on site I think when you're talking about a building with such a large history, but Also such a large space for all of these incredible kind of archives. PHYSICAL AUDIBLE it's lovely to be able to come and rifle through it in person.
So, Alicia, you're the senior archivist here. Can you briefly explain what your role entails?
[00:03:01] Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah. So my role focuses quite a lot on the digital archive world. So it's becoming more important that we look after that the same that we're looking after our physical archive.
So we've just set up a digital preservation system and we're just getting that off the ground.
I'm also sort of like interim as like archive manager as well. So I'm looking after the whole place really, and the fabulous team I've got.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: And hope your role focuses more on the engagement side. Right. What does that, what does that mean?
[00:03:30] Speaker D: Yeah, so that's the sort of front facing side, getting the archive out to people and people into the archive.
So we're doing some fantastic videos with marketing, they're on YouTube in the archive with where we get people, performers to talk about various items within the collection, which is really, really fun.
We're also working on Front of House, so we have sort of exhibition of Women of the hall, looking at the various kinds of women who performed here and the sort of stories that they've told and the things they fought for within the hall, which is so cool.
We do inquiries, we work with community groups as well.
And excitingly, we've started doing public tours as well. So as Laura will be able to test. The archive is such an exciting place to walk around and just kind of everything that you pull out seems to be like magic. So, yeah, we're really excited to share that with people.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: It's super exciting. And it wasn't here in this lovely long kind of stretch of the corridor when I worked here.
[00:04:34] Speaker D: Yeah, we'll be able to help me with this one because you've lived it a lot longer than I have. But the archive hasn't always been here and kind of grown with the hall.
In the 80s, an employee here decided that there was a lot of value in some of the stuff that she was finding sort of scattered around the building and cupboards and that kind of thing. And so started to really collect it and, and make an effort to create this archive and collection.
And then over a decade ago, I think it was kind of solidified with the hiring of Liz Harper, who was professional archivist and did an absolutely incredible job in really solid, solidifying this as an actual archive that was properly cared for.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Yeah, at that point we could start pulling out the stories. Because before it was sort of things in a cupboard that were important but no one knew what they were. And then it became like, okay, what do we actually have? Let's make sense of this.
[00:05:27] Speaker D: And now we've seemed to be the.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: Stage where it's like, let's properly show it off. Bring people in very good position, raised.
[00:05:35] Speaker D: Quite a lot of money to build this space that we're now in. So we're recording this in our sort of reading room, kind of public area. We've got a little adjoining office and we've got the store which is properly climate controlled.
And so it's at the right temperature and humidity for all the amazing documents and material that we have to be looked after for as long as possible. Gas suppression, which we're very excited about.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: What does that mean?
[00:06:01] Speaker D: It just means that if there's a fire, instead of having sprinklers which would damage the documents and other objects, it's gas that puts a fire out.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Very clever. Could have. Wouldn't even thought of it.
[00:06:12] Speaker D: There's so many different things and yeah, so many requirements for an archive. But yeah, that opened in October 2023.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: 2023.
Okay. So really, really quite new.
And it's, yeah, obviously evolving as you go. I mean, there's a sort of endless amount of information that you're collecting, I'm sure. And it's great that you've got the digital element as well, the preserving and cataloging and being able to make sort of sense of all the records, items, information. Alicia, how have you done this? And has the emphasis on history of the. Org changed over the years? What you want to draw out and share with people?
[00:06:54] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So it kind of all started like just creating a basic database of performances and the stuff that we actually have and that's sort of grown into this huge performance database and perform a database where we capture every event that's in every single space at the hall, which could be multiple a day.
So it's an absolute labor of love when we capture all sorts of information. Like there were protests going on, who was seeing the set list, capacity tickets sold, like everything and anything we can get. So we have that running along, which is going to be changing soon. The software does going to be revealed to something new and that will be seamless.
So that's the cataloging side of things that's just going to keep ticking over and over. But the emphasis, I think it's been at the beginning it was a lot on, like, we just need to figure out what we've got what are the stories? Because I know when I started, like the suffragettes, like that story had just been uncovered here, like we were a bit unaware they'd even been here. And then there was a whole series that we did about suffragette talks, women at the Hall. It was if we could create these events around finding things.
So there is an emphasis on that. And now it's just sort of like getting the stories out there, doing tours, like just getting people excited about the stuff we've got and our very weird history.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm picking out the things that really piqued people's interest, which I guess sort of changes over the years as well. And with different anniversaries coming up, there's a difference of focus as well.
So obviously if you're not in London, anybody who's listening can discover a heap of information about the archives and the history of the hall and the building and, you know, all of it. It's been so well documented and preserved. There's a wealth of resources and interactive elements on the hall's website that people can discover and we will link to that in the show notes. But what we're really here to talk about is delving into the part of history which possibly isn't something that you normally get questions on. But we're thinking about letters and the life of letters. And given the hall's history, there's a. The really long legacy of how letters have been used, whether it's individual letters, handwritten penmanship, all of those things. So can you both talk us through some of your favourite letter related artifacts? What can we expect to find?
[00:09:15] Speaker C: I don't know where to start with. Yeah, well, so many things. We have council minute books which contain like information about every detail of the hall and they were handwritten up to a point, then they became digital.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Actually.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: The older ones are very legible. Like the handwriting. It's very clear and it gets about the 1960s where, I don't know, it gets a bit more chaotic.
[00:09:35] Speaker D: The ones from 1865 are really, really beautiful.
This is kind of like gorgeous bloopy Victorian handwriting, which is, yeah, lovely. Absolutely fabulous.
[00:09:47] Speaker C: There's a second meeting that we have, it's got a list of all the people who attended. So it's like Prince Dukes, Lords, Earls and it goes all the way right down to like the Mr. So they're all in order.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Oh, that's incred. So yeah, you've got things where you're. Obviously the minutes and things have been captured and written down.
So the handwriting I guess will have changed or even the style of writing.
Correspondence, letters arriving and obviously a bit of a shift into the digital age. Anything else?
So one of my, I think the.
[00:10:18] Speaker D: Most interesting thing from that point of view is we have a book that's used for noting down something and it's the same one that we've been using since the conception of the hall and it's still used. So you can see as you flick through it the evolution of handwriting. And it goes from this kind of Victorian handwriting until I can kind of recognize my parents style of handwriting from having learned it in the 1950s.
And yeah, it's so fascinating to see that kind of evolution and sort of like slow motion as you flick through.
[00:10:50] Speaker C: This pressure on a colleague writing now to keep it as neat as possible.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: I feel like people, people in, in kind of our, our generations do really start to go, oh my handwriting is awful. And there's a. There's a focus on it in education. And so the practice of handwriting had shifted. Whereas before it was very much a seriously taught script. People remember cursive and all sorts of things.
Whereas now most of us are using quick scribbles and capitals. Yeah. Make it legible for everybody. And what was that? What was the book was.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: It's a seat holder, sort of transfer register. So every single time a seat's been sold or transferred to someone else, there is a note for that.
So it goes all the way back and still being used today. Not quite full yet. So I haven't had to move on to the second.
[00:11:39] Speaker D: Surprisingly I say only like halfway full.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: Yeah. So huge burger.
[00:11:44] Speaker D: Yeah. We've got another like century of people buying and selling seats.
We've got some pace cars actually talking about handwriting, people's penmanships which I think are so gorgeous. So we collected them. Not because anyone who wrote them has anything to do with the hall necessary, but they're postcards of the hall.
I particularly like this one which is sparkly.
Yeah. And it's. I mean, I would guess that's what, 40s or 50s, I'd say so.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker C: Ancient glitter.
[00:12:13] Speaker D: Yeah.
So fun. It's something that until I saw it like literally a few days ago. I haven't clock that people would be bedazzling postcards sort of in the mid 20th century. But there are just a couple of interesting things. I mean this one is absolutely gorgeous. This Valentine's postcard.
And it's someone called Hayda, I think thanking her friend Nora for having gone to the trouble and expense you went to on Saturday to be my bridesmaid. You looked ever so nice and I'm sure no one could have wished for two prettier bridesmaids.
And it's just. It's just absolutely lovely. And the handwriting is beautiful. I think.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: So it's not that they would have got married here. Like the context of sending a postcard of the hall. Yeah. Is that just because it's an iconic venue? Exactly.
[00:13:00] Speaker C: We may have been staying here.
[00:13:02] Speaker D: Yeah. So there's one from a lady in Airdrie in Scotland who says, I was in London and Tunbridge Wells last week.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: T. Wells. Very pretty place.
[00:13:10] Speaker D: And London is simply grand and interesting.
And so she uses this postcard of the hall to kind of illustrate how grand and exciting London is.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: And a nighttime one.
[00:13:25] Speaker D: Yeah. The moon sort of giving. It's very Halloween. I love this because it's quite. It feels like quite childlike handwriting to me. I think it's a birthday card.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: I just find them really fascinating to just learn, like, really weird tidbits about random people. Stories you'll never know. But it's.
[00:13:42] Speaker D: It's so lovely.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: And these are like, a lot more detailed, actually, than like Queen Victoria's diary because, like, when she came here for the opening ceremony, she said it was cold, got the coach, the finalist was okay, had luncheon, went home, and just give you so much more information about everyday life.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:57] Speaker D: Quite interestingly, there's one that I pulled out because it's kind of illegible to us. And I think that's such a. Such an interesting part of our job as well, is trying to decipher people's handwriting a lot of the time. So as part of my master's degree, I did a course in paleography and it was like everything you wanted it to be. It was in a wood paneled room with this. The professor was like, it must have been at least 85 and was coming with his, like, teapot with cosy on it and his little stripy blue and white milk jug. And then we'd go through, like, 17th century handwriting and it was. It was great. But so it's.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: It's quite.
[00:14:39] Speaker D: It depends what kind of archive you work in, but can be quite an integral part of the job.
But this. This one we just like.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: We've put out a couple of ways.
[00:14:47] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:14:48] Speaker C: Orchids of the Valley.
[00:14:50] Speaker D: Yeah. Something about Regent Street. Regent street yesterday.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Snow. The snow.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: That's quite thick.
[00:14:55] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: So. Wow. It's also written over the top of some other texts, isn't it? So that doesn't They've really made it difficult, given us a challenge.
So we interviewed a palaeographer from the Orkney Islands in the first series. We were talking about the sort of idea that being able to decipher script is a little bit like doing a crossword. So we've got to look at it long enough to find a pattern and then you can see that the G's look the same as another G.
Hi there.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: Quick moment to say if you love all things lettering, I send out a free monthly download to my mailing list. Just a little monthly treat from me to you. Follow me on Instagram at The Life of Letterspodcast or @Laura Letters Life, where you'll find the links to my free resources on my website. All the links are in today's show notes. Now let's get back to the episode.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Wow. So postcards.
Yeah.
[00:15:53] Speaker C: We also actively collect autographs from artists. We had a lot of these books. This is a random one. So I'm not sure who we have in here. Oh, we've got Coldplay. This is from 2003. 2001. There you go.
So it could be anything. And the artists, they can draw images. Some of them can be quite rude.
[00:16:12] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: So there's anything rude.
[00:16:15] Speaker D: I think there are like two pretty cheeky ones in there. Actually.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: Got the tweenies.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Slightly harder to read.
[00:16:24] Speaker D: I think the tweenies find so sweet as well because their handwriting feels to really correspond to the characters.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: As a tweenies connoisseur, I love it. So there's. There's some with photos in.
Yeah. Serious looking. Wild.
[00:16:39] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: And who's maybe being back a few times and doesn't have as much to say.
[00:16:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: This is incredible. Right, so you've kept this going again. This has been.
[00:16:50] Speaker C: It started in the 90s and the first book, I think it was very much grab whatever book we have. And so it's this ring bound, sort of velvety floral number.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Then we're like, yeah, let's make it look official.
We got guest books, postcards.
What else have you got?
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Program from Letters Life.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Very nice.
So programs, obviously is something that will have accompanied the audience's kind of journey. Right. They're coming along. It's a real kind of souvenir item that they can not only get into the sort of atmosphere and context of the event. I mean, they may know the artist really well, they may not know what to quite expect, but it's giving them this little bit of a synopsis, especially when it comes to, I guess, the traditional sort of operas and ballets where you might want to get your head around what the story is, because it may not be easy to understand, or maybe it's something that you don't know as well, but also you want to know who are the performers. When you've got multiple artists and things like that, you may like to know, right, who was that playing that night and which cast was it? Or I guess with the letters live, we've got celebrities coming up on stage. It's such a beautiful event, isn't it? Because it's very solo. It's just a stream of light pointing down at one podium and there's somebody reading out a letter of note of some sort. And it could be anything, right? Be something that somebody has written to a loved one that's sort of recovered and just has some poignancy to the sort of social context at the time that it was written. Or it could be something much more like a, I don't know, political letter that's been written as part.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: Do you remember Rory Stewart being here? And I think he started his talk saying, this is my official resignation from the Tory Party, and then read out Boris Johnson's school report.
But then actually was his official resignation. Next day he like, probably resigned.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
That is a moment.
[00:18:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: What a roller coaster. Everyone's like, oh, it's really funny. Oh, it's not really funny.
Wow. So, yeah, the stage itself has seen quite a few kind of elements of letters, whether it's being kind of shared, allowed or shown. Obviously you've got screens then. So the visual signage around the building must have changed as well over the years. Can you tell us a little bit about how letters have been factored into this building as well?
[00:19:21] Speaker D: We have quite a collection of signs, actually.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: I love the ones.
[00:19:25] Speaker D: So as you come into the archive, actually we have some of them hanging up. And I love the kind of this way to the auditorium, this way to the smoking area and those sorts of things and kind of rules and regulations that are up on the. On the wall as well, which is so fun.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: Hand painted, I assume, a lot of them. I mean, it wouldn't. It would have been pre. Kind of printing or vinyl or anything like that.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: So these are of the original, or as. As original as you can get, I guess.
Sort of wooden signs with little very smart frames.
[00:19:56] Speaker D: And they're. They're gorgeous yellow, have yellowy tinge to them and it's. I don't know if it's age, if it's years of cigarette smoke, if it's just, you know, the color that was.
[00:20:04] Speaker C: Chosen there kind of something pointing to the smoking lounge.
[00:20:07] Speaker D: So that's probably the cigarette absolutely wafting out. Yeah.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: And have you seen that kind of the signage changing over the years as well, in terms of kind of the design and the fonts that you see used?
[00:20:22] Speaker D: Yeah. So we. We picked out actually a kind of representative pile of. Of hand bills.
And it is really. It's really fun to trace the kind of changes and designs.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: Yeah, we've got.
[00:20:35] Speaker D: We've got quite a lot.
We can start off with this one from the Chelsea Arts Club Annual ball. So there were these kind of debauched New Year's balls for this artist club. So loads of art students. And this one is just so fun and gorgeous. I think it's from. Says the date on it, but it's 1920.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah, 1920.
[00:20:57] Speaker C: Even the arts for programs, they were very sort of versatile. You could carry them around. We've got a paint palette where you put your thumb through it so you can like, run around and.
[00:21:06] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:06] Speaker C: It wasn't like this huge, big program. We need so much. But the backyard, like rendezvous points. We could write who you're going to meet. So you meet Frank at the fountain and have a dance with her.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: Very sweet. Yeah.
[00:21:17] Speaker D: They're sort of like program come artwork, come dance card, come pointed out fan.
[00:21:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:23] Speaker D: Because they're quite solid. They're these sort of cards we've got.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:27] Speaker D: Dame Nelly Melba, who is a famous Australian singer.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: That's been my favorite era of his typography.
[00:21:34] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Again, this twenties, this really, like, simplistic, bold typeface.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it really says what it is. Yeah, yeah. Prices at the bottom, a couple of names.
[00:21:45] Speaker D: This one is So. I think so 70s. You can look at it and be like. Yeah, that 70s. But also it's, I think, speaks to the staff kind of playfulness in.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: In typography, you've suddenly changed direction. Right. We're not just going across horizontal lines.
What centipedes?
[00:22:04] Speaker D: I think they were a sort of jazz funk band.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: And everything's got very soft suddenly. So we've got all these sort of soft edges, even around the sort of Royal Apple Hall.
[00:22:14] Speaker D: This was actually. It's quite interesting in archive. I was doing a little bit of a look into these events and that event was cancelled. So if you're looking through the collection, you think that because there is a program for it, it happened, but actually that's not always the case. So it's a tribute event for Bob Marley but it's also kind of a youth event and it's an association with the Voice, which is I think still running, but it's a kind of foremost black British newspaper.
And it just speaks so much to like the 80s, but also I think to like the Afro Caribbean community. It's just so aesthetically specific.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: And it looks as though it's actually been kind of. A lot of it has been handwritten to then the reproduce.
[00:23:00] Speaker D: This was a event where they sort of turned the auditorium into like a kind of Latin American club, which is so fun to think about.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: So it's like. It's a sort of fold out.
[00:23:13] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: Leaflet. And it says Tropicana at the top.
And we've got this sort of metallic shimmery outline of Tropicana moving and dancing.
And then actually a very traditional script underneath it, which is kind of hard to read. A paradise under the stars. But there's a few different ones. And then we can see that there's a couple of brands that obviously sponsored lots of shimmery goldness.
[00:23:42] Speaker D: Just so visually overwhelming. A final hideous 90s, if that's all right by you. Elton John performed It's a Sin by the Pet Shop Boys at this, which I think would have been absolutely incredible.
But it just. It feels so like early PowerPoint.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, very much so.
[00:24:03] Speaker D: That's exactly what I was thinking of.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: I know like handles where we've kind of. We don't really have them anymore. They're not really made. But before they sort of died off, like, there was definitely more focus on accessible writing because there's a lot here that.
[00:24:15] Speaker D: Yeah, not a chance. St. Patrick's Day one that's just completely.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: Illegible because color on color and writing on writing.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah. It looks like it's been screen printed or printed in some way with a lot of different fonts. We've got some cabaret in a sort of art deco style.
Got things on.
The clover element behind it is very complicated. Yeah. Hard to decipher. And then a very, very detailed image of the hall.
[00:24:45] Speaker D: What I find really interesting about that as well is it's about 40 years before this one, which is.
I feel like it's kind of stereotypical Celtic style writing, which is really interesting that this St. Patrick's Festival program from the 1930s doesn't have that. But we've kind of learned to associate Irishness with this particular typeface.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And we've lost the sort of strong colors and we're just going to fact, I guess, sort of accessibility Wise, it's probably a little bit easier to read.
Having said that, everything is almost in this sort of Celtic font.
[00:25:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And talking of colours, got the suffragettes who came here quite a few times. They obviously had their purple, white and green.
[00:25:29] Speaker D: Yeah, lovely. I think that's like one of the strongest examples of really strong branding that we've got, which is crazy, considering it was 1912.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: 1912. And you've got, right at the top, this sort of slightly italic kind of black letter style with. For the Women's Social and Political Union. It's nice and easy to read.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: Same with the more militant suffragette. So they probably want to make their point, like, clear, like meeting here. We're doing this, we're getting our vote.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Read our paper. Votes for Women Weekly. One penny and a little bit of extra advertising for some other things, which is great. Tie all the in together. Yeah. That is like really not even scraping the surface, is it? Because you must just have endless kind of examples of all of these events and things, whether they went ahead or not.
When we came into the archives, there was a sort of long metal part of what looked like a railing with the letter A on it. Could you tell us a little bit about where that might have come from?
[00:26:32] Speaker C: That would have been part of a staircase somewhere at the hole. Not entirely sure where, sort of taken out. But I know Liz used to work here. Her last thing she wanted to do was to count all of these aids around the building. And I think there's 1,500 and something. We've got the proper number written down, but so we now have a proper number of how many aids there are.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: And the A, obviously for Albert, is you can still see them. Right. So if people are visiting the hall, they will come across lots of these A's.
I was really fascinated by some of the stunning sort of old photos that the archives had of what the box office looked like. And they had little boxes for the paper tickets, which I guess relates to the idea of a box office. But what I never really asked about was how they were printed.
[00:27:19] Speaker C: So we have records actually saying that our first printers were this Joseph Honey.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: I think his name was.
[00:27:24] Speaker C: So we're trying to find a little bit about his lifeline on Ancestry. So I'm still working on that.
And then I think it was in maybe the 20s, 30s, FJ Milliners took over and they had like a space in the hall and they became like our priority printers, obviously printed for other places, but we got ours first.
[00:27:43] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: So you had an official Office or somewhere that was printing the tickets on site here.
[00:27:49] Speaker C: I think it was the Coda Restaurant, where that is now.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: We have some pictures of them printing away.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Oh, look.
That's incredible. Well, stacks and stacks. I mean, if they had. If they were letting in 8,000 people.
[00:28:04] Speaker C: It'S 15,000 for some of us.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: That is a lot of tickets, isn't it?
[00:28:09] Speaker C: I do feel sorry for the one man band, but it was just him.
I presume there was some apprentices with him.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Wow. So this is where when the printing came on site here.
[00:28:19] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Yeah. We actually have this fight. Toad Scout.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: They knew that we were going to ask about this, but they've taken loads of photos.
They're going to need this in the future. F.J. milner Printing Shop. I guess they would have sort of lined up all the little letters and got that all sort of sized and ready for the ticket size in the picture.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: There's some trays behind it, different fonts you could pull out.
Not sure where they went in the.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Machine, but we have some examples of tickets as well, actually. I almost feel like they must have been kind of like raffle ticket size, but maybe not quite that small.
[00:28:59] Speaker D: Huge one at the top.
[00:29:01] Speaker C: The opening ceremony.
[00:29:02] Speaker D: The opening ceremony.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:29:04] Speaker C: They made an effort with that one.
[00:29:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: That's beautiful. That's been hand.
No, that had been hand Calligraph, do you think?
[00:29:14] Speaker C: I think they wrote the name of the invite because I think he was a seat holder. It was like a special ticket.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: There may have been different ones for.
[00:29:21] Speaker C: Your opening ceremony, but that's the only one that we have that survived.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Beautiful. And this one at the bottom is.
Oh, it's a Logia box ticket. Okay.
So they didn't necessarily have all the event information, it's just the date where their seat was. Okay.
[00:29:37] Speaker C: Luckily. Plus we have our performance database so we can work out what event that was for.
[00:29:42] Speaker D: Got this beautiful one for the Chelsea Arts Club, 50th anniversary. I think this was the last one actually, because in 58 they got. It's. It's disputed as to whether they ran out of money or they got booted out because they were getting too out of hand.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: So that's interesting as well. So it looks like it's being printed somewhere more professional. And then you've got the box number that's been stamped on it.
[00:30:06] Speaker D: And then we have these kind of. I think these are a bit more familiar to.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And actually quite a lot of detail on the back of the tickets as well. So where to go? Handy.
Handy little map so what's this 84. What happened? Philharmonic orchestra. Okay. Classics for Pleasure series. Very nice.
And again. So there's a sort of template of the ticket, isn't there? And then there's. I presume they would have run it through like there's a old checkbook, things, you know, where you kind of swish it across and print onto it. But yeah, all the letters, numbers, lots more numbers, lots more detail actually.
[00:30:45] Speaker D: And we've got the. I think the 90s ones look kind of the most like how they. They do today.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:52] Speaker D: Although it is, as we were discussing this morning, quite rare to get a physical ticket these days.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yes. Everything was digital, isn't it? Yeah.
[00:30:59] Speaker D: You just got it on your phone.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: And you're scanning it.
Yeah, you can see that they've obviously got. So this is. Did you say 90s? Yeah.
So you've got some slightly pixelated fonts which look fairly limited, that. It reminds me of the kind of first computer programs where you had a choice of about three or four. Yeah. Or certain programs. Even today where you've only got a limited choice, the information on there is the same and then you've got different seat numbers and again on the back. So potentially all the tickets stock pre printed, all the additional information printed on top.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: We do have some photographs of the box office itself from the fifth.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Okay. So we've sat around a sort of central desk sorting through piles and piles and there's a man looking at a long list of, I guess, seats and where people have been sat and then somebody's reading a letter and there's a lady in the corner on one of three, four phones. So potentially the sort of telephone element of the box office.
And they've got two giant maps and plans of the seating charts which they would have gone through, but given that there's four of them in the room and the room doesn't look massive, I presume there wasn't a huge team of people.
[00:32:22] Speaker C: I think this is my. This is my favorite one of them. I'm sorting through all the tickets.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: Proof that loads and loads of people came to lots and lots of events here. And I guess split into sections, there's a sort of uppercase and lowercase sorting, alphabetical systems going on on the back wall, lots of stamps, lots of sort of lettering equipment and things going on.
He looks very happy.
[00:32:47] Speaker C: I tried this morning to work out the dates because I know where they would be on the tickets. I know it's January some year, but I couldn't quite read it. Then I saw Af Written on one.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Of the tickets like, oh, maybe that's.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: The event, but it's a stamp for afternoon.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: This is from the 1950s.
Yeah. So the printing potentially still on site and with the.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it might have been round then.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Incredible. Look at these happy people with giant computer monitors in front of them.
So, yeah, we're now moving into. Yeah, very much a sort of digital capacity.
They've got a BBC Proms program in front of them just to help them work out which concerts to advise people on.
[00:33:31] Speaker C: I could just hear the dial up ring.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Yes. That's incredible. As a team, obviously you're always supporting other departments around the hall, whether it's through education and learning tours, feeding back into events as well, but also celebrating those historical occasions which often then get fed back into sort of the beginning or the opening speech of something, which is this full circle event effect, which is really lovely. But how can people access more if they wanted to delve into. I mean, I've basically chosen all my favorite parts, but if they wanted to ask a specific question, that's part one of my question. But also, what are you excited about? Kind of next for the. For the archives, if they want to get in touch.
[00:34:21] Speaker C: First place to look is on the website. We have everything, our performance database, performer database, catalog, it's all available online. But contact us, email us, call us, like, we answer any and all sorts of inquiries.
The more bonkers the better.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it gives you something to delve into. Right on the hunt.
[00:34:40] Speaker D: Yeah, we get loads of lovely inquiries like, oh, I was here in the 70s and it's always so gratifying if we were able to pull out the program from. I don't know, when someone performed with their school choir here or something like that. It's. It's really nice. Yeah.
But also starting off public tours, which is super fun. So if you want to come and have a look around the archive and find out a little bit more, we go through the store and just kind of have a look around, but also do a bit of a deep dive into some of my very favourite programs as well, which is lovely.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: Incredible. And people can just put those online?
[00:35:19] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, they can put them online and you get a tour of the hall as well, and get a peek into the auditorium, which is a really special space when it's completely different from when it's. It's full of people, all the lights are on and that kind of thing. So that's also really special experience.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, lovely. Oh, well, thank you both so much for your for your time and your knowledge and digging out all these really unusual things that possibly haven't seen the light of day for some time because nobody's asked about what it used to look like.
But if you do want to Visit it, it's royal.com about the hall forward slash building and history. You can also follow all the exciting activity Royal hall on Instagram. We will put lots of links and details into the show notes, but I'm also going to try and get some photos of some of the things that we've talked about today so that those who are listening audibly can have a little flick through some of the images of stuff that we've talked about. But also we will try and get some some of the video footage up online as well.
Hope thank you so so much for talking to me today. It's been so lovely rifling through the archives. And thank you for joining the Life of Letters. Cheers.
[00:36:34] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Life of Letters. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss the rest of the series.
If you can, leave a quick review that really helps the podcast reach more ears. And if you're enjoying these conversations, please consider buying us a coffee to help keep the episodes coming. All the details are in the show notes.
Finally, once again, a big thank you to Speedball Arts for supporting this season and for being part of my calligraphy journey from the very start. Until next time, keep writing, keep creating, and keep celebrating the Life of Letters.
