What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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The lava lamp might have been a big part of the Swinging London scene, sold in shops on Carnaby Street and considered a must-have accessory for chic flats on the King’s Road, but this enduring style icon’s genesis lay in a country pub near Poole in the 1950s.
Edward Craven Walker had already fit quite a lot in even before he got round to creating his most well-known invention. Born in Singapore he worked at British American Tobacco’s factory in Southampton, flew RAF mosquito reconnaissance planes during the Second World War, set up a business where families could swap houses for holidays and made multiple films extolling the virtues of one of his great passions, Naturism!
Sometime after World World Two, however, he found himself near The Queens Head pub in Ringwood admiring a strange homemade egg timer device that used two unmixable liquids suspended in a glass jar. Fascinated, he set out to create a more advanced version of the solution, experimenting for many years, building prototypes out of cocktail and orange squash bottles, before coming up with the formula that would go into the first ‘Astro Baby’ lamps which went into production in Poole in 1963.
The lamps were a worldwide sensation, at one point selling around 7 million units a year, making appearances in TV shows like The Prisoner and Doctor Who. Ringo Starr and David Bowie were both pictured with theirs and Paul McCartney and Wings incorporated them into their stage set.
The composition of the original ‘lava’ formula was a closely guarded secret that included oil, wax and more than 12 other ingredients. When heated by the lamp at the base of the unit the ‘lava’ heats up and becomes less dense than the water it’s sitting in. This means it begins to rise before cooling again and falling back towards the bottom of the tube creating the famous hypnotic effect.
Although, as Walker had predicted, the lamps popularity waxed and waned throughout the years, they always endured and built up a dedicated network of devoted fans. Eventually the company would team up with two fans and entrepreneurs, Cressida Granger and David Mulley, to revive their fortunes. Granger had noticed how popular lava lamps were on her vintage stall at Camden Market and was behind a revamp for the venerable brand. The company name changed from Crestworth to Mathmos, a reference to 1960s comic Barbarella, but Walker remained as consultant on the vital formula until he died in 2000.
This particular design of lamp from the Poole Museum collection called the ‘Neo’ was designed by lighting designer Jonathan Coles as part of Mathmos’s ‘new generation’ of lava lamps and launched in 2016 to rave reviews.
Ever since Craven Walker and his wife Christine opened their first workshop down by the boatyards in September 1963, Poole has been the official home of the lava lamp and still is today. The factory has moved locations a few times but has never left the town and is now based at facility near Poole Football Club on Willis Way.
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!