The behind the scenes of a museum are something you don’t see all too often, unless you’re watching Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller running around with a flashlight. Although the objective is to display things as clearly as possible for all to see, and the Pitt Rivers does show off a dizzying number of objects, one feels there is a lot going on beyond the glass cases in the galleries. Having the opportunity to spend two weeks as part of the collections team was a great chance to peek behind the curtain, and more curtains than I first imagined were pulled aside for me. Besides working with the collections team, I was given introductions to the conservation side of the museum, the photography stores, the Balfour Library, spent a day with the textiles team, helped with visitor VR and object handling sessions, and took a trip to the offsite storage bizarrely held in an old RAF base.
My main task as the intern, however, was to catalogue numerous clay pipes, as the museum was preparing for a visit from the Society for Clay Pipe Research. The first step in this process was pulling out the pipes, which are held safely under lock and key in stiff, wooden, Victorian drawers. This marked the start of my behind-the-scenes journey, seeing what lies underneath the cases and isn’t on display. On Mondays, the museum opens later to the public, and with no visitors around I was hoping for a Night at the Museum-esque scene, with drawers opening to reveal a lively entourage of objects coming to life. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, but what was revealed was certainly very interesting.
Pipes are one of those objects that tread the line between form and function. Opening the drawer, one got the sense that these were objects of great aesthetic merit, but also ones that had been used; they played a role in people’s lives. We opened two drawers that morning, one of European pipes and one of Oceanic pipes. The first thing that struck me was the difference in form. The European pipes, for the most part, resembled what I imagine Sherlock Holmes to smoke from, whereas the Oceanic pipes were long tubes of bamboo, intricately carved or pyro-engraved. The second thing that struck me was that these pipes were so full of character, yet were lying still in an unassuming drawer.
That feeling of quiet melancholy wasn’t because I’m a great admirer of pipes, but because I began to understand quite what my task was. Boxed in by 19th-century carpentry are 19th-century objects that tell 19th-century stories of 19th-century people. Keeping them in that drawer locks them in that period, both physically and symbolically. The relationship between Britain and Europe, and Britain and Oceania, is very different now to what it was then. The context in which I am taking these pipes from New Guinea out of the drawer is very different to the context of those who originally put them there, and I suddenly became very aware of that. That realisation stayed with me as I carried out the task of cataloguing the pipes, a process that brought me into even closer contact with their material and cultural history.
 |
| (1) 1933.40.3 - Incised Bamboo Tobacco Pipe (Papua New Guinea) |
 |
| (1) 1979.21.107 - Bamboo Tobacco Pipe (Papua New Guinea, Wola) |
 |
| (2) 1950.5.20B - Bamboo Tube (Papua New Guinea Highlands, Bena Area) |
 |
| (2) 1950.5.22B - Bamboo tube (Papua New Guinea Highlands, Bena Area) |
Cataloguing the pipes involved updating their records on the museum’s database by photographing, transcribing labels, measuring, and writing descriptions. It was during this process that I began to discover more about how the pipes were actually used, and an article by A. C. Haddon published by the Royal Society on Smoking and Tobacco Pipes in New Guinea proved particularly helpful. It explained that the characteristic Papuan pipe (1) is made from bamboo, with one end closed and the other open or pierced. A hole, known as the dorsal hole, is bored into the side, where a bowl or leaf screw filled with tobacco is inserted. The tobacco is then lit, and the smoker draws the smoke through the pipe by suction. All the pipes had very similar construction in order for these steps to be met. Interestingly, some pipes lacked this dorsal hole (2) suggesting they were not smoked from directly but used to transport and store smoke instead. In working through them, I felt slowly transported to the time when these pipes were used, beginning to understand something of their original contexts.
 |
| (3) 1961.8.1 - Porcelain Stafford Ware whimsy pipe (England, Devon) |
 |
| (4) 1895.43.3 - Modified European pipe (Papua New Guinea) |
 |
| (4) 1895.43.4 - Modified European pipe (Papua New Guinea) |
Shifting from the Oceanic collection to the European pipes brought a different set of materials and stories into view. The European pipes differed greatly in form not only from the Oceanic pipes but also from one another. Many looked as you would expect, but some were very unique in their construction. The best example was a twisty porcelain pipe (3) from Devon, as vibrant in colour as it was confusing in form. There were also several pipes of European origin that had made their way to Oceania and been repaired or modified by the people of New Guinea. These pipes (4) occupy a fascinating hybridity. They clearly show that the objects lying in the 19th-century drawers were never truly stationary. Not only were they items of use, but each had travelled great distances and passed through many hands. Although the pipes’ journeys ended in Oxford and they now sit still in the drawer, their stories are constantly in motion. These stories reveal the layered relationships objects have had with collectors across nations, and with modern viewers across time. We owe it to these objects to keep their stories alive by sharing and experiencing them.
This awareness of objects as vessels of living history stayed with me when, in the textile store, I was allowed to look through a drawer containing various items from Pakistan. As I went through these objects, which reminded me greatly of my grandparent’s wardrobe, I felt the most at home in the museum’s vast collections. The stories of those objects were ones I had been told by generations of my family and lived through myself. Those objects felt alive because the life they lived was my own. Opening the drawer is a great first step, putting the objects out for people to see is the next one, and telling their story is what comes after.
 |
| (5) 'Wandering in Other Worlds: Evenki Cosmology and Shamanic Traditions' display and Evenki co-curator Galina Veretnova. |
 |
| (6) Visitors viewing immersive Evenki Cosmologies VR films. |
The importance of storytelling became even clearer through the object handling and VR sessions I helped with. These sessions were run to complement the display on the Evenki people (5) from Northern and Central Asia who are a diverse cultural group. Seeing their objects is one thing; watching their lives unfold in VR is another. The VR films (6) were shot in their homeland of Evenkia, and Anya Gleizier, the artist who helped create the display, worked with elders and children to record their stories as accurately as possible. What is easy to forget when looking at 19th-century cabinets, often with labels written in 19th-century language, is that while the objects are frozen in time, the people they came from often are not. The Evenki people may have told their story, but it is still being written. They are still living in Russia, Mongolia, and China. Their objects are brought to life in our minds with a story, and it is important to remember this is not a story from the past but a reality being lived now. Although the 19th-century Evenki drum is kept in a 19th-century cabinet in a 19th-century museum, its beat reverberates through time, and I believe we should never let it die. We can keep the Evenki drum, the bamboo pipes from New Guinea, the porcelain pipe from Devon, and everything else alive if we look past the 19th-century cloak they are all shrouded in.
During my two weeks, I didn’t get my Night at the Museum moment. I have no stories of objects suddenly moving on their own, or displays coming to life after hours, to report. What I did realise is that maybe I had been looking at it the wrong way. Rather than waiting for the objects to come to life, I understood that they are already alive, and it’s up to us to ensure they stay that way.
By Subhan Aslam
BA History and English student
University of Oxford
Further reading:
Further examples of pipes in the Pitt Rivers collection:
(1) Examples include: 1933.40.3, 1950.5.19B, 1979.21.107
(2) Examples include: 1950.5.20B, 1950.5.22B, 1938.36.571
No comments:
Post a Comment