Caring for the Collections: A Model Boat

I am currently working on upgrading the Museum's model displays on the ground floor (Court Gallery). I work closely with the Conservation Team, who check the condition of the objects, and carry out any necessary treatment before they go on display. I catalogue each object in detail, take photographs of each one, and write the new display labels.

During this process we discovered a beautifully made model of a rowing boat from Malta. The carved wooden hull has been neatly painted and the model includes painted oars, a painted metal lamp, a wooden bucket and baler, a metal anchor, and decorative silks drapes hung over the cabin area.

Detailed model of a Maltese rowing boat, PRM 1908.5.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Originally given to the Museum in 1908 the drapes are now faded and extremely fragile, the damage caused by past exposure to the UV rays in natural light . In addition the anchor, which the Conservators did a spot test on to identify the metal, is made of lead that is seriously corroded.

Close ups showing the faded and fragile silk drapes (left) and the corroded anchor (right) © Pitt Rivers Museum

As you can imagine staff in the Museum are extremely busy and Conservation would need to spend many hours to stabilise the silk on the boat before it could go on display.  Consequently we are going to house the rowing boat in a custom made storage box within the reserve collections.

Even if the decision is made not to include a model in the new display I still catalogue each one in detail. I add any information and photographs to the appropriate record on the object database. These form the basis for the online object database, which is regularly updated. This ensures you can access all the known information, plus see what the objects look like, on the Museum website.

Part of the cataloguing process involves clearly numbering each detachable part of the boat with the appropriate unique identification number. This enables each part to be described in detail and means even if they become separated - for whatever reason -  each part can be accurately identified and linked to the correct information.

The accession number written on
one of the oars © Pitt Rivers Museum

We number objects by applying a layer of reversible acrylic adhesive in solvent - often called paraloid - which looks like clear nail varnish. We then write the number using a rotring pen, before applying another layer of the acrylic adhesive.




As I have just catalogued and photographed the Maltese rowing boat this seemed an ideal opportunity to show you this particular model. Described as a daisa, in the information written down when this was given to the Museum, this appears to be a model of a traditional water taxi used to carry passengers and their baggage. To propel the boat a man stood facing forward pushing on the two oars, rather than sitting down to row.

One of the distinct features when you look at the boat is the height of the stem and the stern. The shape of these - as well as being decorative - provided a means of support for passengers to easily board and disembark.

Carved hull with high stem and stern © Pitt Rivers Museum

I hope you have enjoyed looking at and reading about this beautifully made model.

I will continue to keep you informed about the redisplay of the models with regular posts so keep following this blog.

Zena McGreevy
Senior Assistant Curator

Conservation of Two Fine Mats from Samoa and Tonga

As a third year student studying for a BA in Conservation and Restoration at the University of Lincoln I am spending six weeks within the Conservation Department at the Pitt Rivers Museum. I have been working on two finely woven mats from Samoa and Tonga. Since coming into the Museum collections in 1948 they have been housed in cramped glass frames, making it difficult to tell the condition and even their full size. Upon their release from these frames I discovered a number of interesting aspects - including the fact the Tongan mat was over two metres squared, more than twice the size of the Samoan one.

Left: Samoan Mat PRM 1948.12.1 B with the frame backing removed
Right: Tongan Mat PRM 1948.12.2 B in the old glass frame © Pitt Rivers Museum

Arthur Mahaffy, a British colonial officer, collected both mats. In a letter written in 1914 to a Mrs Harcourt - from whom the Museum received the mats in 1948 - he declared the larger Tongan mat to be over 50 years old. While specifying no age for the Samoan mat, though he noted it was cleaner and overall in better condition. Mahaffy spent most of his career in the Pacific; by 1908 he was Deputy Commissioner of the West Pacific and often visited Samoa and Tonga, where he would have been familiar with the respective political families. These included the revered figure of Fatafehi, the last in a succession of Sacred Tongan Kings, who gave the larger mat to Mahaffy.

Left: Mahaffy's letter 1914; right: detail of the red and white feathers on the Samoan mat © Pitt Rivers Museum

Despite slight differences in the cultural associations of fine mats in Tonga and Samoa - or kie hingoa and 'ie toga respectively - there are central aspects that are true for both. For instance, fine mats make up most of the material wealth of important Tongan and Samoan families and are often reserved for wearing only at weddings or funerals, or other significant events. The cultural exchange back and forth between the two islands and their shared history can be followed in the exchange of these mats down through the years. The red feathers typical of these mats are probably the highly valued rare parakeet feathers from Fiji (possibly the Fiji parrotfinch), which were traded back and forth between Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

Both mats are likely to be pandanus leaves (a relative of palm) the finest of these reserved for fine mats. Ideal characteristics of these leaves include suppleness, colour, and the thinness of fibre. The leaf is laboriously processed with many cycles of soaking in salt and fresh water, drying and splitting repeatedly until the desired qualities are achieved. These fibres are then woven together by hand often taking six months to over a year to complete.

Having possibly spent close to a 100 years tightly packed into frames both mats had deeply impressed creases. Plus the fibres at the folds and creases were comparatively brittle compared to the supple texture of the main body. To relax the fibres I used an ultrasonic humidifier to mist water vapour across the creases, whilst gently and carefully manipulating these areas with my fingers. The creases were then weighted and left for a time.

Left: Tongan mat crease before humidification; Middle: after humidification
Right: Samoan mat weighting of creases and pandanus ribbons © Pitt Rivers Museum

After this process both mats could be fully unfolded, making visible a number of aspects previously hidden from view. These included an interwoven zigzag design in a red-brown yarn, with a stepped edge at the top; original repairs; plus a number of holes in the larger mat. I could also see where strings of feathers had become separated from the body of the mats, which I secured with a couching stitch to prevent any losses. The original repairs were interesting to note, as they imply how important the preservation of these mats were to their original owners.

Left: Untangling the pandanus fringe on the Samoan mat
Right: Detail of the zigzag design on the Tongan mat © Pitt Rivers Museum 

In Samoa and Tonga particularly important fine mats are named. A mat belonging to the Tu'ifa family named Kie Monumonuka or mat that is wounded is described in Adrienne Kaepler's study "Kie Hingoa: Mats of Power, Rank, Prestige and Security". As a trainee conservator this is an appealing concept, where the prestige of the mat derives from the history that is visible in its current condition. As Kaepler, the Pacific scholar suggests, they are 'old because they are important and not important because they are old'.

The Samoan mat after treatment © Pitt Rivers Museum

Bethany Skuce
Conservation and Restoration Student

Conservation of a 19th Century Tahitian 'Poncho'

As part of the final year of my MSc in Conservation for Museums and Archaeology at UCL, I am undertaking a five-month internship in the Conservation Department of the Pitt Rivers Museum. I have been lucky enough to spend some of my time here researching and conserving a fascinating object. Although it was "found unentered" (that is, found without an accession number or other identifying information) in the Museum store in 1984, more has since been discovered about the object's provenance. More recently, it came to the attention of Conservation staff, who blogged about it here - which is how it ended up as my internship project.

Based on analogies with objects at the Royal Economic Botany Collection at Kew Gardens (42977, 73328 and 73329) and at the British Museum (Oc1960,11.22, Oc1960,11.24 and Oc1960,11.25), the object can be identified as a traditional Tahitian poncho-like garment called a tiputa. It consists of a rectangular piece of barkcloth with a central opening to pass over the wearer's head. It is elaborately decorated with rosettes made of folded monocot leaf strips or stems and long fringes of extremely delicate plant leaf epidermis.

PRM 1984.3.1, front shown after conservation treatment © Pitt Rivers Museum

Given the lack of information about how the poncho came to be in the Pitt Rivers Museum collections, it is not implausible to suggest that - like the comparable objects from Kew and the British Museum - it may have been collected by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, during a visit to Tahiti in 1869.

The Duke of Edinburgh is shown in this carte-de-visite photograph surrounded by Tahitian royal women in 1869 (image taken from the web page 'Ahoy - Mac's Web Log', where a now defunct commercial website 'oceania-ethnographica.com' is credited as the original source of the image). 

Prince Alfred's visit took place almost exactly a century after Captain Cook's first voyage, by which time there had already been extensive contact between Tahitians and Europeans. In fact, contemporary travellers' and missionaries' accounts describe islanders wearing a combination of barkcloth and Western woven textile clothing. It is interesting to note that by the mid-19th century, barkcloth production had probably ceased on Tahiti, so the material may have been imported from another Polynesian island. The highly decorated style of the poncho, moreover, does not fit in the traditional category of Tahitian high-status barkcloth, which was white and undecorated. All of this points to the poncho being the product of a period marked by dynamic, creative use of material culture to define colonial identities.

PRM 1984.3.1 as found in storage, before conservation treatment © Pitt Rivers Museum

From a conservation point of view, the poncho presented several problems, many of which resulted from inappropriate storage conditions in the past. The garment had been folded in half twice, and was then tightly packed into a wooden crate. This led to distortion and creases in the barkcloth material itself, as well as extensive damage and material loss to the fragile decorations. The decorative fringes which remained on the object were tangled, creased and damaged. The object was also rather dirty.

Bag of detached fragments. PRM 1984.3.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Thick covering of dirt on one of the rosettes. PRM 1984.3.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Tangled, creased and damaged edge fringes. PRM 1984.3.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Besides providing an opportunity to revisit some research into the poncho's cultural and historical significance, the main aim of the conservation treatment was to improve the structural stability of the poncho, while also improving its visual appearance. I used a Preservation Pencil to humidify the fringes one by one, straightened and untangled them, and repaired damaged areas with small patches of Japanese tissue paper adhered with starch paste. I cleaned the rosettes with a fine brush and vacuum tweezers and then misted them with a consolidant coating to strengthen the material. Finally, integral to the conservation treatment was devising a more appropriate storage solution, which would allow the object to be stored more comfortably and accessed more safely and conveniently in the future.

Humidifying and straightening the edge fringes, in progress. PRM 1984.3.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

The scale of a conservation project like this cannot be underestimated. I spent 110 hours in total on the treatment and used around £78 worth of archival-grade materials (corrugated polypropylene board, Plastazote foam, cotton calico and polyester wadding) for the repacking. The volume of the new storage box is approximately 540 litres - nearly eight times the volume of the old crate. This clearly has implications for space availability inside the Museum store, an increasingly precious resource.

PRM 1984.3.1 in its new storage box, with the old crate pictured alongside © Pitt Rivers Museum

Finally, the treatment has provided me with an opportunity to collect already detached samples of the various plant materials present, with a view to carrying out more detailed identification using scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. This analysis will be done over the next few months and I hope to be able to share the results in a follow-up blog post then.

Naomi Bergmans
Conservation Student

Forthcoming New Displays: Woodwork

Pair of Egyptian shoes inlaid with mother-of-pearl, made by 1918;
PRM 1918.49.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Work is underway for a forthcoming display highlighting woodwork from around the world. This will include various decorative techniques. Here you can see some of the inlaid objects being considered for this display.

Hurdy gurdy PRM 1938.34.653 © Pitt Rivers Museum

The Egyptian shoes you can see above were made by 1918 and are inlaid with mother-of-pearl. On the left is a nineteenth century French hurdy-gurdy inlaid with ivory.

The table you can see below is from Papua New Guinea. The stand, in the shape of a marsupial, is decoratively carved with incisions inlaid with white mineral lime to emphasis the details.

Table PRM 1992.15.2
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Box lid, inlaid with wood veneers PRM 1989.44.157
© Pitt Rivers Museum

On the left you can see the lid from a Japanese box, where thin pieces of wood, or veneers, have been used to create a decorative pattern. This technique of applying pieces of veneer to create a pattern is known as marquetry.

I can't promise all these objects will be in the actual display.  There are so many interesting objects in the Museum collection that there is never room for everything. The VERVE team, who are working on this display, are busy deciding the final selection.

I do know team member Sian has spent time looking for plenty of woodworking examples from the reserve collections. This means this new display will provide you with the opportunity to see objects currently not on public view.

I am looking forward to seeing the results of their hard work in this interesting forthcoming display.

Zena McGreevy
Senior Assistant Curator

Maori Wood Carving Tools

In the Museum collection is a whalebone mallet and a number of stone chisels from New Zealand. Maori carvers still use mallets like the one you can see below to drive chisels into wood.

Wood carver's whalebone mallet showing wear from use on the surface area © Pitt Rivers Museum 

The mallets are made from either wood or whalebone, this particular one is made from the bone of a sperm-whale. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the wear and tear on the surface where the mallet has been used to strike chisels.

Today a Maori carver's toolkit will contain a wide range of metal chisels but early carvings were made using stone tools. Chisels made from greenstone nephrite (pounamu) were particularly popular for fine work. When examining old carvings it is difficult to tell whether nephrite or metal tools were used, as both produce similar cuts.

Stone chisels including one of greenstone nephrite (top).
From top to bottom PRM 1923.87.45, 1921.93.233 and 1927.73.5 © Pitt Rivers Museum 

If you visit the Museum you can see a number of Maori stone woodworking tools on the first floor (Lower Gallery) in case L.83.A Tools for Building and Carpentry. Staff are also working on a forthcoming display highlighting woodwork techniques from around the world, which may include the whalebone mallet. You can also explore the entire collection online using the object database on the Museum website.

If you want to find out more about Maori wood carving I have suggested some reading material below. You can also read about the history of wood carving, plus see the work of contemporary carvers, on the website of the Te Puia Maori Wood Carving School.

Zena McGreevy
Senior Assistant Curator

Suggested Further Reading:

Neich, Roger, 2001, Carved Histories, New Zealand: Auckland University Press.

Neich, Roger, 1996, 'Wood Carving' in Maori Art and Culture, D.C. Starzecka (editor), London: British Museum Press.

Paama-Pengelly, 2010, Maori Art and Design, New Zealand: New Holland Publishers.

Collections A Hive Of Activity

Jeremy busy at his desk © Pitt Rivers Museum

I thought you might enjoy seeing what everyone in the Collections Department is doing this morning.  All is a hive of activity:

Jeremy, Curator and Joint Head of Collections, is busy answering enquiries.

Marina is doing some research on objects in the collection made by the Ainu people from Japan.

In the Photo Collection are images of an Ainu village set up at the 1910 Japan-British exhibition in London. These images were also produced commercially as postcards. Marina has been able to match objects in these pictures to objects now in the Museum collection.

Marina studying the photos and postcards to identify the objects from the collections © Pitt Rivers Museum

Maddie and Faye are busy showing part of the textile collection to a group of tapestry weavers.

Left: Maddie getting the textiles out ready, right: Maddie & Faye during the tapestry weavers visit © Pitt Rivers Museum

Meanwhile, Sian has been to the off-site store to bring back some objects ready for a new metalwork display; while I am working on updating the introductory guide for the West African masks.

Left: Sian bringing objects back to the Museum, right: me, working at my desk © Pitt Rivers Museum

All in all another busy day...

Zena McGreevy
Senior Assistant Curator

Chamberlain Japanese Collection and Ginkaku-ji

When I went to Japan in early November and stayed in Kyoto for a few days, I visited a few temples including Ginkaku-ji (Temple of the Silver Pavilion). It is designated as a national treasure of Japan, and is very popular among both Japanese and foreign tourists.

Ginkaku-ji with 'Kogetsudai' (Moon viewing platform) in the centre © Fusa McLynn

One of the reasons why I wanted to visit Ginkaku-ji was, in fact, the Chamberlain collection. The collection includes numerous maps and plans of holy places as well as amulets from Japan. One of the maps shows Ginkaku-ji with its garden including 'Kogetsudai' (Moon viewing platform) clearly marked. My English friend once called it a Christmas pudding. You can see why if you look at the photo above.

Map of Ginkaku-ji in the Pitt Rivers Museum Chamberlain collection PRM 1908.82.465 © Pitt Rivers Museum

At the top margin of the map, there is a poem with the name of the poet. The name reads as 'Jishoin dono Yoshimasa ko'. This is the 8th Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436 - 1490), who was the founder of Ginkaku-ji.

The place did not originally start as a temple but was actually designed as an elegant villa for Yoshimasa. He was a very cultured man but tragically weak. He failed to take strong political leadership and so became responsible for the outbreak of a civil war, which lasted 10 years and ruined Kyoto completely. Having had enough with politics, he retired, abandoned his official residence, and made his son the next shogun, allowing his wife Hino Tomiko to become extremely powerful. (She is one of very few women who came to power in Japanese history). Then he started to build this villa in 1482. Rather sadly he never saw its completion. Although he was a disastrous ruler, he played an important role to develop Japanese traditional arts such as flower arrangement and tea ceremony. He was also talented in garden designing. After his death, the place became a Zen temple of the Rinzai sect. Thus it is now called Ginkaku-ji (ji means temple in Japanese). But it is a sort of nickname and the formal name is 'Jisho-ji', which takes after Yoshimasa's posthumous name.

When I opened the information leaflet given at the temple, the first thing I saw was a familiar map of the place! It is not totally identical to the one at the Pitt Rivers but it is very similar.

The cover and map page of the information leaflet © Fusa McLynn

Thinking about the troubled and miserable shogun who left such a beautiful legacy, and B.H. Chamberlain who was so well versed in Japanese art and literature, I enjoyed walking in the garden under the warm autumn sun.

The garden at Ginkaku-ji © Fusa McLynn

Fusa McLynn
Collections Volunteer

New Displays: Forthcoming Maori Carving Case

Before conservation treatment showing
the old mount (left) and after treatment
(right), canoe ornament PRM 1902.80.2
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Members of staff from the Collections, Conservation, and Technical Services Departments are continuing to work together preparing a new display dedicated to the art of Maori wood carving. 

Work is progressing well. 

Conservation have finished checking over all of the carvings selected for display. This necessary and important work has involved stabilising any damage on the carvings, cleaning where required, and if necessary removing old mounts. 

Technicians are currently busy creating a mock-up of the display to finalise the design and make all the necessary display mounts.

The case mock-up in the design area © Pitt Rivers Museum

The designated display case has been emptied and is now ready for Technicians to panel out and paint. After painting the case will need to be left for about three weeks. This will allow any volatile organic compounds in the paint to off-gas so no harm is caused to the objects going on display.

I have been busy finding out about Maori wood carving and researching the objects. I am currently drafting the introductory text and individual object labels. I intend to circulate these to members of the Maori community, as well as subject specialists, to ensure the text in the display is accurate and informative. 

Heather, Head of Conservation
emptying the case ready for the
new display © Pitt Rivers Museum

Keep an eye on this blog site and I will let you know when the display is finished.
I am making sure any new information about the carvings is added to the appropriate records. Plus we are taking, and adding, up-to-date images of these carvings.

This will ensure, even if it is difficult to visit, you will still be able to see and read all about these carvings on the Museum website using the online object database.

Zena McGreevy

Senior Assistant Curator

Trench Art Collection

Model military cap PRM 1999.45.2
© Pitt Rivers Museum

This year is the start of the First World War Centenary, which seems an opportune moment to show you this collection of objects made from artillery shells and bullet casings.

Letter opener PRM 1999.45.3
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Professor Nicholas Saunders, a trench art specialist, purchased these for the Museum in 1999.


Part of the collection is on permanent display. If you visit the Museum, look at the 'Recycling' display on the first floor and the '20th Century Firearms' on the top floor. If you visit on a Wednesday afternoon, up to the 12th November,  you could join the free First World War tour, which starts at 3.15.

Ashtray PRM 1999.45.1
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Model coal scuttle PRM 1999.45.4
and vases PRM 1999.45.7 and
PRM 1999.45.8 © Pitt Rivers Museum

You can also explore this collection online using the Museum object database. Where you are asked for an accession number, enter '1999.45.', which is the museum identification number for this collection.

Or to discover the wide variety of objects in the Museum collection made from recycled bullets, select 'bullet' from keywords and 'recycled' for process, then search. Simply click on the individual records to see the full details about each one.

Vases left to right: PRM 1999.45.6,
PRM 1999.45.9, PRM 1999.45.10
© Pitt Rivers Museum

I encourage you to take the time to explore these interesting objects. I really like the way these show the creativity of human beings in taking something designed to cause destruction and transforming it into something decorative.

Vase PRM 1999.45.5
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Zena McGreevy
Senior Assistant Curator






If you are interested in reading more about trench art see:

Kimball, Jane A. (2004), Trench Art: An Illustrated History, Silverpenny Press.
Sanders, Nicolas J. (2003), Trench Art: Materialities and Memories of War, Oxford: Berg.
Sanders, Nicolas J. (2002), Trench Art, Princes Risborough: Shire.
Sanders, Nicolas J. (2001), Trench Art: A Brief History and Guide, 1914-1939, London: Leo Cooper. 

Part of this collection was included in the temporary exhibition Transformations: The Art of Recycling. Held at the Museum from 2000 until 2002 this celebrated the human creativity in recycling and re-using objects.

Visiting Researchers

© Zoe Rimmer

My name is Zoe Rimmer and I am a proud member of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community with 11 years’ experience in museum curation and cultural heritage management. Over this time I have had the privilege of working with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community to help protect, preserve, and revitalize our cultural practices and heritage. I am particularly passionate about how museum collections can be utilized by Indigenous people to maintain, revive and elaborate on cultural practices through effective and meaningful engagement between institutions and Indigenous communities. 

Through a Churchill Fellowship I have recently had the unique opportunity to travel overseas to explore the ways that museums outside Australia are engaging with Indigenous (source) communities and to look at different methods used to present Indigenous cultures to international audiences.

Over 9 weeks through May, June and July 2014, I travelled to the US, Canada, UK and France and embraced the opportunity to experience new directions, methodologies and outcomes in museum cooperative partnerships with Indigenous communities. Somewhere between the 12 flights, 62 hours in the air, 1,900kms by train, 1,200kms by car, 1,000kms by camper van and at least 1 ferry ride – I managed to take 4500 photos and visit 35 museums, art galleries and cultural centers. Not all of these institutions were strictly related to my research but I found that even on my days “off” I was going to museums and art galleries. I think I have developed a serious addiction, and of course I bought home several extra kilos of catalogues and museum publications.

I was absolutely blown away by some of the largest cultural institutions in the world, had unforgettable experiences at some of the smallest and met countless inspirational people along the way. Since I’ve been home EVERYONE has asked me what the best part of my trip was and I think I give a different response every time, as there were just so many. Visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, wandering the galleries, experiencing the uniquely curated cabinets and going behind the scenes to meet Pitt Rivers staff was certainly one of the highlights of my trip. 

Model canoe PRM 1893.50.14 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Searching for the Tasmanian Aboriginal canoe models and the precious marina shell necklace on display in the Pitt Rivers galleries and having the opportunity to view the rest of the Tasmanian Aboriginal collection of necklaces and baskets was an exciting and emotional experience as these objects are a real and tangible link to our ancestors. The Tasmanian model canoes are very rare objects and are significant to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community as they are three of only eight known surviving models from the 1840s (the other five are held by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery). The reed canoe models are particularly special as they are the two known to be made of this material. The bark canoe models at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery have been used by the Tasmanian Aboriginal community to help revive the practice of making full size bark canoes. 

Model boats, left PRM 1893.50.13, right PRM 1893.50.15 collected by John and Jane Franklin in the 1840s
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Basket PRM 1884.44.24 © Pitt Rivers Museum

For the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, ancestral stories, ceremony, ritual and spirit are embodied in shell stringing and basket weaving practices that extend back for many generations, far beyond living memory. In 2009 the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery toured an exhibition called tayenebe, which was the culmination of 6 years of traditional basketry revival within the community. Since 2010 I have been working on a similar revitalization project with shell necklaces stringers and over the next 12 months will be developing a touring exhibition titled kanalaritja: String of Shells for which we are hoping to secure some international loans. Shell stringing requires an intimate knowledge of ‘sea country’ and the time consuming and painstaking skill of collecting, cleaning and stringing shells is one of the oldest continuous cultural practices of Tasmanian Aborigines dating to at least 1800 years ago. The pearlescent but scarce marina shell and the delicate and unique nature of these necklace makes them very sought after items.

Meeting with the wonderful staff at Pitt Rivers was also a great opportunity to learn about some of the amazing collaborative projects they have undertaken

Shell necklaces PRM 1886.1.1577,
1923.87.332 and 1923.87.333
© Pitt Rivers Museum

with Indigenous source communities, as well as their numerous local community engagement projects. I was particularly inspired by the ‘Blackfoot Shirts Project’ and the ‘Globalization, Photography, and Race: the Circulation and Return of Aboriginal Photographs in Europe’ project.  The numerous Community outreach and engagement programs including the ‘Twilight Takeovers’ and the upcoming ‘Need/Make/Use Day’ were also particularly interesting (I wish I was still in Oxford to attend this day!).

My Churchill Fellowship experience has reaffirmed my belief that museums can and do make a difference, and now that I am home I am excited to apply the ideas and inspiration I have gained. I am particularly excited about the opportunity to connect more Tasmanian Aboriginal people with our cultural material in international institutions and to expand our own curatorial practices to include more contemporary cultural expressions. I will be forever grateful to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for providing me this opportunity and to the Pitt River Museum and staff for being such great hosts during my visit. wulika, nayri nina-tu (goodbye & thank you).

Zoe Rimmer
Curator, Indigenous Cultures
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

Japanese amulets: Chamberlain Collection

A series of few happy coincidences brought me to the Pitt Rivers Museum, for the first time, to assist a group of Japanese academics to study the Museum’s Japanese amulets collection. That experience left me both fascinated by the collection and also impressed by the staff’s helpfulness to us, and so I volunteered to work on Japanese objects in the museum. My main work when I began working to transcribe, and to translate, the Japanese text written on ‘o-mamori’ and ‘o-fuda’, which mean amulets in Japanese, into English. These were collected by Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935) while he was living in Japan about a century ago. He was one of ‘o-yatoi gaikokujin’ (Europeans employed by the Meiji government when Japan reopened its door after nearly 300 years of isolation).

Basil Hall Chamberlain and several early editions of his book, Things Japanese, first edition published 1890. 

 

Charm bag worn by children with paper amulet
1892.29.10 .1 & .2 © Pitt Rivers Museum

When I tell my friends that I volunteer in the Pitt Rivers Museum, they get very excited, but most of them assume I am a volunteer guide. Well, not quite. When I explain that I work on the Japanese amulets in the Collections Department, they often become rather skeptical. Amulets and charms are regarded generally as unfashionable and as something belonging to the past and to the superstitious older generations. However, as I went through the items collected by B. H. Chamberlain, I became increasingly interested in Japanese religions, in the amulets they have produced and in the background stories. You see a lot of similar items in modern Japan. In some pictures in the old scrolls or the folding screens, you can see o-fuda pasted on a wall of a house to ward off evils. The continuity is amazing. 

Amulet, ritual purification wand "onus", 1892.21.18 .1 & .2. 
These wands were presented when praying the the Kami 
or exorcising imperfections © Pitt Rivers Museum

Amulet for the safety of horses and cattle, 
1908.82.108 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Amulet from a shrine on Mt. Fuji, 
1908.82.46 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Those amulets normally do not survive in Japan because they are discarded by being burnt, or by being thrown into rivers annually to be replaced by new ones. Therefore the Museum’s collection is really valuable. Chamberlain travelled all over Japan, and the amulets in his collection were from many different places. There is only one place where contemporary Japanese researchers can see them all together, which is oddly enough the Pitt Rivers Museum, almost on the other side of the globe from Japan.  

Fusa McLynn

Collections Volunteer