An unconventional flask from the Arizona desert

What makes an object ‘authentically’ Indigenous? And how can objects challenge our ideas about the history of encounters between Europeans and Indigenous peoples? In this blog article, recent graduate in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology Olly DeHerrera revisits her research into one of the Museum’s display cases, focussing on the provenance of a painted ceramic flask:

If you walk the stone steps down to the forecourt of the Pitt Rivers Museum, you will find yourself facing Case 153, containing “Pottery - North America”. On the left side of the case, you’ll find this small ceramic water flask, described in the museum’s record as a ‘flat circular pottery flask painted with katsina design’.

Figure 1. 'Flat circular pottery flask painted with katsina design'.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1913.87.54)

The flask is recorded as having been made and decorated by a woman named Paelae, with assistance from her daughters, who were members of the Tewa-Hano clan of the Hopi Pueblo Tribe. The Hopi Tribe’s villages are some of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the Americas, situated atop three Mesas (flat-top elevations), six thousand feet above the northern Arizona desert. Today, approximately seven thousand Hopi inhabit the twelve villages of the Hopi Nation. These striking elevated villages and the rich culture of the Hopis were of particular interest to anthropologists of the time. The Hopi are understood to have inspired Alfred Huxley’s depictions of the Native Americans of the ‘Savage Reservation’ in his famous novel A Brave New World.

The flask was collected by Oxford anthropologist Barbara Whitchurch Freire-Marreco. Although her legacy as an anthropologist is modest, Freire-Marreco is remembered as a remarkable, pioneering female anthropologist within Oxford’s Department for Museum Anthropology. As a Research Fellow at Somerville College, she undertook fieldwork in New Mexico and Arizona from 1911-1912, and again in 1913-1914, studying 'the Nature of the Authority of Chiefs and Kings in uncivilised society’. 

Her field notes indicate she spent a significant amount of time with Paelae and her family, purchasing multiple ceramic pieces from them, including this decorative ladle. 

Figure 2. A decorative ladle also made by Paelae and her daughters.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1913.87.26)

The Hopi Pueblo are one of the many Indigenous groups inhabiting the arid, mountainous, and rugged terrain of the Southwest (the contemporary States of Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Western Colorado). Despite being labelled ‘Pottery - North America’, Case 153 contains almost exclusively Pueblo pottery. The Pueblo's centuries-old tradition of producing iconic pottery with geometric designs has found huge popularity with archaeologists, anthropologists, art collectors, and tourists alike. If you have ever visited the American Southwest, there’s a good chance you may have seen some modern Pueblo pottery for sale in National Parks and ‘Trading Post’ gift shops.  

The flask is decorated with the symbol of a Kachina/Katsina, a broad term which describes a series of spiritual figures, or ‘icons’, associated with various natural and supernatural forces in Pueblo cosmology. The Katsina holds feathers in both hands and wears a headdress, a crude depiction of Hopi dancers.

Figure 3. 'Hopi dancers photographed by Freire-Marreco during her fieldwork'.
 Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1998.95.7)

Although the Katsina represent a legitimate feature of Pueblo culture, the inclusion of such designs on pottery only began appearing around the beginning of the twentieth century. In fact, many of the more decorative and pictographic objects in Case 153 are from this later period in the pottery tradition’s long history. A majority of the older pottery in the case is simple in form and would have had a utilitarian function in a Pueblo household, compared to the more decorative later objects, which vary greatly in form.

So, why had the Pueblo begun adapting their pottery style so dramatically by the start of the twentieth century?

By the time of Freire-Marreco’s arrival in Arizona, the market for Pueblo art was changing rapidly. For the last 150 years prior, Pueblo art had mainly been leaving the Mesas via professional ethnographers - most often associated with institutions like the Bureau of American Ethnology. The three large water vases on the top shelf of Case 153 were collected from the Pueblo by ethnographer James Stevenson in the late 1800s. They were later distributed to the Pitt Rivers Museum by the Smithsonian Institution in 1896. 

Figure 4. One of the three large water jugs displayed in Case 153.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1896.54.75)

However, the increase of permanent settlements and the construction of the Santa Fe Railway Line in the twentieth century brought the opportunity for the Pueblo to sell directly to a larger tourist market. The Fred Harvey railway company, which owned the Santa Fe Railway, brought tourists directly into contact with local Indigenous people through the Fred Harvey ‘Indian Tours’. During these tours, Pueblo people were paid to open access to their villages and perform traditional (or at least traditional-looking) ceremonies. Tourists could also purchase directly from Pueblo artists in Fred Harvey’s ‘Indian Shops’. It was during such tours that the American public became familiar with Hopi dances, which was depicted extensively on posters and in handbooks.

Figure 5. ‘Indian Detours’ travel brochure produced by the Fred Harvey Railway Company in 1890. 

The popularity of these tours was driven by romantic colonial ideas about ‘untouched’ humanity living beyond the frontier of American colonial reach. Such ideas about Indigenous societies tend to deny them the same nuanced and complex political histories that we characterise the European past by. It is exactly these romanticised ideas that Huxley invokes in literary form, intentionally contrasting his fictional Native American Society with the hyper-developed and dystopian world of the “World State”.

Objects like the katsina flask represent a form of Pueblo art that arose to appeal to the specific interests of tourists, ethnographers, and other visitors to the American Southwest. Indeed, if Palae intended to create an object appealing to outside observers of Pueblo culture, she was certainly successful. The eye-catching flask has featured in multiple showcasing projects within the Pitt Rivers Museum, including the museum's audio tour that ran throughout the 2010s.

The Katsina flask is actually one of two near-identical flasks purchased from Paelae by Freire-Marreco. If you stand on your tiptoes, you can see the other flask on the middle shelf of the ‘Pottery – Design and Decoration’ case, to the right of the museum’s forecourt. This demonstrates that the Katsina flask was actually one of many produced with this design by Paelae and her family.

A strikingly similar canteen is displayed alongside the Katsina flask, giving the mistaken impression that they are part of a set. In fact, the larger Katsina flask was collected in Arizona by the former Oxford professor, Richard Baxter Townshend, in 1903. Could this have also been made by Paelae and her family? Or could this be evidence that the Pueblo people shared designs in the emergence of a small-scale production?

Figure 6. The Katsina Flask collected by Richard Baxter Townshend.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1931.60.13)

These transformations to Pueblo pottery arts were not embraced as keenly by ethnographers as they were by pottery makers. Many anthropologists felt at the time that commercial factors influencing Native American art styles across North America made these objects ‘less Indigenous’, or ‘fake’. In 1889, one American anthropologist angrily wrote, ‘the country is flooded with cheap, and scientifically speaking, worthless earthenware made by the Pueblo Indians to supply the tourist trade' (Holmes, 1889: 320).

So, how should we view our Katsina flask? Is it an example of a ‘worthless fake’, or might we understand it differently in the light of new anthropological approaches?

Despite the problematic colonial undertones of arrangements like the ‘Indian Tours’, the independence that this market afforded the Pueblo was transformative. By achieving greater economic independence, the Hopi were better able to protect their culture, beliefs, and choices about how they wanted to organise themselves as a society in the United States. The choices of Hopi people during this era laid a strong foundation for the Tribe that continues to this day. In fact, many Pueblo people today continue to identify examples of their parents' and grandparents' work stored in museums and express a deep fondness and pride for pottery from this era.

The unconventional anthropological approach that Freire-Marreco took in her fieldwork allows us to access these sorts of perspectives on colonial history.  Her choice to collect objects that her informants were currently making helps us learn more about how the Pueblo made choices to navigate the immense upheaval that colonialism brought to their way of life. These histories provide a counter-narrative to the dominant view of Indigenous people as subjects defined by their lack of intermingling with European ideas and instead highlight their agency and awareness of outside interest in aspects of their culture.

Freire-Marreco’s interactions with her Pueblo informants provide many such insights that the museum is only just beginning to explore. Her ability to see shared humanity and build friendships with Pueblo women led her to declare in a letter to Somerville that the Pueblo were more her research collaborators than ‘uncivilised’ subjects of study. Despite being unable to receive a degree at the time due to her gender, her progressive outlook was far more aligned with the basis of anthropological methodology today.

The Katsina flask offers us a story of how Indigenous people harnessed ethnographic and popular interest in their material culture. By challenging our conceptions about what makes ‘Indigenous art’, we can also challenge popular social narratives about colonial history. It is my hope that anthropologists continue to embrace these stories and seek them out within the museum archives. 

By Olly DeHerrera, Graduate in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology

Bibliography and further reading:

Dilworth, L. (1996) Imagining Indians in the Southwest : persistent visions of a primitive past. Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian Institution Press.

Fowler, D. D. (2000) A laboratory for anthropology : science and romanticism in the American Southwest, 1846-1930. 1st ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.  

Holmes, W H. 1889. 'Debasement of Pueblo Art '. American anthropologist 2(4): 320

Kinsel, R. & E, Poon (2022) Grounded in clay : the spirit of Pueblo pottery. London ; Merrell Publishers. 

Labelling Matters: The Role of Language in the Ethics of Representation

 “In January 1897 a small party of British officials and traders on its way to Benin was ambushed. In retaliation a British military force attacked the city and the Oba was exiled. Members of the expedition brought thousands of objects back to Britain, including many of those shown here.” - Label from the Court Art of Benin Case, Lower Gallery, Pitt Rivers Museum

This label is illustrative of the colonial legacies rooted in the Pitt Rivers collections. Not only is this notion of ‘bringing back’ objects a euphemistic description of a large scale loot of artefacts, but by using a positive term such as ‘expedition’ it also obscures what was in fact a colonial mission. Such a label obscures the violent colonial context in which these objects were extracted. 

A variety of labels from the Pitt Rivers Museum illustrating the use of offensive terminology. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum.

 
Institutions like the Pitt Rivers Museum are in the middle of a deconstructionist shift. The 19th century objective to bring cultures together for the purpose of the creation of a universalist epistemology is no longer considered a tangible project. It has come to light that the colonial context in which such appropriation of cultures took place has uprooted rather than established harmonies between cultures and their respective epistemologies.

The museum’s commitment to create an inclusive and welcoming space for all goes beyond the use of words, yet it is through language that one can start to build an adequate ethics of representation. It is within the realm of language that a course of action towards a morally equitable space for the preservation and production of knowledge is revealed.

 

In line with this, the Labelling Matters project seeks to revise the language used to describe objects as well as to re-conceptualize the prescriptive nature of its labels by rethinking what and how labels in the museum should relate to its readers. Such a self-reflexive project plays an important role in the process of decolonisation of the Pitt Rivers collections. Through identification of derogatory, Eurocentric, euphemistic and exclusionary language, a new vision towards fairer cultural exchanges is established. By reconsidering the power and function of language, new spaces for more pluriverse and inclusive narratives emerge.

The colonial model pushed ‘outside’ cultures through a process of one sided hermeneutical interpretation. Here, the ‘European’ served as the measure against which to compare and contrast others. As a result it rooted the Eurocentric idea that Western culture signifies something absolute, universal and is itself free of social differentiation. The legacy of this project is a set of misleading norms and axioms that are wrongly regarded as the universal principles that lead to human understanding. 

 

Such mechanisms of coloniality remain an obstacle to impartial dialogue between cultures. The current reactionary movement, of which the Labelling Matters project is constitutive, works to address and tackle such problematic legacies in order to establish fair dialogues and promote rich exchanges of knowledge amongst peoples. 

 

Although the museum has always been part of a process of change and revision, cases of inadequate representation remain multifold. To illustrate, these include instances of unjustifiable hierarchical rankings of cultures, misrepresentations of the ritual functions of objects and Eurocentric claims to interpretive agency. The study of such cases takes a pivotal role in this series of blog posts. 

 

Thus, the Labelling Matters project seeks to tackle the colonial foundations that stand in the way of the healthy relations and interactions between peoples that it wishes to create. The project envisages a rich field of interplay between cultures in which all peoples are regarded equally valid players in the production of knowledge. In this way the museum works towards new relevance in the contemporary world. It is through the formation of a pertinent ethics of representation that the museum wishes to create an inclusive space in which the plurality of narratives that make up human reality are rightfully valued. 

By Jip Borm

Labelling Matters project Intern

Masters Student, University of Leiden

Interning with Object Collections: Researching Model Houses and the Cultures Behind Them, Then and Today

As an intern in Object Collections (see my introductory blog post), something I’ve been researching is model houses from Asia. These objects are being redisplayed and when this happens research needs to be done. While the descriptions on the object database, which can be searched online, gives some information about these collections, like the materials they are made of and some background information, it can often be sparse or outdated.  The case text from the pre-existing display gave additional detail but was centred around a theme that enabled the objects to be compared. For example, several of the model houses I’ve been researching were grouped together under a common theme of thatched roofs.

Toda model house, PRM 1900.78.2 © Pitt Rivers Museum

I started my research by having a look at the model houses and the current information the museum has on them. Several were from the Toda people (a small indigenous group in the Nilgiri Hills in India); many brass models were from Sumatra in Indonesia (at least some being from the Minangkabau people); a few models were from the Ainu people in Hokkaido, Japan; and finally one model – which reminded me of a North American tipi in appearance – was from the Khanty people (who are also referred to by several other names in texts about them), living in Siberia.

As not all of the database entries for the models had reference photographs, I also got to experience how these were taken – the objects were carefully positioned against a plain light-grey background with a scale in centimetres placed in front of them to indicate how large the objects are. Taking the photographs, I had to aim to not distort this scale with the angle of the camera. Once these photographs are linked to the appropriate record, you will be able to see what the models look like, as well as read about them, using the online database.

Khanty model house photographed with scale bar,
PRM 1915.50.73 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Looking for books on houses from around the world, myself and my supervisor, Zena, had a browse of the Pitt Rivers’ Balfour Library, and with the help of the librarian tracked down a couple of books. These only had small sections of relevant information, however, so I used the internet (particularly JSTOR and Google Scholar) to find academic journal articles on the groups the model houses were from. I also browsed Google Images and Wikipedia to find recent photographs of the homes to see if the styles still existed unchanged today or had changed or disappeared over time (all of the models were donated between 1900-1924, so were all at least 93 years old, some at least 117).

I found myself drawn to aspects of the research which discussed the impact of tourism and interactions with other groups – for the Ainu, Japanese tourism had greatly impacted their lifestyle, with tourist villages being a primary source of income for some Ainu people and even – some felt – a way to maintain traditional aspects of their culture, but reductive portrayals in some of these villages and in mainstream Japanese media have had a large effect on how the Ainu are perceived. According to these articles, many Japanese citizens view the Ainu as ‘primitive’ and at one with nature, living exactly the same as they did centuries ago, rather than using modern transport vehicles, for example, among other things.

Ainu model house, PRM 1900.78.2 © Pitt Rivers Museum

I think there is a tendency to view indigenous peoples as wholly separated from other societies, living uninterrupted by country’s governments. Or, alternatively, gone – semi-mythical people of the past who are no longer in existence today. Researching these groups in the present day and in relation to others in their countries helps to disperse these distorted views and myths, and shed light particularly on how energy consumption often has a disproportionate impact on indigenous groups despite these groups gaining the least from this consumption.

For example, in one of the articles I read there was a recent photograph of a traditional Toda temple, which included a sign in English ‘NO ADMISSION (TEMPLE)’. This suggests regular interaction with English-speaking tourists. Government policy can also have a dramatic impact on the lives of indigenous minorities. For example, the lives of Khanty people has been greatly impacted by Soviet policy. There have been various projects to try and assimilate the Khanty into mainstream Soviet culture and most of their land from the 1960s onwards seized for a petroleum deposit.

Minangkabau model house, PRM 1960.5.22 .1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

In other areas of my research I read about construction and materials used, and the significance of certain elements of the dwellings and their locations, usually having both practical and religious reasons. For example, traditionally Ainu houses have only one window which is used for sacred purposes only – weapons are passed through it to be blessed for a hunt, and food caught during this hunt is then passed back through the window. The window is always positioned facing upstream as this is believed to be where the Gods reside. For the Khanty, river systems also have religious importance, believed to be created by divine ancestors who protect family hunting areas.

I would like to see the model houses placed alongside contemporary photos if the Museum is able to secure the copyright for these images (or find photographs without copyright).

Miranda Reilly
Museum Intern

References

Lisa Hiwasaki, ‘Ethnic Tourism in Hokkaido and the Shaping of Ainu Identity’ in Pacific Affairs, 2000 (on JSTOR)

Peter Jordan, Material Culture and Sacred Landscape: The Anthropology of the Siberian Khanty

Contemporary photographs of the Khanty (more can be found by searching ‘Khanty’ or ‘chum’ – the Russian name for the Khanty tent – on Google Images): Click this link and this one for two examples.

George Lugosi, ‘Mathematical Tourism in Siberia’ in The Mathematical Tourist, ed. Dirk Huylebrouck

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, ‘Ethnicity without Power: The Siberian Khanty in Soviet Society,’ in Slavic Review, 1983 (on JSTOR)

William A. Noble, ‘Toda Dwellings and Temples’ in Anthropos, 1966 (on JSTOR)

Ringing the Changes

Bells stored in the Music store, as well as bells from Sharpe the PRM also have bell ringing holdings from other prominent  campanologists George Elphick and Ronald Clouston

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, campanology is the study of bells encompassing the technology of making and playing bells and the history, methods and traditions of bell ringing.  I was recently joined in the Museum’s music store by several bell ringing enthusiasts representing the Sharpe Trust.  Frederick Sharpe was one of the World’s leading authorities on the history, technology and music of bells. In his lifetime Sharpe collected a unique body of material relating to bell ringing including an extensive library, bells, hand bells, photographs, records of bell tower inspections in the UK, bell ringing music and gear. He founded the Launton hand-bell ringers in 1951, the ringers still play and perform to this day. On his death in 1976, in accordance with his will, the Sharpe Trustees were set up. The trust act to continue Fred’s legacy as an outstanding campanologist and bell historian.

It was  members of the Trust who arranged for Sharpe’s collection of bells, papers, manuscripts, photographs and books to be stored at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) on loan after his death. An agreement was drawn up with Senior Museum staff and facilitated by the Museum’s ethnomusicologist and curator of the Bate collection of Musical Instruments, Hélène La Rue. In Hélène the Trust found a sympathetic ear, Hélène herself was a member of the Bell Committee. Hélène’s passion for all things musical made the loan to the PRM a good choice. Sadly after the unexpected death of Hélène La Rue in 2007 the specialist knowledge accompanying the music collections at the PRM was somewhat lost and the restricted access to Sharpe’s material was proving problematic.

The Museum has since worked closely with the Sharpe   Trustees to return Fred’s extensive holdings back to the Trust where they will be catalogued and made an accessible and important resource to those interested in all things bell related. It is hoped that the collection will eventually be kept at the Bell Foundry Museum at the John Taylor & Co foundry in Loughborough, where plans are in hand to create a national centre for the study of bells. In the meantime the Sharpe papers have been transferred to temporary archival storage, but the collection can now be accessed by prior arrangement with Tim Pett (The Sharpe Trust Collection Secretary). 

Boxes of Sharpe packed and ready to be loaded onto the van

Faye Belsey

Assistant Curator

Research Visit: Archaeology from Skhul Cave, Israel

Dr Ravid Ekshtain studying the collection
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Part of our work in the Collections Department is to provide researchers with access to the collections. In June I met Dr Ravid Ekshtain, from Harvard University in the USA, who spent a week at the Museum researching the archaeological collections from Mugharet-es-Skhul.

This is a cave on Mount Carmel in Israel that was excavated extensively during the 1930s. The finds included what are still thought to be the oldest fossilised human remains discovered outside of Africa. So this continues to be one of the most important archaeological sites for studying the prehistoric human past.

The cave itself was completely excavated and the findings dispersed to a number of museums, including the Pitt Rivers. So the collections in the Museum from those original excavations are really important for any current, or future, research about this site.

Skhul Cave, 1931, the man is thought to be Theodor McCown who directed the excavations at this site.
Taken by Dorothy Garrod and now in the Photo Collections PRM 1998.294.189 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Illustration of flints from Skhul Cave.
 From image in the Photo Collections
PRM 1998.294.451
© Pitt Rivers Museum

I always feel privileged to work with such significant collections and to continue to see these being used for research. I really enjoyed meeting Dr Ravid Ekshtain and thought you might also be interested in knowing about her research. She was busy all week analysing the stone tools from Skhul Cave to gain more understanding about the evolution of human behaviour.

You can explore this collection yourself via the Museum online object database. If you enter 'Skhul' under region and then search this will find all 337 objects (museum identification numbers 1931.70.701 through to 1931.70.1037). This material from Skhul Cave is part of the Museum's Dorothy Garrod collection - comprising objects, photographs, and manuscripts.

Keep an eye on this site for other blogs about research on the collections.

Zena McGreevy
Senior Assistant Curator

Temporary Exhibition: Preserving What is Valued - A World of Repairs - Part 2

One of two ceramics on loan from private collectors
demonstrating repairs made using the kintsugi technique
with lacquer and gold © Pitt Rivers Museum

Back in May we posted a blog about preparations for a temporary exhibition curated by the Conservation Department demonstrating original repairs made to objects when they were still in use. This is an update on the earlier blog now that the exhibition has just been installed into the display case on the Lower Gallery.

Despite the last minute addition of an excellent gourd, discovered by Jem and Faye while working to improve storage of the reserve collections, we managed to have everything ready for mount making on Monday 1st June as planned. We also borrowed from private collectors two ceramics demonstrating the kintsugi repair technique, the starting point for our exhibition plans.

Most labels were designed to include a detailed image of the repaired area on each object to help focus the visitor's attention on the part they should be looking at. We were keen however, to not put too much information on each label but leave it for visitors to think about  what significance the repair might have, after reading the introductory panel text.

Mock-up of the display once mounts were complete
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Display Technicians Chris Wilkinson and Alan Cooke had produced a scale mock-up of the final display case and were ready to go immediately. We were surprised to find that it took them about a week to complete the mock-up, which I think was also a relief to them given the complexities of working on the re-display of the Cook Voyages Collections, from which they were taking a therapeutic break.

At this stage the previous exhibition in the case was deinstalled, allowing Chris and Alan to prepare the case by filling and sanding holes and re-painting. It is important to do this a few weeks before the objects are installed to allow the paint to dry properly and any fumes from the paint to dissipate as they could cause adverse chemical reactions with the materials used on the objects. This is why you may see display case doors left open when you visit the Museum. At this stage they also painted and prepared the panels and plinth to be used in the display.

Chris and Alan mount the final copies
of labels and text © Pitt Rivers Museum

The next task before installation was to prepare the final labels and text. Katherine Clough, who has volunteered in the Conservation Department for a few years in many capacities, had accepted the challenge of producing a poster for the exhibition. The key element of the design uses several detailed images of the repairs fitted together to look like the world. We had added the strap-line 'A World of Repairs' to the exhibition title to be more explanatory on the poster. We used Katherine's 'world of repairs' motif in a semi-translucent way on the panel text to give it a bit of a lift and tie it into the poster.

On Thursday 25th June, a little ahead of schedule, Chris and Alan installed the objects in the case where they had already added the pre-painted panels earlier in the week. They started early to have the case closed and locked when the Museum opened at 10.00 a.m. On Friday 26th we adjusted the lighting in the case slightly to prevent too much light hitting the textiles, the materials in this display most prone to light damage.

Left: Installation of the objects, right: Alan and Chris take a moment to appreciate their labours © Pitt Rivers Museum

When we set out to produce the exhibition we were keen to write a gallery trail to enable visitors to see more repaired objects that are permanently on display. Having narrowed down the list, Andrew (with a little help from Madeleine) has produced a colour trail, which is available beside the display case. This again uses Katherine's 'world of repairs' motif on the cover. There are lots of trails available in the Museum but they are aimed at children and we wanted to see what interest there would be from adults. Hopefully the Gallery Assistants will be able to observe how many people use the trail over the coming months.

Cover of the Gallery Trail
linked to the exhibition

Finally, this is a good opportunity to mention some of the other tie-in events that will be coming up over the 6-month run of the exhibition. On the 18th and 19th September Tom van Deijnen will be running darning masterclasses in the Museum's annexe. Tom is best known for his visible mending program where a 'beautiful darn is worn as a badge of honour'. Follow this link to book a place on one of Tom's workshops.

In November traditional lacquerware artists Muneaki Shimode and Takahiko Sato from Kyoto will be artists in residence at the Museum for 10 days, demonstrating the kintsugi technique of repairing ceramics. The residency will include gallery demonstrations, an evening event and half-day practical workshops. There will be information on how to book a place on a workshop appearing on the the Museum website very soon - so keep watching this space.

Heather Richardson
Head of Conservation

Bellarmine Jars

In the Pitt Rivers Museum we have seven Bellarmine bottles.  The bottles are also known as Bartmann jugs or ‘greybeards’. 

The vessels were originally used to transport wine from Northern Germany to England in the 16th and 17th century.  The name Bartmann means ‘man with a beard’ in German.  This type of vessel was made at a pottery in Frechen near Cologne.

The vessels are stoneware and salt glazed.  The bearded face is a mould added to the neck of the vessel.  Later 17th-century vessels also had moulded medallions on the body of jug.

The jugs in the Pitt Rivers Museum were recently studied by a researcher interested in witch bottles and concealed objects. Two of the Pitt Rivers Museum bottles have contents and could have been used as witch bottles.    

The bottles contain nails, pins and hair.  One bottle contains a cloth heart. 

Top right: PRM accession number 1893.81.4
 
Left: PRM accession number 1910.18.1 with its contents pictured below.

Jugs from the PRM collections for inspection in the visiting researchers' room 

Witch bottles are said to offer protection and counteract spells cast by witches. The Museum of Soho has a bellarmine bottle that was found concealed in a wall. 

Madeleine Ding

Assistant Curator