Percy Manning: The man who collected Oxfordshire

On Monday 20^th February we welcomed the Kirtlington Morris dancers to the Museum to mark the opening of the temporary exhibition ‘Oxfordshire Folkloreand Customs: Celebrating the centenary of antiquarian and folklorist Percy Manning’ in the Didcot case on the Lower Gallery. The Kirtlington Morris have kindly donated some contemporary pieces of Morris dancing kit to the exhibition. They performed a number of dances outside the front of the Museum of NaturalHistory and after joined us for some celebratory tea and cake!

The exhibition closes on the 8^th May. Kirtlington Morris will be participating in Oxford folk weekend alongside other Oxfordshire Morris teams on the 21^st-23^rd April.

Loan to the exhibition ‘The Global City: Lisbon in the Renaissance’ Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon

Facade of the Museum Nacional de Arte Antiga © Pitt Rivers Museum

On the 15^th of February I travelled to Lisbon with two objects, a Congo cushion cover and an Aztec pendant. Both objects travelled in a crate in the cargo hold of a Tap Portugal plane. Myself and the PRM crate arrived in sunny Lisbon later that day. We were driven to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Portugal’s national art gallery where the crate was stored overnight for the objects to be unpacked and installed in the exhibition ‘The Global City, Lisbon in the Renaissance’ the following day.

Cushion cover 1886.1.254 .1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Pendant 1905.56.1 © Pitt Rivers Museum

The exhibition recreates the mercantile heart of Renaissance Europe’s foremost global city, Lisbon. A time when luxury and exotic goods, spices and commodities were imported from Africa, Brazil, Asia and elsewhere and sold on the streets of Lisbon. The cushion cover loaned to the exhibition is an important part of the PRM’s collections. The cushion cover is from the Museum’s earliest collections, that of the Tradescants from the 1600’s. The cushion cover has been radio carbon dated AD 1360-1436. The cushion cover is made from raffia fibre, admired for their beauty by European explorers, they were soon prized as bedcovers and floor coverings and taken back to Europe as luxury items. The PRM cushion cover is displayed alongside two other raffia textiles from Kongo from the Museum of Roman Civilisation, Rome, Italy. The pendant is made from jade and is from Mexico and was donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1905.

PRM crate being prepared for cargo at Heathrow © Pitt Rivers Museum

The crate arriving in Lisbon © Pitt Rivers Museum

Installation in the exhibition gallery © Pitt Rivers Museum

Due to the age and fragility of the cushion cover it was packed by our conservation department for a safe journey to Lisbon. For the duration of the exhibition it is very important that the environmental conditions of the display case are kept stable and the textile is not exposed to too much light, humidity or fluctuations in temperature. Before installing the display in Lisbon I checked the condition of the two objects and monitored the environmental conditions of the showcase. I then ensured that the cushion and pendant were secure before leaving for Oxford. The exhibition closes on the 9^th of April when I will return to Lisbon de-install the loan and collect the cushion cover and pendant.

Faye Belsey

Assistant Curator

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

Percy Manning: the man who collected Oxfordshire

Percy Manning was an antiquarian and folklorist, who died one hundred years ago in 1917. He was particularly interested in collecting objects and information about popular folk customs, and donated over 200 objects to the Pitt Rivers Museum. We at the PRM are creating a small temporary display to celebrate this centenary. The display contains objects related to folklore customs in Oxfordshire including a Morris Dancers outfit (1895.46.1), whit horns (1902.16.7), objects collected by Percy Manning such as candlesticks (1911.29.24, 1911.29.25 and 1911.29.37) and lace makers pot (1911.29.45) and contemporary Morris dancers accessories loaned by Kirtlington Morris.

Mock up of the layout for the display case © Pitt Rivers Museum

Two lanterns collected by Percy Manning 1911.29.33 and 1911.29.34 © Pitt Rivers Museum

The PRM display is one of many exhibitions and events happening in and around Oxford in 2017 to celebrate the life and achievements of Percy Manning. For more information about them visit here 

Madeleine Ding

Curatorial Assistant

Visit to South Africa the Art of a Nation at the British Museum

On Thursday 8^th December, I visited the exhibition South Africa the Art of a Nation at the British Museum with members of the Museum Ethnographers Group. It is always interesting to get out of the office and visit other museums and exhibitions and I was particularly excited about seeing this exhibition given South Africa’s remarkable history. We were lucky enough to be given an insight into the curatorial process of creating the exhibition with one of its curator’s Chris Spring, curator of contemporary, sastern and southern Africa at the British Museum. The exhibition was very much a collaborative venture working closely with museums, art galleries and heritage centres in South Africa itself and contemporary South African artists.

The earliest item in the exhibition is a pebble found at Makapansgat with three circular indentations. The pebble did not originate in this location, with water-worn indentations suggesting that it was carried from water to Makapansgat by early humans. It has been suggested that the pebble is the first appreciation of art in that these early humans recognised a face in the weathered pebble and so showed an aesthetic appreciation of the pebble by collecting it. In contrast is the last room of the exhibition which display’s contemporary art pieces by the likes of Willie Bester and Lionel Davis acknowledging that South Africa’s history is not resolved by the end of apartheid but complexities still exist in the ‘New South Africa’ best demonstrated by white South African Candice Breitz video installation where she inserts herself as a passive presence in the Black South African soap opera Generations questioning her role in South African society as a white person. Most striking is the installation by Mary Sibande where the representation of her mother, her grandmother and her great grandmother through a mannequin dressed in Victorian costume alluding to the roles they had as maids in white South African households stands in juxtaposition to a second figure dressed in purple representing Sibande herself. The use of the colour purple is significant and refers to the purple dye used in the police water cannons during the anti-apartheid Purple Rain protests of 1989. In this installation Sibande is saying goodbye to her past and embracing or confronting her present and future. Overall the exhibition successfully displays the art of South Africa old and new in an interesting way, comparing and contrasting past and present and acknowledging the colourful and turbulent history of a nation.

Mary Sibande's installation, A Reversed Retrogress, Scene 1

Faye Belsey 

Assistant Curator

A Gift from the New South Africa

Cruet sets. Right to left: Mandela and De Klerk (2016.44.1), Tutu and Terre Blanche (2016.44.2) and Elizabeth II and Prince Philip (2016.44.3) © Pitt Rivers Museum

I have recently accessioned an interesting new acquisition of Africana into the collections. At the time of the first free elections in South Africa in 1994 a local pottery in Bryanston, S. Africa, called Baker Street originals produced two salt and pepper sets, one depicting Nelson Mandela and F.W. Klerk and the other Archbishop Tutu and Eugene Terre Blanche; subsequently at the time of the Queen's state visit to South Africa a couple of years later they produced a third set representing the Queen and Prince Philip. Baker Street trading the manufacturers of the cruet sets was established in 1986 and through the years has manufactured various items for the home and garden including the now famous and collectable cruet sets of South African political figures. The company are still manufacturing goods but no longer produce the cruet sets, which were produced in small quantities. The Mandela and De Klerk and the Archbishop Tutu and Terre Blanche sets were donated with their original packing, a cardboard box illustrated by South African cartoonist Peter Mascher, who has worked for South African newspapers Beeld, Citizen and Daily Dispatch. The cruet sets are made from terracotta and have been hand painted, they are caricatures of the famous South African political figures and British monarch. Mandela and Tutu were famously anti-apartheid freedom fighters whilst the position of De Klerk is more complicated, he was Head of State under the apartheid era but helped to broker the end of apartheid and supported the transformation of South Africa into a non-racial democracy whilst Terre Blanche was a white supremacist, a major figure in the right-wing backlash against the collapse of apartheid.

Pepper shaker depicting Nelson Mandela (2016.44.1 .1)  © Pitt Rivers Museum

Pair of salt and pepper shakers depicting Archbishop Tutu and Eugene Terre Blanche with souvenir cardboard box (2016.44.2) © Pitt Rivers Museum

Following a series of tense negotiations and years of liberation struggle, the first democratic election was held in South Africa on the 27th April, 1994. This election changed the history of South Africa. It paved the way towards a new democratic dispensation and a new constitution for the country. For the first time all races in the country were going to the polls to vote for a government of their choice. Nineteen political parties participated and twenty-two million people voted. The African National Congress (ANC) won the election, they formed the Government of National Unity and Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president. De Klerk was the last Head of State of South Africa under the apartheid era and acted as deputy president during the presidency of Mandela. Controversially, the Nobel Peace Prize 1993 was awarded jointly to Mandela and De Klerk "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa"

Pepper shaker depicting Queen Elizabeth II (2016.44.3 .1)  © Pitt Rivers Museum

Queen Elisabeth II visited Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Port Elisabeth between the 19 - 25th March 1995 on a state visit to South Africa. It was the first visit of a British monarch since 1947. Her trip marked the country's return to the Commonwealth following the election of its first multi-racial government. Her visit was as Head of State visiting an independent country and also as Head of the Commonwealth to mark South Africa's return to the organisation in July 1994.

Faye Belsey

Assistant Curator