The Collections People Stories project is currently working with the theme ‘Food, Drink and Feasting'. Our Assistant Curator of Anthropology explains how we’ve been exploring that theme with our objects.

We have a really interesting and unusual collection of objects from Tibet, and many of them relate to food and drink. This made museum’s Tibetan collection an obvious choice for our Food, Drink and Feasting theme.

We wanted to organise a workshop which would introduce our Tibetan objects to people in the UK whose lives were linked to Tibetan food.

We got to know the London Tibetan community at a Tibetan New Year event in Charlton. There we heard fascinating and remarkable stories of people’s travel from Tibet and arrival in the UK.

You can also visit acapmedia's blog for a more detailed post about the New Year event.

Several Tibetans whom we had first met at the New Year event attended our workshop.  Other participants included academics specialising in food, scholars of Tibetan culture and a monk and nun from Samye Dzong, our local Tibetan monastery. With participants coming from such varied backgrounds, a wonderful variety of different perspectives were communicated.

We also made fresh discoveries about our collection and heard the testimony of a participant who had seen some of our objects in use during his childhood.

We were lucky enough to be able to film interviews with some very interesting people at the New Year event, including the man who founded the first Tibetan community in London. We also filmed the workshop. Our film is currently being edited and soon it will be ready to watch as a short video on our YouTube channel, so look out for it!

Professor Steve Hooper and Dr. Andy Mills recently visited the Horniman Museum store to inspect a selection of our Fijian collection as part of the Fiji Art Project. 

The Fiji Art Project is a 3 year project taking place at the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. You can read their own account of the visit on their website.

The Horniman has a wonderful collection from Fiji (447 objects in total) collected over the last 150 years by travellers, colonial officials, missionaries who visited the region. Objects were also purchased through auction houses here in the UK. These include a whole range of objects, including musical instruments, canoe related objects, baskets and bags, barkcloth, kava bowls, headrests and personal ornaments.

Our visitors were particularly keen to see what range of whale ivory ornaments we had in our collections. One of the most stand-out pieces we saw on the day was a breast ornament of pearlshell and sperm whale ivory. Steve Hooper explained how this piece was made using techniques normally associated with canoe building. This is a high status chiefly piece. It was collected by Sir Everard im Thurn, who was Governor of Fiji between 1904 and 1910.

Another group of objects that sparked interest were two 19^th century kava bowls. These bowls were both very well made and had a lovely patina on them from being used in kava drinking. Kavais a sedative drink made from the root of the plant Piper methysticum. Throughout many parts of Western Polynesia, kava drinking was central to traditional social and political life and continues to hold great significance in many regions today.

On the second day of the store visit, the Fiji team was joined by Rosanna Raymond, a Maori/Samoan artist whose work critically engages with the role of museums and their collections. Rosanna was keen to inspect a few examples of barkcloth that displayed inter-island connections between Samoa and Fiji.

We look forward to working more closely with the Fiji Art Project over the next few years. As part of our collaborations, the project will curate a Fiji object from our collections that will join our Object in Focus loans scheme and go on loan to a number of smaller museums in the UK. Some of the Horniman collections may also figure in the big international exhibition at the end of the Fiji Art Project.

This week marks the start of our Entomology Bioblitz where we will be reviewing our insects collections, following on from our previous Bioblitz reviews of birds, reptiles and mammals.

Our insect collections contain around 100,000 specimens collected from around the world. Our expert carrying out the review is Howard Mendel. Howard has spent his career working with natural history collections across several museums, including several years as Head of Entomology Collections at the Natural History Museum.

He has a wide interest in insects and a particular interest in beetles. Howard is involved with many organisations and has been heavily involved in biological recording. In addition to Howard’s many scientific publications, he founded and wrote for the Suffolk Natural History Series.

After leaving the NHM, Howard has continued to work freelance on projects which interest him and we are very happy that the Natural History Bioblitz Collections Review at the Horniman is one of those projects.

If you've been following our Tumblr blog, you'll have already seen plenty of fascinating finds the Collections People Stories team have been making in the stores. Sarah, who is working on the project, has offered us an update on how it's going.

At the beginning of the project, we spent a number of long months at the computer looking at the museum’s registers, which detailed objects coming in to the museum from 1897 to 1996. We compared the information in the registers with the object information in our database and created new records for anything that didn’t already exist.

More recently, we've been working in the stores: we take out each object, enter and check the information about it on our database, take a good photograph and pack it away again neatly and safely. 

We check objects for any numbers, input information about what the objects are, what they are made of, where they’re from and any information about the people who donated the objects to the museum.

We then measure each object, check for any inscriptions and check that there is a good description on our database. We then briefly check the object’s condition, take a photograph (having had amazing training from our lovely photographer, Dani), and repack it in its box.

This process will help us to know what we have in the stores, highlight important objects for potential re-display in the future, and improve the objects’ documentation so we will be able to find things more easily.

We’re made up of four people in two full-time teams called Haddon and Quick, named after two former curators at the Horniman. There is also part time sub team called Haddock, a cunning blend of the two.

Team Haddon started by reviewing charms and Quick have started on spoons. We have already come across some amazing and fascinating objects! A highlight for team Haddon was a Lappett-Faced vulture skull wrapped in leather on a cord used as a charm from Nigeria.

Don’t be deceived by the seemingly repetitive appearance of team Quick’s current reviewing topic; there have been spoon highlights too! One of these was a pair of scorpion handled spoons. Sadly, at the moment, there is not much known about them on the database so hopefully we’ll find out more soon!

We put up any interesting and aesthetically pleasing finds on the museum’s Tumblr blog (including the aforementioned objects), so do check it out.

We have a mysterious sword in our collection. It looks like a dha from Burma, but it was collected over one thousand miles away from there in a region of North West Pakistan called Chitral.

Chitral is quite different from the areas around it. In fact it only officially became part of Pakistan in 1969. Our sword was collected in 1895 when the British invaded Chitral to relieve a British garrison which had become besieged there, and also to exert British control over the region.

We invited Shah Hussein and Muntazir Ali, two members of the Chitrali community in London, to the museum to try and help solve the mystery of the sword.

They thought that the sword could have found its way to Chitral as a gift between ruling elites. Although Chitral would have had no direct dealings with Burma, the sword could have travelled across India state by state: a gift which was passed on again and again.

Shah and Muntazir also suggested that the sword could have come to Chitral with a soldier in the British army, the makeup of which was very diverse, although there were no specifically Burmese units in it.

Muntazir and Shah found it strange in some ways, but unsurprising in others, to come across the sword so far away from their homeland. It brought to mind folk memories of the siege and a sense of pride, still felt today, that Chitralis had come together to resist the British. But the sword also served as a reminder of the violence from which the regions around Chitral have suffered in recent years.

Jim, who works for The Conservation Volunteers, has been updating us on the latest news and sightings from London's oldest Nature Trail.

Down on the Nature Trail on the half term walk, we had Giant Puffballs 'a puffing their millions of Spores, while Newts, Dragonfly Larvae & Water Boatman are bringing the pond to life.

Also look out at the moment for Snowdrops in flower and the aromatic Wild Garlic just emerging from the ground. You will also see Daffodils & Crocuses near to flowering, and Blackthorn's white flowers that come out, unusually, before its leaves.

To cap it all, we had two very large Stag Beetle Larvae in the wood - yes, the endangered variety!

There has been some Tree work being carried out that you may notice. This is to manage the trees to keep them safe & healthy. The bird nesting season is here now & lasts at least till May, during this time vegetation & trees should be left undisturbed so the birds have the best chance of having a successful brood. It is against the law to disturb nesting birds.

We've been using Tumblr to collect photographs from museums around the world.

After having so much fun using Tumblr for our Collections Review blog, we decided we wanted to try something new. Using the automated social media service IFTTT, we programmed a recipe to post Instagram photos tagged #museum to post to our new Tumblr blog, Museumpics.

We've also been topping up the Instagram shots with a few reblogs from Tumblr.

There have been some fantastic results! We've loved scrolling through and seeing the huge variety of museums, collections, and what people get up to in them.

You can click on any of the images to see links to the people who originally posted them.

Visit the blog to see the latest batch.
 

After the reptiles had been reviewed on the Monday and Tuesday, it was the mammals’ turn for the rest of the week.

During our latest Bioblitz, our expert, Pat Morris, spent three days looking at all of our mammal specimens. He checked their significance and identified any Star Specimens we have.

Pat started in the busy gallery, which was full of excited children also looking at the animals on display. He looked at every mammal specimen on his way round, discussing his thoughts with us: inaccurate identifications, rare species and unusual preparations.

Back at the stores, Pat looked through our taxidermy mounts and cases. He enjoyed seeing some of our interesting specimens, such as our pied hare or our leopard with an atypical coat pattern.

We have a large collection of mammal skeletal material. This includes a series of “double preparations”: half taxidermy mount and half skeleton. They are a fascinating educational tool and reveal how the skeleton sits inside the skin. Some of them even have organs in them!

Finally, Pat visited the spirit store to look at all of our mammal material preserved in fluid. Although there weren’t any Star Specimens among them, Pat was able to point out the strengths and weaknesses of the collection.

Now we have a few weeks to prepare for the next Bioblitz Review: entomology!

Last week we conducted our second Bioblitz Review. With the first one (birds) behind us, it was time to focus on the next group: reptiles.

Colin McCarthy came in for two days to take a look at our reptile and amphibian collections. We knew that, unlike the birds, many of our reptiles weren’t identified correctly and were keen to remedy that. Colin looked at each specimen, identified them as far as he could and assessed their significance. There weren’t any highly significant specimens amongst the reptiles or amphibians but the opportunity to improve the collection information as well as hone our own ID skills was invaluable.

Colin talked us through the differences between crocodiles, alligators and caimans using our specimens. As a result, we now know that we have a few of each.

We unfurled many a snake skin to identify the species based on its pattern and size, as well as counting the scales across it. This allowed us to correct previously misidentified specimens.

Colin looked through our tortoises and together we managed to identify most them by looking at the shapes and patterns of the scales on their shells.

For more photos of the reptile Bioblitz, check out our Flickr.

Saturday was a busy day at the museum, with our annual event ‘Crossing Borders’. This event is produced in collaboration with Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers and we have been doing it for the last 6 years.

The first activity was an Eritrean Coffee Ceremony led by Abeba and her sister. Abeba started by roasting the green coffee beans - the smell of the roasting beans completely filled the Education Centre.  To add to the smells in the room, she also burnt frankincense.

The roasted beans are then ground and transferred to a pot called a jebena and boiling water poured in.

Abeba had brought her own beautiful little cups to serve the coffee and added a little bit of ground ginger and a good spoonful of sugar to each.

To go with the coffee we ate some of the delicious food made by people from the Centre - Alganesh brought an Eritrean bread called hembesha, Abeba brought popcorn, and Chovan made a pineapple upside-down-cake.

In the afternoon Ahmadzia ran a kite-making workshop. He has been making and flying kites since he was a child.  He had brought with him the exact cotton he needed, specially imported from Afghanistan. Somehow he even demonstrated his skills by flying a kite inside the education centre!

In Gallery Square, we exhibited the work done during our sessions at SDCAS. Each plate and napkin in 'Banquet of Memories' told the story of a different person who attends the Centre.

Along with these went our Pinterest board of suggestions for an International Feast, developed with the help our Twitter and Facebook followers.

It was a really great day and visitors to the museum gave us some good feedback:

‘It was great to see such a lovely community spirit at the coffee ceremony’

‘Today was excellent – great to get people in the local community involved – that’s what made it so good’

‘I enjoyed reading about the values people attach to food and learning the various recipes – thank you!’