milk container

Milk vessel made of blackened wood and decorated with vertical carved protrusions around the outside.

Label: Black exhibition label with white text indicated collected by Dr Moffat.

The SADEC13a2 spreadsheet indicates that ‘Moffatt, Dr’ is the vendor of this vessel. Is this possibly Dr Robert Moffat (1795 - 1883), London Missionary Society missionary to South Africa? Or is this another ‘Moffatt’ who collected other objects? The vessel, subject to further research and first hand inspection, appears to be a Southern African milk or beer vessel. Moffatt’s mission in Kuruman, Northern Cape, was among the Tswana people, although he visited the Ndebele King Mzilikazi on at least one occasion. Elliott, Catherine; 2014-03-30

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.

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