A Charming Send-off

All good things come to an end. Last week the Small Blessings project came to its official close and we saw the departure of both amulets and people from the staff areas of the Museum.

Over the past seven months, more than 3000 objects have been physically numbered, catalogued and photographed. What an achievement! But de Mortillet was no slouch when it came to collecting and there remains a large number of religious 'medals' or tokens that will be processed in due course.

Just a few of de Mortillet's many medals or tokens

Meanwhile, the catalogued amulets have been repackaged and boxed up, ready to return to the stores.

Boxes of amulets in transit to our storage facility 

Originally they were in huge, old-fashioned trunks but with much more economic and organised packing, they are now contained within slimmer archival boxes which take up much less valuable space on our very crowded shelves!

Finding a new home for the amulets

Each amulet has been given a location (a box and shelf number) so will be easy to find should we need to retrieve it for display purposes or a visiting researcher.

We also had to say goodbye to our three contract project staff - Charlotte, Alice and Rosanna. It was a bit of a sad day, despite the copious tea and cake, as they had all become part of the Museum and we will miss them. We wish them well with their future endeavours and hope that they've enjoyed their experience at Pitt Rivers. One thing's for sure - having worked with amulets from around the world to protect against every conceivable disease, misfortune and evil spirit, or designed to bring prosperity, health, fertility and good fortune, there was little need for us to wish them 'good luck'...

A lucky cuppa © The Moon's Hobby Store and More

Helen

Vials, Boxes and Envelopes: De Mortillet's Storage System

As we come to the end of the project and the amulets are nearly ready to be put into storage, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on some of de Mortillet's own storage methods and how they differ from those we use in the Museum today. At first glance the containers that he stored some amulets in appear to be utterly random, perhaps things that he simply had lying around his office or house. However, on closer inspection, you begin to ask, 'are they'?

Some amulets have been stored in cardboard pen-nib boxes. For example, this one contained ten discs of bread or ‘small loaves’ with religious figures moulded onto them from Copacabana in Bolivia. You can easily imagine that de Mortillet would have had several pen-nib boxes on his desk. In addition, they are well suited to housing small amulets!

1985.52.1735. 1-.10 © Pitt Rivers Museum 

We've also found a number of amulets inside envelopes, such as this one here, addressed to ‘Monsieur A, de Mortillet’ written in beautiful handwriting and with a wonderful stamp on it. The envelope contains a religious picture made from daisies and wood from the hazel tree where Christ appeared to St. Margaret Mary of Alacoque. Again, it's more than likely that de Mortillet would have had an abundance of old envelops that he could slip amulets into.

1985.52.2693 © Pitt Rivers Museum

However, it's striking how many pharmaceutical or medicinal boxes and glass vials de Mortillet used as storage containers, and I would suggest that this is significant. Many of the amulets in the collection have medicinal qualities and have connections with health issues. Therefore, the choice of these objects to store some of the amulets becomes less random, even though the objects are not directly related to the containers they are stored in. We can only guess at what de Mortillet’s actual intentions were. 

Firstly, lots of objects are stored in glass test tubes, vials or jars. This test tube with a cork stopper contains seven fragments of shell from Algeria. 

1985.52.190 .1-.7 © Pitt Rivers Museum

And this glass 'Grains de Vals' jar contains lead pellets from the Holy Land, yet it would originally have contained herbal medicine for constipation. Grains de Vals have been a used as medicine for a long time (as both the jar and this advertisement from 1934 suggest), and they are still sold today. 

1985.52.2279 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Grains de vals, 1934 (Wikimedia Commons)

Lastly, de Mortillet used various boxes and tins that once contained medicine or cures for various ailments, and which now are very sought after 'vintage' items. For example, there is a cardboard liquorice paste (Pâte de Réglisse) box containing a clay plaque described in the catalogue as a medieval wizard’s talisman. The label translates as: 

'Liquorice Florent. Vanilla flavoured liquorice paste. Delicious tasting, this paste facilitates digestion and expectoration. It cures colds, hoarseness, influenza, stomach upsets and effectively combats ailments of the chest. Made in the great liquorice factory of Cantarel - Avignon (France).'

1985.52.1064 © Pitt Rivers Museum

There is also a ‘Le Rénïol’ metal tin containing eleven iron pyrite crystals. The box would originally have contained pills or small pastilles for a head cold made up by 'PHARMACIE RENGNIEZ, 56 Rue de Passy, Paris'.

1985.52.2337 © Pitt Rivers Museum

We use different packing practices in the Museum today to ensure that objects are stored in a stable environment. The amulets are stored in acid-free boxes, which are lined with jiffy foam (a neutral packing material). Each amulet is placed in it’s own individual sealable plastic bag, which can also be lined with jiffy foam if an object is a little bit fragile. We stack the objects in the boxes with the heaviest items at the bottom, and it’s important not to overfill them. It is essential to label each box and to make a corresponding note about the location of each object on the computer database so that we always know where it is and it can be found easily. 

De Mortillet amulet boxes in the Museum's on-site store room

De Mortillet used a range of containers to house the amulets he collected. They often seem merely random or expedient, but they are incredibly interesting objects in their own right and some are visually very appealing. On one level they provide insight into the type of things, especially pharmaceutical items, common to French households at the time. But on another level, if the use of these medical boxes and glass vials was intentional, perhaps de Mortillet was trying to say something much more significant? Discovering what his intentions were might help us to understand more about his motivations for collecting certain objects. 

Rosanna

Volunteer is our own 'small blessing'

This week, a chat with our project collections volunteer, Kristyn Maguire.

Where are you from Kristyn?

Australia, but currently living in Oxford.

Why did you volunteer at the PRM? 

I was interested in the Wellcome collection of amulets and saw the job vacancies for the ‘Small Blessings’ project when I was in Canada. I'd already decided to study in Oxford (MSc in Applied Landscape Archaeology) so I thought that if I could still be involved with the project in some capacity I could find out more about the development of belief systems and ritualistic behaviours by getting to see a wide range of amulets and objects from different cultures around the world.

What have you been doing at the Museum?
I’ve been volunteering up to two days a week for several months, trying to fit it around my working life. I’ve been assisting with the project documentation process. The cataloguers Alice and Rosanna take a photograph of every amulet (several thousand of them) and I’ve been optimising these in Photoshop - cropping, colour correcting and so on. I’ve been double-checking the file names to match the images to the records so people access the right image when they’re browsing the online database. I’ve also been transcribing some of the collector’s original catalogue entries into the database - again, so all the information is stored together.

What have you enjoyed most about being here?
I really like the Museum – it’s unique. It’s been fascinating going behind the scenes. I worked for almost two years in the museums sector in Canada so it’s been nice to build on my experience by continuing here in the UK where it’s so hard to break into the industry.

What will you do next?
I start my Masters course in October, part-time for two years. I then hope to do a PhD. I will be in Oxford for a while so I’d be open to any further voluntary opportunities here at the Pitt Rivers!

Caring for Fragile Fabrics

These are three ribbon amulets from Bolivia, which were sent to Conservation for treatment. 

Flaking decoration (PRM 1985.52.1726)

As you can see, the gold decoration over the text was flaking off, so I had to consolidate it. This means fixing it more securely to the surface using an adhesive. I did this under the microscope, so that I could watch very carefully if any colours on the ribbon started running.

Stuck together (PRM 1985.52.1729)

Two of the ribbons were folded over on themselves and had become stuck where they'd been painted. I had to decide whether to attempt to open them up or leave them as they were.

I tried releasing them very gently using a scalpel and managed to unfold the crimson one, but the white one was much too firmly stuck and the action would have caused quite a lot of damage to it, had I continued trying. As we already had two from the same area with the same decoration, it seemed unnecessary.

PRM 1985.52.1727

They all have a small amount of ‘shattering’ which is when the fabric becomes brittle and falls apart. This is mainly at the centre of each ribbon around the painted text and image. To stop the fabric breaking apart, I gave it a backing of silk crepeline, which was dyed to the same colour as each ribbon. This was then placed over each break like a plaster.

Once treatment was completed each ribbon will need to be stored properly. It’s best if it doesn’t get folded, as over time folds become breaks, so I wrapped each ribbon around some conservation grade foam and interleaved it with some acid free tissue to prevent any more sticking problems in the future. I then made a couple of small boxes out of conservation grade corrugated plastic to stop them getting crushed.

Jenny

A Bit of Support

Sometimes the best thing we can do to help an amulet is simply to give it some better packaging or more support.

All the materials we use for packaging are inert and stable. This means that the packaging materials themselves aren’t going to deteriorate or give off harmful gases and they don't have any chemical residues. Any gases etc., which a packing material might give off, could increase the deterioration of the artefacts they are trying to protect.

The plastic boxes we use for storage are made of Polypropylene or Polystyrene, which are very stable plastics. Both are easily available on the high street. We tend to use materials such as Plastazote, Jiffy foam (both Polyethylene foams) and acid free tissue to cushion around objects. Correx board (corrugated Polypropylene sheeting) or acid free mount board is used to support them.

In the image below, amulet 1985.52.10 (a bronze ram’s head pendant from Russia) has been cushioned using black and Plastazote and then placed in a crystal (Polystyrene) box.

Ram's head pendant (PRM: 1985.52.10)

Amulet numbers 1985.52.504 and 1985.52.505 (both textile scapulars from Italy) needed more support, so they were placed on a Jiffy foam lined piece of Correx board with a window cut in it and then another Correx board on top.

Jenny

A museum cataloguer’s ‘tool-kit’

One of the main aims of the ‘Small Blessings’ project is to accession, catalogue, physically number, label, document, and improve the storage for around five-thousand amulets. 

In the process of doing this, we cataloguers have a ‘tool-kit’ that we draw upon to go about the practicalities of our job on a day-to-day basis. This tool-kit consists of things such as rotary pens to physically number the objects and write labels. Where there is a large enough non-porous surface available, we use an acetone-based liquid (not unlike nail varnish) to apply a clear barrier before letting it dry and writing the number on top. This means we are not writing onto the object itself and allows the number to be removed or altered in the future. Due to the nature of amulets – ‘small blessings’ that are designed to be worn close to the body – it is sometimes very difficult to number them like this because they are too small!

In a cataloguer’s tool-kit you’ll also find string, a tape measure, a magnifying glass, scissors, and some charming nitrile purple gloves! We also use a digital camera to create a visual record of each object.

But this tool-kit also includes immaterial qualities such as an eye for detail, an ability to describe concisely what you are looking at, and an awareness of the different materials and processes that were involved in making such a wide variety of amulets: from Roman Catholic reliquaries, to pendants carved out of lava from Mount Vesuvius, to a wolf’s tooth worn to prevent convulsions. 

Images of religious figures printed on paper and
carried in a policeman's amulet satchel from Germany.

It is incredibly important to complete all the above stages involved in cataloguing an object collection. This will allow staff, researchers, and the public to locate these objects in the future and hopefully be inspired to find out more about a particular amulet or the collection as a whole.

Rosanna & Alice

What's inside?

Over the next seven months the project team will be accessioning and documenting the objects inside these boxes. What will they find? 

The catalogue for this collection tells us that Adrien de Mortillet collected amulets from all around the world. There are amulets from Algeria, Bolivia and China, and from Egypt, India and Japan. Many of the amulets are from cities in Russia – Kiev and Moscow, Italy – Naples, Rome and Verona, and France – Paris, Toulouse and Tours. 

The catalogue also tells us that many of the objects are religious amulets. There are reliquaries (containers for relics connected with saints or other religious figures), rosaries (prayer beads), and ex-votos (votive offerings to saints or divinities). There are also many hamsas (the hand of Fatima) and fish (a traditional symbol of Christianity). 

Apart from these religious amulets there are also many folkloric amulets in the collection, including acorns, clovers and horseshoes. 

The variety of these objects is also reflected in the materials from which they are made. There are amulets made from stone, coral and pearl, from bronze, silver and gold, and from teeth, bone and skin. 

Charlotte