French Connection: Amulet loan to Marseille

The Pitt Rivers Museum often loans objects to other museums, both in the UK and abroad. During transit, installation and removal, a member of Pitt Rivers Museum staff is present making sure the objects are looked after. The Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM) in Marseille has a temporary exhibition entitled Lieux Saints Partagés ('Shared Sacred Sites'). Staff from MuCEM came to the PRM to select candidates objects in summer 2014 and earlier this month I couriered the loan of 14 amulets to Marseille.

MuCEM © Pitt Rivers Museum

The amulets were checked and prepared by Kate Jackson, Conservator at the PRM. Kate took photographs and recorded the condition of the objects before their journey, then mounts were made to keep the fragile object secure in transit as they were packed into a small carry case. I flew to Marseille and the carry case was secured in the aeroplane seat next to me.

The amulets being checked and then installed in the display case. © Pitt Rivers Museum

At MuCEM the other objects and art works of the exhibition were also being installed - objects exploring the nature of holy sites of shared significance among different religions around the Mediterranean.

The loaned amulets derive from Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, made in continental Europe, north Africa and the near East. They are all part of a large collection made by Adrien de Mortillet, which was the focus of our recent Small Blessings project.

Twelve of the Pitt Rivers amulets were put in a display case together. The other two were displayed in a case with other objects from the Milk Grotto in Bethlehem. These two circular tablets are made of white clay. One side is impressed with a geometric motif, the other side shows a feint figure of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus.

Milk Grotto tablets, Palestine. PRM 1985.52.938 © Pitt Rivers Museum

According to legend, Mary was nursing baby Jesus in the grotto when a drop of milk spilled onto the ground and turned it white. This miracle led to the belief that dust and clay from the grotto, which is made of limestone, can enhance fertility and improve a motherʼs milk. Although tablets of clay like these ones are no longer sold, the Franciscans who oversee the shrine still prepare small packets of limestone powder to give in return for a small donation. They instruct that both husband and wife should drink the powder mixed with milk or water for nine days, and recite the prayer for the Third Joyful Mystery of the Rosary which recalls the birth of Jesus, known as the Nativity.

Milk Grotto display © Pitt Rivers Museum

MuCEM was built for 2013 when Marseille was European Capital of Culture. Marseille is a historic port city and a modern meeting place for Mediterranean cultures which makes it an entirely appropriate place for an exhibition such as this. The exhibition is on until 31 August 2015.

MuCEM and Fort Saint-Jean. © Pitt Rivers Museum

Madeleine Ding
Curatorial Assistant and Volunteers Officer

Cataloguing Hildburgh’s amulets

W. L. Hildburgh. Image: V&A

Walter Leo Hildburgh was a prolific collector of amulets from all over the world. When he died in 1955, he left his collection to the Wellcome Museum, and from there it was transferred in 1985 - along with thousands of other amulets including those collected by Lovett and de Mortillet - to the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The Wellcome Collection in London is currently engaged in a major revamp, and their new Reading Room will have fresh display spaces, for which they want to loan a number of the amulets now in Pitt Rivers. Some of the Wellcome staff visited Oxford recently and made a selection from the Hildburgh, Lovett and de Mortillet collections. While Lovett and de Mortillet have been the subjects of recent documentation projects, much of the Hildburgh collection remains uncatalogued. It was my task therefore, over the course of a three-month project, to ensure that the documentation for the selected objects was up-to-date, and that a digital image was provided for each.

Amulet for animals
© Pitt Rivers Museum, 1985.53.409

I started by completing the documentation of the Japanese section of the collection, which had already been started by two of my colleagues. From 1900, Hildburgh began a prolonged tour of Japan, India and China. He had a keen interest in anthropology and folklore - particularly magic and superstition. Many of the Japanese amulets are papers, printed with inscriptions and sometimes pictures, which you can buy at Shinto shrines and Japanese Buddhist temples. They can be for protection from various aliments, good luck, or for averting a particular calamity. Animals don’t have to go without protection, either: this amulet, from Hase-dera Temple in Kamakura, is for cows and horses.

Other amulets take the form of objects. They can be natural objects which are ascribed magic or amuletic properties, or they can be figures of deities or animals associated with good luck. One of these, the ‘maneki-neko’, the beckoning cat, is well-known outside Japan and can often be seen enticing customers to enter a Japanese restaurant. It does not bring luck exclusively to business owners, but to anyone who owns such a figurine. 

Maneki-neko and pig amulets
© Pitt Rivers Museum 1985.53.696 and 1985.50.154

Around 20 of Hildburgh’s Japanese amulets are going on display at the Wellcome Collection. To these are added some examples from Italy, Tunisia and Algeria. Amulets from these countries are often meant to be carried on the person for protection and double up as ornaments, e.g. pendants and brooches. This mother-of-pearl pig from Italy is a particularly pretty example. In his ‘Notes on Amulets’, Hildburgh writes that the pig stands for tranquility, an easy life and ‘all desired’.

Amulets are a particularly fascinating and pleasing subject. They are usually small, often beautiful, and come from all over the world, with interesting tales behind them. My project was only a very short one, and whilst I was able to complete the documentation of the Japanese section alone, much of Hildburgh’s collection awaits future projects to uncover the rest of its stories.

Elin Bornemann

Hearts in Mind

Ah, February 14th. Will you be sharing heart-shaped cards with your beloved, or sitting alone on the sofa in your pyjamas eating chocolate and settling for heart-throbs on screen? Either way, Valentine's Day is all about hearts and here are two very different ones from our collections:

First up is this Sacred Heart from the de Mortillet amulet collection. What began as a vision by a 17th-century French nun, Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, of Jesus Christ showing her his heart entwined with thorns and flames turned into an active cult of worship in France. There is a Sacred Heart feast day, the symbol was adopted for protection during the French Revolution, and of course there is the famous white church of Sacré-Cœur Basilica at Montmartre in Paris.

PRM 1985.52.33

Next is a rather more gruesome heart object - a preserved human heart in a leaden case, discovered in the medieval crypt of a church in Cork, Ireland and collected by General Pitt Rivers in the 1860s.

PRM 1884.57.18

For an interesting account of the history and significance of heart ablation and burial separate from the body, see this article on one of our project sites. Alternatively, this object features on our gallery audio tour and you can hear the entry here (3 mins):

Listen to ‘Heart in a lead casket, Ireland, 1884.57.18’


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

Lithic Links

Adrien de Mortillet did not just collect amulets. Our researcher Charlotte has found this interesting blog entry, 'Neolithic sickles from the Mortillet Collection' by Katzman, charting de Mortillet's career and impressive pedigree in prehistory and archaeology (passed down from his famous father).

Image from Aggsbach's Paleolithic Blog

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