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

Green Russian

This leather purse is from Kazan in Russia. It contains two nuts and according to our records, once also held two old Russian coins. It was carried to ensure that the bearer always had money. 

Before treatment (PRM: 1985.52.968)

Detail of corrosion (PRM: 1985.52.968)

The purse was passed to me for conservation treatment due to there being green-blue evidence of copper corrosion around the eyelets.

We always assess an artefact throughly before carrying out any treatment, as a sweep of our brush could mean life or death for a little piece of history.

On first inspection it looked a little like there had been copper wire stitching around the eyelets and that this had corroded. If this was the case, I would need to record it carefully before continuing treatment, so I took a look at it under the microscope. I took the photo by attaching a Canon EOS 60D camera to a microscope set at x40 magnification. The image was then sharpened using Helicon Focus Software.

After treatment (PRM: 1985.52.968)

This revealed that it was just products of copper corrosion growing away from the eyelets, giving the illusion of stitching. As a result I could simply brush away the corrosion and vacuum up the debris with our Museum vacuum. 

Jenny

Small Blessings on display

Over the last few weeks the team has been busy preparing 23 of the ‘Small Blessings’ amulets for display in the Museum. After selecting a handful of amulets from the thousands in the collection, I set about the task of writing display labels for them. The labels tell visitors a little bit about where each amulet is from and what it was used for – a first glimpse of the stories that will be available on the final project website, which we will be launching this summer.

Each of the objects was catalogued by Alice and Rosanna, photographed by Malcolm, and checked for display by Jenny. Alice and Rosanna ensured that each object had been numbered and that its location had been updated on the database, and Jenny whisked one of the snails away to the freezer as it was showing signs of pest damage that might have endangered the other objects.

Ady, one of the Museum technicians, made a mock-up of the display so that we could decide where to place all of the objects and labels and see how the case would look. All this advanced planning meant that when everything was finally ready we could install the display with minimal disruption to the Museum.

Although the ‘Small Blessings’ display is only a small, temporary installation, preparing it involved a whole team of people. We hope you will be able to come to the Museum and take a look at these intriguing objects – you can find them in the Upper Gallery.

On display are: a policeman’s amulet, an ex-voto, a wolf’s tooth, a faith, hope and charity charm, two reliquaries, two Loreto bells, three horned hands, three Eiffel Tower mascots, four snails in linen bags, and five death’s head amulets.

Charlotte

Notes from Conservation

Some amulets bagged up ready for
freezing due to pest damage

Now that the Small Blessings project is well under way, amulets requiring conservation treatment have started to make their way in to the conservation lab.

The large majority of the objects being sent my way for treatment are corroding metals and textile / organic objects, which have been nibbled by pests.

Objects with pest damage are gently cleaned using a museum vacuum, which has a very low suction. They are then placed in our freezer for several days at -30 degrees in order to kill off any remaining bugs, larvae or eggs.

One of the slightly more complex objects needing attention is a small satchel containing religious pictures that was carried by a policeman in Germany (PRM 1985.52.70 - see below). It is a composite object, with silk, copper alloy, paper, and other textile components, each of which is deteriorating or damaged in its own way.

Front of policeman's satchel with detail of corroded metal (PRM: 1985.52.70)

One problem area is on the front, where there is a heavily corroded copper alloy border placed right on top of the red silk. Any treatment carried out on the metal has to be done with great care not to damage or stain the silk further.

The next issue is pest damage, which is particularly noticeable on the back of the satchel. Here the pests have eaten away a lot of the textile around the stitching.

Back of satchel showing pest damage

As with all objects arriving in the lab, the satchel has been photographed and given a thorough assessment. The next stage will be to come up with a plan of action for its treatment.

Jenny

De-installation of 'Charmed Life' exhibition at Wellcome Trust

A guest blog by PRM Curatorial Assistant, Maddie Ding:

© Wellcome Images

At the end of February I went to London with Andrew, a PRM Conservator, to de-install an exhibition of amulets at the Wellcome Trust. Curated by the artist Felicity Powell, Charmed Life was inspired by the collection of Edward Lovett’s amulets held by the PRM. I was involved with the original installation last autumn; now our job was to remove, check and pack the 381 objects lent by our Museum.

Maddie and Felicity Powell arranging amulets for display during
the installation of Charmed Life in 2011. © Wellcome Images

We worked from Monday to Wednesday. The first case lid was removed by the Wellcome Technicians team shortly after our arrival and objects were carried to the work table where they were condition checked by either Andrew or myself and countersigned by the Wellcome Trust conservator before being packed. The objects were removed from display in reverse order to how they'd been installed (i.e. the last one in was the first one out). Objects were placed in plastic bags and padded with foam. The bagged objects were packed in the appropriate plastic box. The wooden crate held nine plastic boxes each with a contents list.

Andrew and Luana (Wellcome conservator) checking objects under lamplight

Before the objects left the Pitt Rivers Museum for loan, they were assessed by another of our Conservation team, Jenny (who is now working on the Small Blessings project). She described and photographed each object so our role was to compare the object with the original condition report to check that no changes had occurred. Happily there no problems as the condition of all the objects matched the initial assessment. Each time we had a break, the objects we had de-installed were stored in the packing crate and the lid secured. The remaining objects were secured in the display case and the gallery locked.

© Wellcome Images

By Wednesday all the objects were packed safely into their crate. The time it takes to install or de-install an exhibition depends on the number, complexity, size or significance of the objects and working practices of the host museum. This de-installation was calculated to take about three days but if we needed more time the return transport could be delayed. The courier company provided a lorry with drivers to transport the objects back to Oxford, and Andrew and I personally accompanied the crate back to the Pitt Rivers Museum. Most of the objects will be re-packed for storage but a few will return to display.

Maddie

P.S. Even though the exhibition has now finished, you can see a selection of the Pitt Rivers Museum's Lovett amulets that were on display here.

Magic Snakes and Potatoes

A couple of weeks ago, the project team walked the short distance up to No. 61 Banbury Road, home of the University’s Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA). We went to attend a student lecture entitled ‘The Self-Management of Misfortune by the Use of Amulets and Charms'. The speaker was Eric Edwards, whose years as a former gallery attendant and library assistant at the Museum have endowed him with a passion for, and extensive knowledge of, its collections. 

59 and 61 Banbury Road
© Roger Templeman  

Eric talked about the ancient origins of amulets as far back as Paleolithic Germany more than 30,000 years ago. He pointed out that although concepts of folklore, religion, superstition and medicine were all useful when talking about amulets, the most important thing to understand is that they are believed to possess magical powers. That belief may be personal or cultural (or both), and is what transforms them from ordinary objects into amulets. They retain this power for as long as people believe in them and, in many cases, are only considered efficacious when held, touched or kept close to the body.

PRM 1985.51.840: Ammonite pendant in silver mount

Eric cited the social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer who, a century ago, attributed the magical powers of amulets to one of two principles: the laws of similarity and contagion. Amulets working under the law of similarity use ‘like-for-like’ to imitate cause and effect; for example, in places such as Cambridgeshire and Whitby ammonite fossils were believed to be dead, curled up snakes and were therefore worn as amulets to protect against adder bites. As such, they were often known as ‘adder beads’ and ‘snake stones’.

An amulet working under the law of contagion has once been in contact with another object or person, thereby establishing a magical link between the two. Obvious examples of this type are the many Christian reliquaries we are finding in the de Mortillet collection, their owners able to channel reassurance and protection from the tiny fragments of bone, hair or clothing derived from the saint or holy figure to whom they directed their prayers.

PRM 1908.11.1:
'Lucky stone', Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Northumberland

Eric went on to describe other idiosyncratic examples of British and Irish amulets. There were twigs of wormwood, fixed over doors to keep away 'bad fairies' in County Cork and the Newbiggin stone, one of the few items in the Museum from Northumberland. It is a piece of limestone that has been bored through naturally by a mollusc and was hung on the back of a door in the cottage of William Twizel, a fisherman, as a ‘lucky stone’. 

Finally, there was a potato charm belonging to Harry Hopkins, an innkeeper in Leighton Buzzard in the late 19th century. Mr Hopkins had carried the potato in his coat pocket along with three others for nine years as a cure for rheumatism and had remained free from the condition for all that time. Unfortunately, you won't be able to use those hash browns in your freezer to the same effect; for the charm to work, it was essential for the potato to have been stolen…

Helen

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