Eating the Exotic

As featured in a recent blog post, the Pitt Rivers recently loaned some Cook-voyage objects to the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby, for their exhibition "Eating the Exotic'.  Dr Sophie Forgan, Chairman of the Trustees of the museum in Whitby, writes:

John Walker's House, Whitby, home to the Captain Cook Memorial Museum

'As a small independent volunteer-run museum, we are delighted to be able to borrow twelve important artefacts from the Pitt Rivers for our exhibition ‘Eating the Exotic’, which examines the Cook voyages through food, eating and the cultures surrounding food in Polynesia. 

We thought hard about the best way to display the objects.  The fish hooks were comparatively easy, well spaced in the case alongside contemporary illustrations of the sorts of fish that they were designed to catch.  Likewise the food preparation implements were simply placed in a case with models of fruits and tubers (breadfruit and kumara) cultivated.  The case containing the kava bowls and Tongan ‘mat’ (featured in an earlier blog), now reinterpreted as a skirt, was trickier.  We decided to leave the skirt as a ‘mat’, with a note on its recent redesignation.  We then created three perspex stands, triangular in shape, of different heights.  These hold the kava bowls and surround the ‘skirt’, displayed flat on the floor of the case.  A large piece of kava root from the Economic Botany Museum at Kew was placed within one of the perspex stands, rather appropriately under a kava bowl, allowing it to be seen, but still kept separate from the organic materials of the other exhibits.

1886.1.1177.  Skirt/mat, Tonga

One of the most interesting points raised by working on the exhibition was how the Forsters managed to get all their collections back from the Pacific. Their cabin space was very limited.  On the floor below the exhibition, the Museum shows Johann Reinhold Forster’s desk.  This is extremely compact, and could take no more than writing materials, papers and a few books.

Johann Reinhold Forster's desk

The cabins were small, and Forster complained that the scuttle leaked and he often found his bedding wet.  Apart from the occasional very small object tucked into one of the desk pockets, the cabin could only hold some materials in bags or bundles slung from the ceiling.  Otherwise, all objects would have been placed in one of the store rooms available for officers’ supplies.  Given the amount of tapa cloth the Forsters brought back, and large objects such as baskets, bowls, weapons, costumes and so on, the Forsters must have taken every inch of available space.  Perhaps more space became available as trade goods brought from Britain were used up during stops at the islands.'

A Loan to Whitby

Heather Richardson, Head of Conservation at the Pitt Rivers Museum, recently couriered some objects from our Cook-Voyage collections to Whitby.  She writes:

'The Pitt Rivers Museum has just loaned 12 Pacific island objects to the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby, North Yorkshire, for the temporary exhibition “Eating the Exotic”. Ten of the twelve objects related to food are from the Cook voyages, nine from the Forster Collection and one from the Banks Collection. They include fish hooks, a kava bowl and a fern root beater.

Prior to sending objects on loan conservators must check that they are suitable to travel and then prepare condition reports detailing all existing scratches, accretions or other markings. The conservators then pack the objects securely into crates lined with inert foam to cushion the objects while in transit.

Fish hooks packed in cut-outs in the foam near the top of the crate

Eleven of the objects travelling to Whitby fitted into an existing packing crate and a new crate was made to transport the large Tongan mat made from hibiscus fibre with Pandanus decoration (1886.1.1177) detailed in an earlier blog posting. Instructions on how the crates are packed and unpacked were also compiled.

On Monday 20^th February the crates were loaded onto a special truck with air ride suspension and securely strapped in place by the drivers, who were both experienced art handlers. As with all loans of objects from the Pitt Rivers a courier then travelled with the objects throughout the journey from Oxford to Whitby, which took six hours.

The Captain Cook Memorial Museum is situated within a 17^th Century harbour-front house and is where James Cook was apprenticed to Captain John Walker in 1746.

View from the garden of the Captain Cook Memorial Museum.  A replica of the Endeavour is in the foreground, which is about 40% of the ships original size

The attic where Cook stayed as an apprentice is now used by the museum for temporary exhibitions.  On arrival at Whitby the crates were unloaded and carried down Grape Lane to the museum, which is too narrow for vehicle access. The crates proved marginally too wide for some of the very narrow doorways of the house, so the objects were carefully unpacked in a room on the ground floor and carried up the narrow stairs to the attic.

Over the next two days the objects were checked against the condition reports to ensure no new damage had occurred during transit, before positioning them in three display cases.

A case containing kava bowls and a Tongan mat from the Pitt Rivers

While designing the layout of the display cases labels were also checked for the correct attributions and positioned inside the cases. All three cases needed to be securely locked before the courier was allowed to depart on the 22^nd February.

A large shark hook from Tahiti, part of the Banks (First Voyage) collection

The exhibition will open to the public on 1^st March and run until the museum closes for winter on the 31^st October 2012.'