Cook-Voyage Collections in Germany - Göttingen

Göttingen street and tower of Jacobi Church

Last week I went on a trip to Germany to see some Cook-voyage collections in museums there.  The first stop was Göttingen, in Lower Saxony.  The Institute of Ethnology of the University of Göttingen houses one of the oldest and most important ethnographic collections in the world.

Institute of Ethnology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

The collection was begun in 1773 when the naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach obtained a significant cabinet of natural history items for the University from the natural history teacher Büttner.  Several items from the South Seas were listed in a museum catalogue (Catalog. Musei Academici) dating from October 1778, and in 1782 three Cook-voyage collections were purchased from the London dealer and collector George Humphrey.  The collections were a result of Blumenbach petitioning the councillors of Hanover to ask King George III of England, (then also prince-elector of Brunswick-Luneburg (later Hanover)) to purchase 'something of the surplus of foreign natural curiosities, which in particular have been collected in large quantities on the recently completed voyages around the world on Your Majesty's command.'  Over 350 Cook-voyage objects were in the collection by the end of 1782.

Portrait of JR Forster, Anonymous

The large Forster collection came to Göttingen in 1799, after the death of Joseph Reinhold Forster in 1798. (George Forster predeceased his father, dying in 1794.) The Forster collection in Göttingen has been said to 'mirror' that of the Pitt Rivers, since the Forsters collected ethnographic objects systematically and often collected more than one of each item.  They appear to have divided up their collection fairly evenly when making the donation to Oxford University in 1776.

Display of objects from the Pacific

The collections in Göttingen were used as teaching collections from the very beginning.  Blumenbach was the first to use material bought back from the South Seas as demonstration material in his lectures, giving impetus to further research efforts.  His pupils included Alexander von Humbolt, who travelled extensively in Latin America between 1799 and 1804.  Goethe praised above all the 'objects fabricated by the peoples of the South Sea Islands' during his stay in Göttingen in 1801. 

Inv. Oz 142 Ornamental apron, sisi fale, Tonga

Inv. Oz 590 Barkcloth, Hawaii

Inv. Oz 313 Unfinished Maori cloak, New Zealand

Currently there are 17000 objects in total in the collection in Göttingen, the original collections having been added to over the years, with an emphasis on Africa and the Indo-Pacific.

The museum was kindly opened for us by the curator, Dr. Gundolf Kruger.  Many of the Cook-voyage objects are currently on loan to an exhibition at the Neidersachishes Landesmuseum in Hanover, the subject of the next post. 

See 'James Cook:Gifts and Treasures from the South Seas - The Cook/Forster Collection, Göttingen' Edited by Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Gundolf Krüger, Prestel-Verlag, Munich, New York 1998

Bagpipes and Captain Cook

This Saturday, the 9th March, is International Bagpipe Day, which this year is being held at the Pitt Rivers Museum. 

A bagpiper was on board during Cook's second voyage - a recruit who played bagpipes and one who played the violin were requested by the Admiralty Secretary in a letter to a Colonel Bell in Plymouth, asking that they be held in readiness to embark on one of the ships fitted out for making discoveries. 

George Forster mentions this bagpiper in 'A Voyage Round the World', in an entry for August 1773, when the expedition had reached Tahiti.  He writes that 'a highlander, who was one of our marines, was ordered to play the bagpipe, and its uncouth music, though almost insufferable to our ears, delighted the king (Aheatua, said by Forster to be the king of O-Taheitee-eetee-Little Tahiti) and his subjects to a degree which we could hardly have imagined possible.'

A few days later, in Matavai Bay, 'our Highlander performed on the bag-pipe to the infinite satisfaction of all the Tahitians, who listened to him with a mixture of admiration and delight.  King O-Too (the king of O-Taheitee-Nue, Greater Tahiti) in particular was so well pleased with his musical abilities, which I have already observed were mean enough, that he ordered him a large piece of the coarser cloth as a reward for his trouble.'

Surprising Barkcloth

Sometimes, objects can surprise us.  The barkcloth mentioned in the last post, 1886.21.19, was collected in Tahiti by Joseph Banks and donated by him to Christ Church, his old Oxford College.  Our museum database suggested that it was nearly 4 metres long, and just over a metre wide.
Once the barkcloth had been brought to the Conservation Lab for treatment, it was soon obvious that these were the folded measurements.  The piece of barkcloth actually measures 3.35m wide by 3.85m long.

Barkcloth fully unfolded

In our small conservation lab objects this size can pose a problem.  It was impossible to open the barkcloth out fully, and the processes of surface cleaning and reinforcement of tears had to be carried out by keeping the barkcloth rolled at each end, like a scroll, and working on the small unrolled section.  We had to decide how to store the barkcloth, and came to the conclusion that our stores could only accomodate it if it were folded in half and then rolled.  Folding it needed the largest tables in the museum, found in our Researchers area, and it was amazing to see such a large sheet of fine, almost translucent barkcloth and to think about how it would have been made, probably by groups of women working together.  The barkcloth is so finely beaten, however, that there is no evidence of any joins.

Folding the barkcloth

The barkcloth has been rolled for storage around a custom made support sewn from calico and filled with polyester wadding.

Cook and La Perouse

While working on a very large barkcloth this week (1886.21.29, a barkcloth from Tahiti collected on the first voyage by Joseph Banks) I was listening to a biography of Marie Antoinette.  In her final prison of the Conciergerie the ci-devant French Queen apparently liked to read tales of foreign adventures, her favourite being the Travels of Captain Cook.  This was translated into French for Louis XVI - a special edition was made for the edification of the Dauphin.

Posthumous portrait of Marie Antoinette, the Widow Capet, in her cell at the Conciergerie

Louise XVI and Marie Antoinette had admired Cook and followed his voyages - the Queen is said to have wept at the news of Cook's death.

In 1785, Jean Francois de Galaup, Comte de La Perouse was made Minister of the Marine in France, and charged with leading an expedition around the world to complete Cook's Pacific discoveries.

Louis XVI and La Perouse (1785, Edouard Nuel)

La Perouse left Brest on the 1st August 1785, and visited Chile, Easter Island and Hawaii before sailing to Alaska, California, East Asia, Japan, Russia and the Pacific.

Map of La Perouse's voyage

After visiting Australia, the expedition was lost, and its fate not confirmed until 1964.  Both of La Perouse's ships, L'Astrolabe and La Boussole, were wrecked on the reefs around Vanikoro, in the Santa Cruz islands.  However, documents were regularly sent back to France and an account of the voyage was published in 1787 by the French Government as Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde (La Perouse's Voyage Around the World).

Every Conservators' Nemesis...

Pesticides are now no longer routinely used on our collections.  My colleague Kate Jackson, conservator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, has written a post about our current pest management systems:

1923.85.293 Textile from Nagaland, N. India, with active moth infestation

In the past, museum collections were routinely treated with pesticides in an attempt to stop the damage caused by moth, beetle and wood boring insects.  The Museum's Annual report dated 1906 boasts – ‘the addition of a fuming-room, in which specimens infected with moth and beetle may be cured, will be of great convenience, and will greatly lessen the trouble caused by insect depredations’.

Unfortunately there was no 'miracle cure’ and as it transpired the commonly-used pesticides have over time proved to be highly hazardous not only to insect pests but also to us humans and in some cases to the objects themselves. Due to the health and safety issues surrounding the use of pesticides in museums they are no longer widely used, and we must instead find alternative methods of warding off unwanted insect pests.

Up to eighty percent of the Pitt Rivers ethnography collection is made up of objects composed of organic materials such as textile, feather, fur, hair, wool, felt and skin. It is these organic materials that attract every conservator’s nemesis - the common clothes moth (Tineola bisselliella). Due to warmer winters and the decline in pesticide use over past decades the cloths moth has enjoyed a population boom within UK museums. In order to tackle the issues of moth in museums it is vital that we understand what we are dealing with.

Adult common clothes moth

The adult moth, which prefers dry, warm, dark areas, lives for between 70-80 days. The female lays her eggs within undisturbed, organic materials.  As the larvae hatch they feed for between 2-30 months (depending on environment) on any organic material close by. It is this larval stage that can cause devastation to museum objects if left undiscovered. The larvae will eventually cocoon before the adult moth emerges after 8-10 days.

There are 35 pheromone moth traps within the museum, the majority within high-risk cases, with others placed in open areas. The pheromone used on the traps attracts the male moth and the sticky surface holds the moth in the trap. Every week a conservator checks the traps and counts the number of moths caught. The number will indicate if there is a gradual or sudden rise in moth in the area, this will lead us to do a thorough search of the surrounding cases. If an outbreak is found the objects infested are sealed in bags and placed in one of our chest freezers at -30 for three days. This temperature will kill every stage of the moth whether adult, egg, larvae or cocoon. The conservator will then assess the objects, any pest debris will be removed and any damage recorded.

We also have a number of ‘blunder’ traps. These are also sticky, and would hold a blundering beetle if it wandered across the trap. Thankfully we have not had major problems with beetles or wood boring insects for a number of years. If we were to find an outbreak we would use the same freezing method, which would kill the beetle at all stages of its life-cycle.

An unaccessioned Biddenden Biscuit, with biscuit beetle damage.