Sunday, 20 April, 2008
I haven’t yet mentioned my visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, my favorite one in Oxford. Here’s what I wrote about it three years ago?
Oxford, England
17 April ‘05
I have to admit, this is my favorite place in Oxford. It’s the most bizarre museum I’ve ever seen. According to the guide I purchased, a visitor once wrote in the guestbook, “I want to live here when I die. This is the best place I will ever go to. I’m 30.” When we visited Oxford in ’02, we were able to roam throughout the entire three levels of stuff, but they’ve finally procured the funds to renovate, so the top two galleries are closed until late next year. No matter – the ground level is enough to keep you busy for about a month.
This afternoon I made my last visit until I return to Oxford. (We have much to do this week, and we leave for the Continent early Thursday morning.) I wended my way through cases of shrunken heads, Indian artifacts from North America (including Minnesota), Maori clothing, a priceless red and yellow Hawaiian feather cape, mysterious musical instruments from countries I’ve never heard of and no long exist, weapons, idols, boats and jewels. Everything is either in freestanding glass cases, with pullout drawers underneath (filled with more treasures) or hanging from the 3-story high ceiling in the ornate Victorian barn of a building. Yes, it needs remodeling badly. But somehow I like the fact that the lighting is so bad you are given flashlights to read the carefully penned descriptions of each item (which is another story altogether). Today a wide-eyed small boy held the flashlight on the shrunken heads, no doubt scaring the living daylights out of himself.
Apparently, General Pitt Rivers first fathered nine kids, then started collecting weaponry. Hmmm. . .Anyway, he sort of got carried away. His goal, in the age of Darwin, was to collect pieces that would show the evolution of the human species. He wanted common objects, which, of course, are very uncommon now. This was the age of the great Victorian explorers, who bought, bribed, stole and otherwise acquired things from all over the world. The General never traveled himself, but bought from all these explorers. He ended up with 20,000 objects and convinced the University of Oxford to accept them as a gift and inscribe his name on the annex built to house them at the University Museum. Henry Balfour, the first curator, must have been a saint. He not only added thousands of more items to the museum, but catalogued them all in excruciating detail on note cards, complete with exquisite color drawings of each item.
I asked the docent on duty if anyone had ever written a book about Pitt Rivers. “I think so,” he said mildly. If not, I think I’ve found my life’s work.
That was in 2005. I revisited shortly before we left Oxford this year, and renewed my love affair. I spent my time browsing through the upper levels, which were closed last time, focusing on artifacts of human adornment from around the world, mysteriously grouped with odd items made from birds, such as birds with wicks rammed through them for use as tapers, mummified hawks and a Norwegian candleholder made from an eagle’s foot! Here’s a partial list: ear and neck-stretching and foot-binding equipment, tattooing and scarification items, lip plugs, corsets, tooth alteration artifacts and head printing tools, etc., etc. So, I open a drawer beneath the teeth and instinctively drew back when, inexplicable, I was faced with a drawer overflowing with brightly colored birds, even though the displayed stuffed birds were on the other end of the balcony. I close it quickly.
It finally dawned on me that the attraction of this place is its creep factor. This goes beyond oddities. The attic quality of the experience and the semi-darkness only adds to this weird attraction.
I’ve posted a couple of photos. Enjoy.
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