Cultures of Collecting

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Cultures of Collecting
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Enlightenment values

• Desire to re-examine and question accepted ideas
  and values
• Empirical
• Light of reason
• exploration
• Liberation from ignorance, superstition and
  progress towards the good life, knowledge,
  freedom, and improvement
• Encyclopedia of knowledge
• 1761 guide to the BM Learning was for many Ages
  in a manner buried in Oblivion a dark Ignorance
  spread itself over the face of the whole Earth
  Indeed numberless were the obstacles to the
  Resurrection of Learning a dark Ignorance, a
  blind Infatuation, an obstinate Prejudice yet so
  hard a matter is it to fetter the human Mind,
  that it rose superior to all Difficulties.
  Literature is once more recovered from its long
  swoon and now shines in its pristine Lustre nay,
  there are in these happy times many things
  generally known of which the ancients had not the
  least notion and many others by them only
  guessed at, or known in Theory, which we have
  reduced to a mathematical certainty. Nothing can
  conduce more to preserve the Learning which the
  latter age abounds in, than having Repositories
  in every nation to contain its Antiquities, such
  as is the Museum of Britain.

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Early Museums

• Cabinets of curiosities
• Ashmolean museum Oxford, 1683, founded by Elias
  Ashmole building on collections of John
  Tradescant. One German visitor in 1710 expressed
  his displeasure at the presence of 'ordinary
  folk' in the Museum and surprise that the
  collection survived their attentions, '... since
  the people impetuously handle everything in the
  usual English fashion and ... even the women are
  allowed up here for sixpence they run here and
  there, grabbing at everything and taking no
  rebuff from the sub-custos'.
• Robert Hookes collection for the Royal Society

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Sir Hans Sloane

• Physician Fellow and President of Royal Society
  knew Locke and Newton, and John Ray (naturalist)
  and Linnaeus
• Travelled to Jamaica 1688 and in 1707 and 1725
  published a Natural History of the island
• His own collection incorporated that of William
  Courten (museum in the Middle Temple) his own
  collection from Jamaica, West Indies and
  thousands of gifts from travellers. 200,000 items
• Experimented with cocoa used by natives of
  Jamaica added milk, enjoyed as a drink that he
  thought aided digestion the recipe eventually
  passed to Cadburys.

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Sloanes will 1749/51

• Whereas from my youth I have been a great
  observer and admirer of the wonderful power,
  wisdom and contrivance of the Almighty God,
  appearing in the works of his creation, and have
  gathered together many things in my own travels
  or voyages, or had them from others, especially
  my ever honoured late friend William Courten Esq
  who spent the greatest part of his life and
  estate in collecting such things, in and from
  most parts of the earth, which he left me at his
  death And whereas I have made great additions
  of late years as well to my books, both printed
  as manuscript, and to my collections of natural
  and artificial curiosities, precious stones,
  books of dryed samples of plants, miniatures,
  drawings, prints, medals, and the like, with some
  paintings concerning them .. now desiring very
  much that these things tending many ways to the
  manifestation of the glory of God, the
  confutation of atheism and its consequences, the
  use and improvement of physic, and other arts and
  sciences, and benefit mankind, may remain
  together and not be separated where they may by
  the greatest confluence of people be of most use
  And I do hereby declare that it is my desire
  and intention, that my said museum or collection
  be preserved and kept and that the same may be
  from time to time, visited and seen by all
  persons desirous of seeing and viewing the same,
  as well towards satisfying the desire of the
  curious, as for the improvement, knowledge and
  information of all persons.

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The Founding of the Museum

• 1753 Act of Parliament
• 1759 open. First national public museum.
• Additional collections including that of the
  Duchess of Portland, Sir Joseph Banks, Charles
  Townley, George III.

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Sir Joseph Banks

• President of the Royal Society
• Naturalist aboard the Cook expedition to the
  South Seas, on board the Endeavour. Amassed huge
  collection.
• I may flatter myself that being the first man of
  scientific education who undertook a voyage of
  discovery and that voyage of discovery being the
  first which turned out satisfactorily in this
  enlightened age, I was in some measure the first
  who gave that turn to such voyages.
• Banks and Cook saw potential of bread fruit on
  Tahiti HMS Bounty sent out to transport it to
  Caribbean as food for slaves
• Promoted introduction of tea from China to India
  and merino sheep to Australia

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What did it contain ?

• No distinction between arts and sciences
  library, natural specimens, artefacts. Natural
  History Museum and British Library were from the
  original collection.
• Library of George III and the Enlightenment
  Gallery is in the Kings Library, designed in
  1830s
• Sculpture display of classical statuary insert
  Sir Rowland Winn in the Library, Nostell Priory
  impact of the grand tour. 1816 Elgin Marbles.

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The Classification of Knowledge

• John Ray important in development of systematic
  classification of natural world. Collector.
  Notion of dividing plants and animals into basic
  groups and a basic unit but used strings of
  Latin words
• Swedish Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) 1735 Systema
  Naturae set out classifications of animals and
  minerals and sexual system for plants based on
  flowers and stamens. Two-word name, the first
  describing the genus, the second the species

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Fossils

• Cleric Thomas Burnet at end of C17th went on
  Grand Tour and saw Alps earth had to have been
  changed by natural processes over long periods of
  time but still sought to reconcile this to the
  Biblical account. Opened debate about origin of
  earth which Bible put at 4004 BC.
• John Woodward, Prof of Physick at Gresham
  College, London, began collecting fossils Robert
  Hooke distinguished minerals from petrifactions
  and compared ammonites to living molluscs.
  Woodwards Essay Towards a Natural History of the
  Earth (1695) suggested that fossils were once
  living creatures and could be used to investigate
  the ancient history of the earth. Noahs Flood as
  the explanation.
• Edward Llwyds Lithiphylacii Britannici
  Ichonographia (1699) mapped and classified
  fossils, without reference to the Bible.
• Sloane collected minerals, including those with
  pharmaceutical uses.

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Earthquakes, Geology and Paleontology

• Geology first used 1735
• Sir William Hamilton arrived in Naples in 1764
  and became fascinated by Vesuvius it erupted
  1765 and sent his observations to Royal Society
  1776 published.
• James Hutton studied medicine modernising
  farmer argued that new rocks were formed by heat
  and fision, uplifted, process of movement
  infinitely older earth. 1795 published. No need
  for miracles.
• William Smith, son of a blacksmith, observed
  stratified rock in coal mines surveyor of
  Somerset Canal and found fossils were in certain
  order depending on layer of rock rocks elsewhere
  could be dated via the fossils they contained.
  Published The Stratigraphical System of Organised
  Fossils (1817)

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Dinosaurs

• Bones often found
• 1758 Mr Wooller found what looked like a
  crocodile in cliffs near Whitby compared it with
  living crocodiles and noted differences declared
  it to be antedeluvian
• At end of C18th remarkable finds in cliff at Lyme
  Bay, Dorset Mary Anning discovered an
  ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and pterosaur
• Still Flood as explanation for extinction

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Discovery of British Antiquity

• c.1660 term archaeology used study of the
  material remains of the past.
• End of C17th discoveries of stone tools and
  ascribed by Dugdale and Lhwyd to ancient Britons.
  Apothecary John Conyers found hand-axe in 1690s
  with remains of an elephant in Grays Inn Lane
  acquired by Sloane.
• 1707 Society of Antiquaries 1770 published
  proceedings as Archaeologia
• Frenchman Mahudel described sequence of stone,
  bronze, iron ages. By end of C18th acceptance of
  a pre-Roman Britain.
• Interest in Stonehenge John Aubrey, then
  William Stukeley (vicar) who published in 1740.
  Strong interest in Druids
• Late C18th romanticism of ancient patriot
  fighting the Romans
• Late C18th excavations eg Rev James Douglas in
  Kent describing Anglo-Saxon finds

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Classifying the ancient and artistic world

• Similar processes at work for antiquities though
  for a long time there was very little ordering of
  displays ordered by type
• 1719 Jonathan Richardsons The Connnoisseur An
  essay on the whole art of Criticism to be a
  connoisseur a man must be as free from all kinds
  of prejudice as possible and a clear way of
  reasoning, with proof. He divided science of
  looking into 8 parts composition, colouring,
  handling, drawing, invention, expression, grace,
  greatness, advantage, pleasure, and sublime.
  Visual taxonomy. Art was linked to society so
  art could be used to classify civilisations
  there is a history of the arts and sciences
  wherein it would be seen to what heights some of
  the species have risen in some ages and some
  countries, while at the same time on other parts
  of the globe, men are but one degree above common
  animals. So origins of art were in Persia and
  Egypt, then perfected by the Greeks but lost
  after the Romans.
• Johann Winckelmann applied this systematically to
  ancient art in his History of 1764.

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The East

• 1798 Napoleon hoped to capture Egypt began
  exploration. 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone
  allowed deciphering of hieroglyphics (1801 handed
  over to GB but 1824 by a Frenchman Champollion).
• 1813 published identification of Babylon by
  Claudius Rich, and East India Company official
  based at Bagdad to counter French designs on
  route to India he spoke Persian as well as many
  other languages 1811 excavations there 1821
  Ninevah
• Stamford Raffles collector of Javanese objects
  his History of Java (1819)
• Chinese porcelain

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Greek art

• Greek vases began to be collected. Sir William
  Hamilton collected 730.
• Influence on Wedgwood who copied some of the
  designs. The collection of Etruscan vases in the
  British Museum will ever be resorted to for the
  finest models of elegant and simple forms
• Society of Dilletante 1734 sponsored expedition
  to Greece in 1750-3 for artists to record
  monuments of Athens.

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Scientific Instruments

• Old instruments such as astrolabes
• New ones such as orreries
• 1809 the object of a medical or anatomical nature
  were hived off to the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow.
• Public science

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Religion

• Increased awareness of the variety of religious
  practices
• Idea of stages of religious worship superstition
  to rational enlightenment. Initial worship of
  fetishes or animals or the phallus Richard
  Payne Knight, 1786
• Non-Biblical religious texts eg 1785 Sir Charles
  Wilkins published a translation of the Bhagavad
  Gita, the sanskrit text Ed Moor gave illustrated
  account of Indian deities in Hindu Pantheon
  (1810)
• Idea of single common religious and cultural
  heritage which, through migration and separation,
  had changed.

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Ethnography

• Exploration encouraged the study of peoples and
  their ways of life
• Sloane collected 2000 objects
• 1768 Cook set sail with Banks to Pacific
  encounter with Tahitians and collection of
  objects, including bark shield used by native
  Australians to defend themselves vs Cooks
  voyagers. 7 May 1774 entry re mourners dress.
• 1778-9 expedition by Cook to Vancouver Island and
  Alaska
• in 1780, after Capt Cooks death, BM opened a
  new South Seas room to display the collections
  the first systematic display of such objects. Sir
  Joseph Banks encouraged collecting trips to the
  Americas and funnelled the results to the BM.
• 1818 voyage to Northwest passage recording of
  the Inuit lifestyle, including iglu.
• Mexico after independence in 1819
• Objects now displayed geographically

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The Public

• The visitor experience
• Apply for a ticket
• 10,000 visitors 1774 29,000 in 1810 98,000 in
  1822
• 1784 Trustees learnt that the majority of
  visitors were mechanics and persons of the lower
  class
• Tour lasted 2 hours
• 1806 labelling systematically introduced
• In 1783 it was visited by Barthelemi Faujas de
  Saint-Fond, an eminent French geologist and
  professor in the Museum of Natural History in
  Paris The British Museum contains many valuable
  collections in natural history, but nothing is in
  order, everything is out of its place and this
  assemblage appears rather as an immense magazine,
  in which things have been thrown at random,
  rather than a scientific collection, destined to
  instruct and honour a great nation.
• The previous year the German Carl Philip Moritz
  had also visited The company who saw it when
  and as I did, was various and some of all sorts,
  and some, as I believe, of the lowest classeses
  of the people of both sexes for as it is the
  property of the Nation everyone has the same
  right to see it that another has.

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Other contemporary sites

• Sir Ashton Levers museum opened in 1775 to
  paying public in Leicester Square In the 1760s
  and 1770s he had acquired an enormous collection
  of birds, amongst other materials, which he
  displayed in the former royal palace, Leicester
  House, 1775. As a friend of Captain James Cook,
  Lever acquired exceptional Pacific ethnography,
  which was displayed alongside the natural history
  collections in three rooms he refused access to
  the common people
• 1810 William Bullocks museum had 7000 natural
  and foreign curiosities
• Royal Academy, first exhibition 1769 1780 at
  Somerset House
• Society for the Encouragement of the Arts,
  Manufacture and Commerce, 1753
• Royal Institution 1799, lecture room, for the
  application of Science to the common purposes of
  life
• Covent Garden Theatre 1732 Drury Lane Theatre
  (riot in 1744 over proposed rise of ticket
  prices) Sadlers Wells 1765 Academy of Music
  1710
• 1787 Thomas Lord created Marylebone Cricket Club
  (1814 to its present site).
• 1750 Westminster bridge
• Tyburn for public executions
• Shopping at Oxford Street and Picadilly

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Lever Museum