Horniman Museum and Gardens
Museum
- Scope of Collection
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Collection-level records:
Collection history (Collection development policy)
Frederick Horniman, tea merchant, politician and philanthropist, was a compulsive and passionate collector, fascinated by the power of real objects. He used his own travels and a network of agents to amass a huge collection of specimens from every corner of the world which he then made freely available to the people. These collections, well-curated and developed over the past 150 years have enabled the Horniman to become one of the few museums in the country capable of illustrating the breadth of the World’s natural and cultural diversity.
As with any collections of this nature, our collection includes objects that are today subject to restrictions that did not exist at the time of collection, including those made of controlled materials (i.e. ivory), human remains, and cultural property which we now understand it is disrespectful for us to own, store or display.
As the Horniman begins to confront its colonial history we wish to develop an ethical approach to collections development which will take into account the views of source and diaspora communities and past history of collecting.
Source: Collection development policy
Date: 2019
Licence: CC BY-NC
Collection overview (Collection development policy)
The Accredited Collections are divided into three disciplinary areas: Anthropology, Musical Instruments and Natural History. In 1997 both the Anthropology and Musical Instrument collections were designated as being of national importance by the then Museums and Galleries Commission (MGC; now Arts Council England). Detailed information about the existing collections and their history can be found within the following appendices to this policy:
Anthropology
Musical Instruments
Natural History
Description of existing Ethnographic and Archaeology collections
Quality and variety of collection
The Anthropology collections of the Horniman Museum, which are estimated to number in excess of 100,000 objects, are among the most significant anthropology collections in the United Kingdom. They comprise objects from many regions of the world and include specimens of major national and international significance.
The core of the Oceanian collections was systematically assembled under the auspices of A. C. Haddon, an eminent Oceanist who acted as Advisory Curator between 1903 and 1915. It contains material from the three sub-areas of the Pacific, namely Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as Australia, with a particularly strong focus on Papua New Guinea. Numbering almost 7,000 artefacts, it is distinguished by its particularly fine quality objects and important source collections from which many of them were derived. Notable among these is a group of 32 artefacts formerly belonging to James Edge Partington (1913), Fijian material from Sir Everard Im Thurn (1918–20), J. K. Hutchin’s Rorotonga collection (1903) and Papuan collections made by W. H. Abbot from Collingwood Bay (1903), C. G. Seligman and Cooke Daniel (1906), A.C. Haddon (1906, 1912) and later L. P. Robbins (made in the 1890s, but purchased in 1932), and Lord Moyne (1936).
Many of the objects within the Asian collection were acquired through purchase by Frederick or John Emslie Horniman from international exhibitions such as the Great Exhibition (1851), the India and Colonial Exhibition (1886), the Vienna Exhibition (1889) and the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition (1910). Others were purchased in the course of world travels (India and Sri Lanka (1894); USA, Japan, China, Burma and southern India (1895)), while still others came through dealers and auction houses and through the assistance of agents and acquaintances (the Rev Robert Davidson, western China (1895); Sir Somers Vine, India (various dates)). The collections have been further increased in the 20th century through systematic field collecting carried out by curators and other anthropologists. Notable among these are the Andaman collections made by Montague Protheroe (1908) and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, one of the founders of modern anthropology (1910), Maldive collections made by Stanley Gardiner, Charles Hose’s spectacular collection from Borneo and Sir Henry Cotton’s and Maj-Gen K.J. Kiernan’s (1969) Naga collections from Assam (1916 and 1969 respectively). Important curatorial collections include Otto Samson’s extensive field collections from India, Sikkim and Tibet (1936–7), Ken Teague’s collections from Central Asia (1991–2001) and Fiona Kerlogue’s collections from Japan and South-East Asia (2001–9). Other important material has been donated, such as the Mears collection of Chinese Qing dynasty material. In recent years the Museum has also purchased good material from anthropologists such as Genevieve Duggan’s field collection of textiles from Savu, Indonesia; Willemijn de Jong’s field collection from Flores, also in Indonesia; and Susan Conway’s fieldwork collection of Thai textiles.
Amongst the most important of our collections from Europe are the Lovett collection, chiefly of English ‘folklore’ material acquired between 1906 and 1933; material from Mary Edith Durham from Montenegro (1907) and Albania (1920); an extensive collection of material covering all aspects of rural life in Romania presented to the Museum by the Romanian government in 1957; a collection of propaganda posters from the former Soviet Union collected by Chris Tsielepi; and the Pennington collection of costume from the former Yugoslavia acquired in 1981.
The African collection contains a considerable variety of material and represent aspects of many different lifestyles (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, agriculturists and indigenous politics as well as contemporary urban life), stretching from the northern deserts to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the Guinea Coast to the Horn of Africa. Many of the collections are associated with eminent names in African studies, including early anthropologists and scholars such as: Emile Torday, Zaire (1910); Edward Evans-Pritchard, Sudan (1920–30); Siegfried Nadel, Nigeria (1930s); Daryl Forde, Nigeria (1980s); as well as from colonial officers, missionaries and private collectors: F. H. Ruxton, Nigeria (1930s); Graham, Sierra Leone (1950s), Leroux, Zaire (1968), the Rev Lionel West, Zaire (1970); W. Holman Bentley, Congo (1905); Jean Jenkins and P. Radford, Ethiopia (1960s–70s). The African collection has continued to grow over the last half-century and includes important additions made under the directorship of Otto Samson (1947–65) and later David Boston (1965–93), as well as through the work of Horniman curators such as Valerie Vowles and Keith Nicklin.
The American collection was built from donations, particularly the Inuit and Northwest Coast collections made by A. C. Haddon, and the E. Lovett North
American Collection which was presented to the Museum by Emslie Horniman. Emslie himself made important donations of North American material to the Museum, including pre-Columbian archaeological pieces from central Mexico and Oaxaca. John Eric Horniman, Emslie’s son, also made an excellent collection of Plains Indian beaded material, including clothing, pipe bags and a bonnet. In 1961 the Museum acquired a Blackfoot Tipi, transferred from the Glenbow Museum, Canada. The Museum has also sponsored contemporary North American Indian artists. In 1966, Fred Stevens, a Navajo medicine man, executed a sand painting in the Museum; while in 1985 Nathan Jackson, of the Tlingit people of Alaska, carved a 25-ft totem pole and presented it to the Museum.
The ethnographic collections also include the former collection of the National Museum of Wales, transferred in 1981, as well as transfers from: the Smithsonian Institute; the Glenbow Museum; the Royal Museum of Canterbury, which includes an important 18th-century drill bow from Northern Alaska collected by Captain James Cook in 1778 or 1779; and the Museum of the American Indian, New York. The Museum also holds objects on loan from the Royal Collections.
The collections also include important archaeological specimens, including several Egyptian mummies and related funerary furnishings acquired through Sir Flinders Petrie, lithographic collections from various parts of Africa, various smaller pieces of Gandhara stone sculpture, pre-Columbian Caribbean stone tools and implements, pre-Columbian Mexican and Peruvian ceramics and some European archaeology.
A substantial part of this collection was part of the original gift of Frederick Horniman, although later additions were made by, for example, A. C. Haddon, as well as a large collection from the Canary Islands, transferred to the Horniman from the Institute of Archaeology in 1972 and collected by F. E. Zeuner. The early collections are of particular importance as they shed light on ‘the beginnings of archaeology’.
As with most of the major ethnographic collections in the UK, no general survey of this collection has been published. Dr Ken Teague has written on the early period of the collection and two manuscripts, in the Horniman Museum Archive, chart their overall historical growth. Specific historical aspects of the collection have been discussed by Annie Coombes and Anthony Shelton. A summary statistical survey has been published by the Museum Ethnographers Group, while the Oceanic collections are reported in the 1979 UNESCO survey. The mask collections have been extensively reported and surveyed in Anthony Shelton’s Masks, the footwear collections are documented in Natalie Tobert’s Feet of ingenuity, and the headwear in Pitt and Norris’s Catalogue of headwear. Other parts of the collection have been described in various published guides to exhibitions and in academic monographs and journals. In the catalogue Wrapping Japan, for example, Fiona Kerlogue gives an overview of our Japanese collections, and her article ‘Theoretical perspectives and scholarly networks: the development of the collections from the Malay world at the Horniman Museum 1898 –2008′ provides an extensive examination of the Museum’s Malaysian collections. The Museum’s own series Contributions in Critical Museology and Material Culture has also included articles on different aspects of the collections. The two volumes on Collectors edited by Anthony Shelton, Nicky Levell’s Oriental visions, and Re-visions edited by Karel Arnaut, cover different aspects of the collections.
Demonstrable quality, uniqueness or rarity
Oceania
Within the Pacific collection there are notable holdings from the Bismarck Archipelago, two chalk figures and five tatuana masks from New Ireland, extensive Papuan Gulf material including gope boards, personal decoration, etc. The collection contains two Solomon Island canoes, three particularly fine anthropomorphic prow ornaments, a Cook Island canoe and models and canoe attachments from elsewhere in the Pacific. There are also two important and rare dance paddles from the Easter Islands and a rare whisk handle from the Astral Islands.
The collection is continuously being improved and boasts notable acquisitions such as a collection of Baining masks from the 1950s and 1970s used in night ceremonies and a well-documented field collection, including video footage and photographic documentation, of 13 uvol headdresses from the Melkoy people. This is one of only two of its type in the UK and forms part of the original van Bussal collection shared between the Museum of African and Oceanic Art, Paris; Museum für Völkerkunde, Stuttgart; and the Royal Albert Museum, Exeter. Other acquisitions include two contemporary dance headdresses from the Torres Strait, Australia, acquired to compliment two fine 19th century examples in tortoiseshell held by the Museum.
Asia
The Asian collections account for about 42% of the total holdings, or approximately 41,023, items and are particularly rich in art, masks and puppets, and material culture from India, China, Japan (including objects from the Ainu), Sri Lanka and Burma. Many of the Indian and Japanese holdings formed part of Horniman’s original collection and include important examples of stone sculpture, ritual objects and Japanese, Chinese and Indian costumes.
The Mary Burkett collection of felt from the Middle East, acquired in the 1980s, is regarded as the reference collection for such material in the UK. Rare individual items include a Brunei gantang or rice measure, believed to be the only one in a UK collection; a pair of enormous cloisonné vases; a summer palanquin and a bamen, or horse mask from Japan; rare documents relating to secret societies in China; a mask and funerary post from the Jorai people of Vietnam; a bearskin war coat from Borneo; and so on.
Africa
The African collections, numbering an estimated 18,486 objects, represent 19% of the total ethnographic holdings. The geographical range of the collection is extensive, covering the whole of the continent, with virtually every modern African state represented. The collections boast several important pieces include two Afo figures donated by Ruxton, Nkisi Nkondi figures, an Ibibio figure with suspended sword, and several groups of African masks. Consequently, several of our important pieces have been included in major exhibitions both locally and internationally in institutions such as the Royal Academy of Arts, the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Word Cultures in Göteborg, Sweden.
Americas
The American collection contains about 8,500 objects, including artefacts from North America, Latin America and the Caribbean. It holds exceptional pieces, like the Inuit bucket decorated with bone figures, and three Inuit masks. Also included in this collection are 59 Northwest Coast pieces transferred from the Museum of the American Indian, New York (1934), which include fine examples of Haida material; two Kwatiutl masks and related material transferred from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew (1958); as well as field collections and purchases such as a collection of Inuit seal skin clothing from the Church Missionary Society (1965).
Europe
A unique aspect of the collection is that it contains substantial and important folk art collections from western and central Europe as well as Scandinavia. Until recently, the Horniman has been the only museum in the UK committed to research in this area. Notable among these collections are extensive holdings of textiles, costume, wooden utensils, paintings on glass, agricultural and domestic implements, puppet theatres and masks from Romania, Poland, Norway and the Tyrol region. In the opinion of Deborah Swallow, Director of the Courtauld Institute and former Keeper of Indian Collections at the V&A, ‘the Horniman certainly has the widest range of early 20th century European folk costume in this country and possibly in Europe as a whole’.
The Museum’s European collections include rare items from Scandinavia such as calendar staffs, ceremonial drinking cups and mangle boards. Archaeological material includes some of the earliest evidence of human activity in England as well as Danish material from the collection of the first Lord Avebury. Other individual items include a coracle from Ireland, a set of penitents’ costumes from Spain, and carnival masks from Sardinia.
Aesthetic significance
Although from 1901 the Horniman has focused much of its collecting policy on material culture, the collections nevertheless also contain objects of outstanding aesthetic significance. Material of this nature arrived under the directorship of Otto Samson (1947–1965), formerly a curator of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, who had a special interest in art. Samson used his extensive continental connections to make collections of Yoruba gelede masks from the Republic of Benin and built an extraordinary collection of masks from the Pende, Yaka, Suka, Kuba and Congo peoples of Zaire.
The African collection contains important historical and archaeological collections, including extensive Egyptian burial material, some superb examples of 19th-century high status Aymara metalwork and primitivist paintings from Ethiopia, and Benin brasses and ivories, purchased from W. J. Wider of the British Punitive Expedition of 1897.
Objects of outstanding aesthetic significance may also be found in other regional areas of the collections. For example, many of Frederick Horniman’s early purchases of statuary and other religious artefacts from Asia are aesthetically strong, especially examples from Japan and India. Some of the Chinese archaeological ceramics are of fine quality. There are also a small number of 20th-century paintings from Bali, India and Mongolia.
Items of aesthetic significance in the European collections fall chiefly into the category of naïve art, such as scrimshaw, icons and wooden carvings. There are also examples of sculpture and ceramic art from the Greek and Roman period as well as mediaeval alabaster religious sculpture.
Cultural significance
Since the 1950s, the Museum has focused on building ethnographic archives representing the material culture of people from all parts of the world. These collections are the product of in-depth field research and provide extensive documentation of the cultures concerned, of technologies used and of the structure of human society in different ecological zones. Outstanding among these unique resources which provide type specimens of material culture at specific historical times are:
Colin Turnbull, the Mbuti people of Zaire (1956–9);
James Woodburn), the Hadza of Tanzania (1966;
Valerie Vowles (with the National Museum and Art Gallery, Gaborone), the San of Botswana (1970–71);
Jeremy Keenan, the Tuareg of Algeria (1971);
Eric Bigalke (with the East London Museum, South Africa), Transvaal and Transkei;
Jean Brown and Cordelia Rose (with the Institute of African Studies, Nairobi), the Samburu of Kenya (1972);
Nancy Stanfield, the Yoruba of Nigeria (1970s–80s);
Keith Nicklin, Luo pottery from Kenya (1987);
Keith Nicklin, Southeast Nigeria groups (1980s);
Keith Nicklin, the Yoruba of Nigeria (1990);
Keith Nicklin, the Ogoni of the Delta region of Nigeria (1992);
Natalie Tobert, Sudanese material culture (1996);
Rodney Gallup, collection of 65 masks and other material from Mexico (1960 and 1967);
Marion Wood, collection of Navajo textiles and weaving implements, including dyes, Arizona and New Mexico, USA (1980);
Natalie Tobert, collection of modern Pueblo pottery, Arizona and New Mexico, USA (1992);
Anthony Shelton, collection of 40 Hopi Katsina dolls representing principal spirit beings, and tracing stylistic development in carving from 1950s–80s (1996);
Nicholas Guppy, collection of Wai Wai material culture, Guyana (1969);
Philip Peberdy, collection of Wai Wai material culture, Guyana (1949);
Anna Lewington, ethnobotanical collection illustrating folk medicine of Highland Ecuador (1986);
Gosewijn van Beek and Kateline van Beek-Auer, the Bedamuni, Western Province, Papua New Guinea (1978–9);
Marilyn Strathern, Mount Hagen peoples, Papua New Guinea (1966);
Cambridge Expedition to Budhopur, Pakistan (1960–61);
Beryl de Zoete archive of film, photography and artefacts (collected 1936);
Ken Teague, Uzbekistan (2001);
Fiona Kerlogue, Cambodia (2003);
Fiona Kerlogue, Bali (2008–9);
Romanian government, transferred from Museum of Peasant Art (1957).
Description of existing Musical Instruments collection
Quality and variety of collection
The Horniman Museum aims to include sound-producing objects from all periods of history, from all parts of the world, and from all musical traditions in the Musical Instrument collection. It is currently responsible for some 9703 examples, which are used extensively by all sectors of the public, including specialist scholars and musical instrument makers. While the MGC report Museums of music was inconclusive as to which museum had the largest collection in the country, the authors acknowledged that the Horniman ‘has some claims to being more comprehensive than any other in the UK’. The Museum’s instruments feature in numerous works of reference.
In 1901, Frederick Horniman’s gift to the public included some 200 musical instruments. Until the 1950s, the Museum’s Ethnography Section was responsible for the Musical Instrument collections. The quality and variety of the instruments acquired during that period reflect the ethnography holdings, since they were obtained from the same sources. Collections of objects for both the Anthropology and Musical Instrument sections, such as the systematic ethnographic material culture archive of the Bedamuni of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea (van Beek, 1978–9), and the musical instruments, costumes, masks and video performance of Chhau dance from Orissa and Bihar, provide tangible evidence of the continuing policy of documenting connections between the instruments and their cultural contexts. This policy is carried through into exhibitions curated by staff, as seen in temporary exhibitions such as Music from India and the permanent exhibition in the Music Gallery, where short extracts of video footage, from longer films documenting performance technique and contexts, are an integral part of the exhibition. The Boosey & Hawkes display includes a range of material from the archives that contextualises instrument use and consumption. Instrument makers’ tools and footage of instrument makers at work are also included. The At Home With Music display, opened in 2014, includes silent footage showing both exterior and interior views of the types of instruments on display and close-ups of the actions or working parts. In addition, it includes four accessioned historical keyboard instruments maintained in playing order and used on a regular basis for public performances.
In 1947 the status of the musical instrument collection was consolidated by the acquisition of the Carse Collection of over 300 historic woodwind and brass instruments from the European orchestral and band tradition. The collections of Percy Bull were added the following year, and in 1956, the transfer was made of a large part of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s collections of instruments from countries outside Europe. Jean Jenkins, the well-known ethnomusicologist and broadcaster, was appointed to the post of Curatorial Assistant in the early 1950s and became the first Keeper of Musical Instruments when the musical collections were formed into a separate department in 1960. Under her guidance, the ethno-musicological collections were developed both by fieldwork and by further transfers of substantial collections of instruments from other museums. Since 1978, the Musical Instrument Section has instigated the acquisition of a number of important collections, including the Dolmetsch collection; the collection of the Concertina Museum in Belper, Derbyshire (Wayne collection); the Boosey & Hawkes collection; and the collections of instruments and recordings from rural India acquired in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive between 2000 and 2005.
The range and types of the instruments represented in the collections is indicated below. The Museum’s instrument collection is particularly rich in historic European wind and brass wind instruments from the Carse and Bull collections.
The Boosey & Hawkes collection includes over 300 historical musical instruments, mostly woodwind and brass, including those made by Boosey & Hawkes and their subsidiaries and predecessors. It also features many instruments by other makers that illustrate important English and continental developments in design and manufacture. The Boosey & Hawkes Collection was begun in the late 19th century by David James Blaikley, a pioneer of brass instrument design and the works manager of Boosey & Co until 1930. Blaikley collected a wide range of historical and contemporary instruments from around Europe, many of which were examples of the latest developments in instrument design and technology. Boosey’s instrument makers clearly used the collection as an in-house design resource. The collection continued to grow in the 20th century, particularly during the curatorship of Eric McGavin. It is unique in that it reflects what was of historic interest and value to instrument makers and designers and is a rare survival of an instrument making firm’s factory collection. The collection also reflects the corporate history of Boosey & Hawkes and their great influence on instrumental music in Britain. This aspect of the collection has become even more significant with the closure of the instrument making arm of Boosey & Hawkes in December 2005, which marked the end of large-scale musical instrument making in Britain.
The Wayne collection of over 600 examples of concertinas and related European free reed instruments such as accordions and harmoniums represents a chronicle of the concertina, from its invention by Charles Wheatstone in 1829, with the earliest models and prototypes, through to its late 20th-century revival. It is complemented by a large collection of Asian free reed instruments from which the European instruments derive, including an elaborately gilded Japanese sho or mouth-organ, made for the orchestra of a named 18th-century Japanese nobleman. Single and double reed instruments include shawms from Africa and Asia, and the collection of bagpipes from Europe ranges from French instruments of the 18th century to a late 20th-century Polish example. Wind instrument collections made in Romania in 1867, 1957 and in the 1980s are among the most numerous of the Museum’s holdings in East European traditional instruments.
Among the stringed instruments, there are many varied examples of late 19th- and early 20th-century Indian long-necked lutes. Lyres from East and Central Africa are one of the strengths of the collections, as are zithers from many parts of the world. The bowed instruments are similarly representative of the world’s traditions; historic European examples include a number of kits and viols with some important English examples in the Dolmetsch collection. The 30 stringed keyboard instruments range from 17th-century Italian virginals to 20th-century player pianos, including later instruments of the early music revival by Arnold Dolmetsch. Among the collection of organs is a composite instrument with a rank of 17th-century Iberian pipes, a bureau organ attributed to the great London 18th-century maker of Swiss origin, John (Johannes) Snetzler, and a fine example (in playing order) of a late 18th-century English chamber organ attributed to Joseph Beloudy. The mechanical musical instruments include late 18th-century barrel organs, musical boxes, instruments reproducing recorded sound and an orchestrion (a large barrel organ) probably made for a German roller-skating rink, which once stood in the main hall of Frederick Horniman’s private museum, greeting visitors with favourites such as the overture to Hérold’s Zampa (1831). Electro-acoustic guitars and electronic synthesisers also feature in the collection and are part of a considered policy of collecting musical instruments from popular music traditions.
The Museum houses a large number of drums used in dance and ritual, from all parts of the world. Many have associated documentary evidence or video footage of how they were used. Bells and rattles include archaeological material from Roman Britain, Egypt, China, Luristan, and Peru; instruments used in religious rituals and dances in Africa, Asia and the Americas; and horse bells and other animal bells from the UK, Europe, Asia and Africa. South-East Asian gamelan orchestras of percussion instruments with bronze keys are played in both Java and Bali, and examples have been collected by a number of music colleges and museums in the UK. The Horniman Museum houses a village gamelan ringgeng, with iron keys, the only example of this vernacular version of the gamelan ensemble in the UK.
The Horniman houses over 75 examples of an instrument found in many of the musical cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, the plucked lamellaphone mbira. This instrument is rapidly disappearing in Africa, and many of the Museum’s examples are now no longer made. An example of a mbira dza vadzimu is the subject of a focused collection on the technology of making this instrument.
This year, the Horniman’s double manual Jacob Kirckman harpsichord of 1772 has been joined by three other contrasting historic keyboard instruments that have also been restored to playing condition and are used principally for performance-demonstrations in the Music Gallery. They are virginals by Onofrio Guarracino of Naples made in 1668, a square piano by Adam Beyer, made in London in 1777 and a chamber organ attributed to Joseph Beloudy of London, made circa 1800. They were purchased by the Horniman from the Finchcocks collection, with generous sponsorship from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Demonstrable quality, uniqueness or rarity
The Adam Carse Collection of over 300 woodwind and brass instruments from the Western orchestral and band traditions contains many outstanding items including:
a horn by William Bull of London, made in 1699 and the earliest dated example of this instrument made in England;
a pair of flutes by Thomas Lot of Paris, complete with its shagreen-covered and silk-velvet lined case, which may have been made for a member of the French Royal family in the 18th century;
a group of recorders, flutes and oboes by Thomas Stanesby and Thomas Stanesby Jr who were among the most highly-regarded makers of woodwind in
London during the early 18th century (the oboes are particularly rare);
an important experimental model of bassoon by Schott of Mainz, incorporating a prototype version of Almanräder’s keywork;
a tenor saxhorn by Adolph Sax inscribed ‘La Famille Distin’ and ‘T. Distin, London’ (this instrument may have been presented to the Distins on their 1844 visit to Sax in Paris; Saxhorns, through the agency of Distin, became the mainstay of the British brass band);
Carse’s library, which includes 19th-century books not held by the British Library or the Bodleian Library;
Carse’s archive, which includes rare ephemera from the 18th and 19th centuries.
A collection of more than 300 instruments from oriental art traditions as well as a number of folk traditions, built up in the 19th century, was transferred from the V&A in 1956. This collection includes:
an outstanding group of classical instruments made, possibly for the Persian court, in Shiraz during the 18th and early 19th centuries, including the earliest extant Persian kamanche (spike fiddle) which dates from c.1800, and was collected by Sir William Ousely, British ambassador to Persia – an instrument which should be brought to the attention of the authors of a recent scholarly study who state ‘… that … to our knowledge, no Persian musical instruments currently exist that belong to a period prior to 1850′;
a large group of Romanian, Turkish and Georgian instruments bought at the Paris Exhibition of 1867
a large group of 19th-century African instruments including a Zande harp described as ‘un chef-d’oeuvre de la lutherie zandé du début du XIXe siècle’.
The Victoria and Albert Museum transfer also includes unique examples of Western instruments, such as the late 18th century monochord by Longman and Broderip of London. The makers claimed that this instrument facilitated tuning by amateurs in all kinds of keyboard instruments, and it is the subject of an entire article in volume 52 of the Galpin Society Journal.
The report by Kate Arnold-Foster and Hélène La Rue identifies some of the areas where the Horniman Museum has the only public collection in Britain of a particular group of instruments. These, and other notable examples, are:
popular music:
a collection of popular instruments including electric guitars and guitar synthesisers from 1937 to the present;
a collection of popular keyboard instruments including electronic instruments from the 1950s to the present;
the Wayne collection of over 600 concertinas and other European free-reeds including the 19th-century ledgers of the C. Wheatstone & Co concertina factory; described as a ‘spectacular collection of instruments’, this acquisition answers the lack of a public collection demonstrating the work of Wheatstone.
The collection includes many individual instruments of outstanding quality and interest. For example, the German baroque lute by J. C. Hoffmann of Leipzig is the only k
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