Items

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  Mariner's compass

  This mariners’ compass was collected by a Canadian physician working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Back in August 2015, I asked Dr. Simon Bryant to document his perspective of the migrant crisis unfolding on the Mediterranean. At the time, he was stationed on the 40-metre rescue vessel, MY Phoenix. This compass was found in an inflatable migrant boat after all the passengers (108) had left. Initially, I had hoped that Dr. Bryant would collect objects that spoke directly to the medical experience of migrants. He did collect various items that reflected this harrowing experience, but he did something even more important - he collected objects that related to the overall experience of the migrants. Since collecting it, the object has moved in an out of multiple contexts. Some of the objects from that initial collection have been displayed down the road at Pier 21, Canada’s Museum of Immigration. They have also been on display at Canada’s Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg. The compass eventually returned to China was part of Srajana Kaikini’s exploration of objects, relations and curatorial practice at the 2016/17 Shanghai Biennale. Back in China, the compass had returned to its context of manufacturing, as well as region of the world reputed as the inventors of the magnetic compass. When the object arrived at our museum in Ottawa, I was surprised that is was plastic. From the images I assumed that it was a brass and glass instrument found on many ships, and in many museum collections around the world. There is something telling about this plastic version of an iconic navigation instrument being used for such a desperate and dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean.
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  Camp of the Chorographic Commission in Yarumito, Colombia.

  This watercolor was created by Venezuelan Carmelo Fernández (1809–87), one of the three official draftsmen and painters of the Chorographic Commission, an ambitious Colombian enterprise to map the country, including its mineral resources, between 1850 and 1859. The Commission was led by the Italian born Agustín Codazzi (1793–1859), who involved members of his family: his wife Araceli de la Hoz served as de facto quartermaster, chief logistician, and hostess, while his daughter Constanza and her siblings assisted with reproducing maps. His sons Domingo and Lorenzo also participated in the group’s explorations. The Commission counted on interpreters, porters, muleteers, peons, baqueanos, all led by the butler José Domingo Carrasquel. The watercolor shows a character with a spyglass, presumably a naturalist, and the daily life of the camp, where it was necessary to cook, care for horses and mules, organize samples, notes and reports, as well as pitch and repair tents. Observations were not made in a vacuum, requiring numerous assistants, go-betweens, and wider support networks to make it possible to look, interpret, measure, and collect.
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  Lunario de un siglo

  Buenaventura Suárez (1679-1750), a Jesuit from Santa Fé (in present-day Argentina), spent most of his life as a missionary in the Río de la Plata Basin, where he composed these lunar ephemerides, published in Lisbon in 1748. This specific copy is a poignant reflection of the social structure within what would become the largest Jesuit mission in history, ultimately destroyed during the Guaraní Wars in the mid-18th century. Returning to South America, initially the copy belonged to Suárez himself, and later it was owned by Juan Sixto Mbiti, the Guaraní deputy "corregidor" of the village of San Lorenzo Mártir, in what is now Brazil. Besides having been written in Paraguay, printed in Lisbon, sent back to the author, and finally passing into the hands of a Guaraní official—knowledge in circulation in a most literal sense—the book includes a century-long lunar calendar and eclipse canon, along with the longitude differences between various major cities worldwide and the small locality of San Cosme, which effectively becomes the "center" of the world.
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  Foto de Salomón Briceño Gabaldón (1829-1912), taxidermist in Mérida, Venezuela

  Salomón Briceño Gabaldón (1829-1912) es un excelente ejemplo de una especie de "centro de conexiones científicas". Aprendió taxidermia directamente del propio pintor, naturalista, viajero y taxidermista alemán Christian Anton Göring (1836-1905). A su vez, Göring había aprendido el oficio de su padre, en Alemania. Christian Antón llegó a Venezuela en 1866, y en 1869 llegó a Mérida, donde permaneció un tiempo, y conoció a Briceño Gabaldón. Este último llegó a ser tan competente en la profesión que envió ejemplares durante más de 20 años a museos de Europa y Estados Unidos. Además, Briceño Gabaldón enseñó el oficio a un hijo y una hija, que continuaron su tarea de colecta, taxidermia y envío a colecciones, sobre todo europeas por varias décadas después de su muerte. Un nutrido grupo de sus especímenes fueron conocidos por primera vez para las ciencias gracias a sus envíos a los museos metropolitanos. En total, la familia Gabaldón preparó más de mil ejemplares durante más de 70 años ininterrumpidos, haciendo circular conocimiento sobre vertebrados de los Andes venezolanos entre Sudamérica, Norteamérica y Europa. Consideramos a la figura del personaje tan estimulante, y con una serie de ramificaciones y extensiones de su trabajo e influencia, que juzgamos necesario proponer la difusión de su fotografía, acompañada de esa breve reseña biográfica. Se tendría con él un ejemplo de un naturalista criollo, que sobresale en su arte, y es capaz de imponer nueva información a museos y centros de cálculo europeos y norteamericanos, realizando un labor titánica, en una época donde las condiciones de trabajo y procesamiento de esa muestras no eran precisamente fáciles. Además, formando a una generación de sucesores en el culto de su arte/oficio. Tratándose de solamente una foto de una única persona, se podría llegar a pensar que la información que ésta aporta al observador sea limitada. Por ello, ha hecho falta aportar información adicional, en forma de una breve introducción a su biografía y logros científicos y de trabajo, como la expuesta en la pregunta anterior.
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  Chinese celestial globe

  These globes from 1830 reflect how global exchanges produced new objects of knowledge and how the places where science happened were transformed. Qi Yanhuai, an official from Suzhou, manufactured this globe to update the imperial star catalog called the Compendium of Computational and Observational Astronomy (1723) and its Supplement (1742), the result of efforts by Jesuit and Chinese astronomers. By the 1820s the data was judged to be out of date and consequently astronomers such as Qi Yanhuai and Zhang Zuonan conducted new observations. These globes, therefore, demonstrate how Chinese users applied such translated models for their own purposes. Moreover, these globes expanded the audience for who produced astronomical knowledge. During the 18th century, exchanges occurred primarily at the Imperial court with Jesuit missionaries and other go-betweens. Yet that knowledge was limited. Only a handful of libraries had access to such printed books or manuscripts. These celestial globes aimed to distribute this knowledge more broadly through a different media and experience. They simplified computation and allowed for most educated people to participate. One remarkable feature of these globes is that they also function as clockwork devices. Created by Chinese clockmakers, these mechanisms transferred a global technology into a useful system for Chinese officials and families. The clock reported hours and time according to the traditional system of timekeeping in China, rather than simply a wall decoration. Moreover, since some globes included bells for hours of sunrise and sunset, the clocks could also be used as a practical device for bureaucratic needs to report those times to the city watch. More than just repurposing technology in a local context, Qi Yanhuai claimed that this feature was in fact what made them so useful as knowledge making devices. Although some conservatives viewed elaborate automata as wasteful and unnecessary or as appealing to base senses for popular audiences, Qi said that clockwork allowed one to check and evaluate celestial positions with just a single glance. They made calculations easier. “If your household has one, even your wife and children will be able to know the stars,” he said. Although clockwork connected this device to the world of entertainment, Qi suggested they were “Chinese instruments.”
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  The Game of the New U.S. Merchant Marine

  This game was developed as part of the publicity campaigns to build the "shipmindedness" of the modern United States under the auspices of the U.S. Shipping Board. This civilian board oversaw the massive ship building program of 1917–20 to support the entry of the U.S. into WWI; after the Armistice it promoted a maritime vision of the modern world. Geographical and economic games were an established genre in the 19th and early 20th century. This game is noteworthy for its promotion of technological change and the modern conditions of shipping—it was the opposite of nostalgic visions of geographical exploration or the dangers and adventures of a sailor's life.
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  Pocket Compass Sundial, Spanish

  As with all pocket sundials, this instrument is made for travel. It carries a compass needle so that it can be aligned north-south, and its outer casing is engraved with the latitudes of many major European cities so that its shadow-casting gnomon can be adjusted as its owner moves. The predominance of Iberian cities in the latitudes list, and the presence of Antwerp as one of the four cardinal cities of Europe, suggests that it is Spanish-made and pre-dates the protestant reformation of Antwerp in the late 1560s. A second set of evidence points to the instrument’s global travels. The underside of the dial’s case has been heavily modified by a second artisan sometime after its original manufacture. A second set of city latitudes has been added, in a less assured hand. Remarkably, all of these cities are in the ‘New World’, and include both major Caribbean, Central, and South American cities (Havana; Mexico City; Lima; Quito), as well as many smaller and more obscure cities from across the north and west of the continent. Research links many of these cities to Spanish mining concerns; and so the dial appears to have been modified for use by a Spanish conquistador. Because this second latitude list cannot be matched to any known atlases or geographical texts in Spain, it is plausible that these modifications were made by an artisan working in Central or South America.
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  Intersex Somatotype

  This figurine was used during the Second World War to help students without clinical experience ‘recognize’, diagnose, and treat the supposedly pathological traits of intersex peoples’ bodies. As a teaching aid and visual representation, this somatotype demonstrates medical and scientific institutions’ role in solidifying oppressive biases across generations of practitioners. The project that created these somatotypes was inspired by similar models made at Johns Hopkins in the United States, showing how a transnational network of medical expertise interacted with the local practices solidifying the pathologization of intersex people among Canadians. In a 1999 interview, Marjorie Winslow (the artist) recalled that Dr. Robertson encouraged her to exaggerate the 'abnormal' qualities while sculpting the somatotypes. In this case, Winslow used actual human hair to simulate the body hair, pubic hair and moustache that physicians viewed as indicative of the supposed ‘pathology’.
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  Telegraph Cable

  The invention of telegraphy transformed the way that information was transmitted across space. This particular object represents an early example, donated to National Museums Scotland in 1855, at a time when the first transatlantic telegraph cable was being laid. This particular object represents not just the material heritage of this critical communications technology—it also demonstrates the instability of that heritage. The object, despite being only the 3rd object collected by the museum, has for the last fifteen years been classified as ‘unlocated’ in its collections stores. This object speaks to the history of the sources through which we tell the story of circulating knowledge. It also speaks to the fragility of this history—and how stories about loss of information are as critical to narratives of knowledge in transit as the stories that we find in the archives.
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  "Aloes in Monkey Skin"

  These two items from the Kew Economic Botany Collection show the ways in which aloes were packaged for international trade. Comparing the two distinct methods used to collect, prepare, and transport these specimens demonstrates how the international drugs trade was shaped by African and Native American technologies. Medicinal “aloes” are made from the leaf gel of several different species of the plant. The drug is a black colour and looks rather like the resin of a tree. The first image (Cat. no. 36522) shows Aloe perryi from Socotra, a small island off the coast of Yemen. These aloes were considered the best for medicinal use from at least the 1st century until the 19th century. The second image (Cat. No 36520) shows aloes from the Caribbean. These aloes come from the plant now known as Aloe vera. Both these types of aloe circulated internationally, but their packaging reflects the specific technologies and environments of the places where they were produced. In Socotra, the method of making aloes involved draining the leaf sap into a monkey skin. The sap was left to harden in the sun and then packaged in the same skin for export. Although these aloes come from Socotra, they were sold to traders from western India and marketed internationally from there. This explains the reference to the “East Indies” on the label. In the Caribbean between the 17th and 19th centuries, aloes were exported in gourds, and as such were often known as “gourd aloes”. In both Africa and the Americas, the gourd is used as a container also known as a calabash. In Mexico, it was used to contain pulque, the fermented juice of the agave plant. It was the confusion between agave (also called Aloe americana) and aloe that originally gave rise to the name Aloe vera.
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  Ami Stone Tool Collections

  Henri-Marc Ami made his career at the Canada geological survey, where he became convinced that all humans descended from Neanderthals. In the 1930s he created the Canadian School of Prehistoric Archeology in France and started collecting literally tons of prehistoric stone tools, notably at Combe-Capelle, at a time where no law limited the exportation of prehistoric artifacts. Ami's goal was to create collections for most Canadian university to train future archeologists. The collection speaks to the ethical issues that follow the belief in a shared human history when it comes to the collection and circulation of artifacts, notably with respect to the role it gives to Indigenous populations in human evolution and the role museums play today in the preservation of these collections that were acquired “far away from home”. Some of the tools are marked with labels indicating where they were collected. They are stored in a box along with a letter that indicates how the collection arrived at King’s College from the National Museum, after Ami's death.
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  Numeral Frame

  This well-used abacus comes from Mexico. It is not known who made it or when, although it is tentatively dated to around 1900. The abacus, as an aid to doing arithmetic, has a long history that can be linked to Roman times. China, Japan, Korea, and Russia have distinctive forms of the instrument. A French mathematician and soldier learned about it in Russia during imprisonment at the time of the Napoleonic wars and brought one back to France for teaching purposes. From there it spread to England and then the United States, where it came to be widely used in teaching at newly established public or common schools. As this example attests, the device also spread to Mexico. Abacuses made for doing commercial arithmetic, such as were common in Asia and Russia, tended to have uniform beads shaped for easy manipulation. Columns might be split, with one or two beads representing the digit 5 and the remaining the digit 1. When the abacus was adopted as a teaching device for young children, the beads became larger and were often colored.