JPG Magazine: Stories: Photo Essay: The Pitt Rivers Collection, Oxford

The Pitt Rivers Collection, Oxford

By Catherine Hadler

6 July 2008

The Pitt Rivers Museum, located behind the Museum of Natural History in Oxford, is my favourite Museum. It houses a collection of objects gathered over the last hundred years or so, started by the wonderfully named Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers in 1884.

The collection includes archeological objects as well as everyday anthropological items from all over the world. Ancient and modern live side by side in dark cabinets and drawers. 300,000 or so objects are crammed together in apparent chaos so that every visit reveals a new thing to marvel at. My favourite objects are a witch in a silver bottle and a miraculous piece of ivory carving.

The collection is arranged over 3 floors in a beautiful building, and is full of children running around with torches looking for pieces of treasure. The biggest crowd is usually to be found looking at the cabinet of shrunken heads, trophies collected by various tribes. It's a tragic sight - many of the skulls are from children, but it is also quite compelling. Beautiful feathered cloaks from Hawaii are hidden behind velvet curtains, boats and totem poles line the walls, cabinets full of eerie masks (including one made from a woven spiders web) stare out at you from the darkness. Works of art on display alongside smoking paraphernalia, charms against snake bites and baskets made from electric cable.

It is the most fascinating place, but sadly it is currently undergoing rennovation and will be shut until next year.

The Museum of Natural History (which you go through to reach the Pitt Rivers collection) is like a smaller version of the more famous museum in London. It is full of skeletons and pickled animals and some really dreadful taxidermy. It is almost as fascinating as the Pitt Rivers museum, and well worth a visit.

http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/index.html