Tony Eccles:
When a visitor walks into the World Cultures gallery, they get a sense of the wider world and the local connection to that world. And what they see is a very small percentage of the full collection. In the collection, we have about 13,000 objects and there's about 5 to 7 per cent of that on display at any given time.
I am Tony Eccles. I am the curator of ethnography at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. We have this wonderful treasure trove from lots of different people who worked in the British Empire as missionaries, traders, colonial officers, soldiers, adventurers.
And they came back to Devon and, through time, they just donated their personal collections to us. What's so wonderful about that is that it highlights the Exeter, Devon, collection to the wider world, and that is very important.
There's a small group of artefacts that we have that come from the state of Victoria in Australia, and they were donated in 1868 by a chap who has family in Devon. And we knew nothing about this individual until a friend of mine from the British Museum was doing some work on the collections here, and we were talking about the names of some of the donors. And W.R. Hayman came up. And she asked: ‘Tell me that name again. Oh my goodness, we've got a little discovery here.’
I think what we have here is a collection that's been lost. Hayman was the manager of the very first Aboriginal cricket team in England. In 1868, they came over from Australia. It was a way for Hayman as a business opportunity to make money.
And once they finished the cricket game, they would do a demonstration of Aboriginal skills, like spear throwing and boomerang throwing. They played almost every day. They didn't get paid, even though they were supposed to, and one of them died during the tour and the rest of the players were not told about it.
This is a spear thrower. This was used by one of the Aboriginal cricketers to demonstrate spear throwing. So you have your spear, here, would be held in place with a peg. And you would run and then you would snap it. It's a successful hunting device.
And so we loaned this collection to Lord's for a special exhibition to commemorate this event, and the Aboriginal Australian cricket team came over, and they held the artefacts that their ancestors had made. So it’s quite a touching, important moment for everybody involved in that process – more so for the visiting players.
This is a coat that was donated by E.B. Penney in 1868. Its provenance is given as Mexico, but from initial research has shown that it's likely to be a product of Spanish trade from Mexico to Asia. Now, this coat is really interesting because it's deerskin pretending to be cowhide.
You have representation of wealthy people here, but also servants, church as well. So we know that this is a time of the insertion of Catholicism in Mexico. So it's indicative of that time.
And we are trying to find out who E.B. Penney was. We know he was a trader, but we don't know any more. Certainly, we know nothing about the acquisition of this piece but, when we do, we will display it with that story. It just requires a lot more scholarship.
So, when a visitor comes into the gallery, I'd like them to think not everything was stolen. There's a lot of things that were purchased or gifted or found. And I don't mean unethical acquisition. There are things that are gifted and made for visitors and friends and people who have travelled worldwide.
What we are trying to talk about honestly in the gallery is opening out those real histories of the objects, looking at different perspectives, trying to be as inclusive as possible, so it's not just a one-sided, unfair narrative that may have existed last century. We engage with those communities and their voices need to have a stronger presence.
And, you know, we want to show our donors in an honest light for who they really were, so we make items in the gallery available for communities on religious days. So we have a very strong connection with our local Hindu organisation and the community in Exeter. And we want to be relevant to all of our other communities as well, both here in the UK and in Exeter and abroad.
