When I was 14 years old my family and I lived in Oxford for
a few months where my father was doing research and finishing a book. Because of
my young age, and protective mother, the only two places my younger sister and I
were allowed to go unsupervised was the self-service laundry and the Pitt
Rivers Museum, which was close to where we lived.
Despite the restrictions, we
were quite content with the arrangement; we knew no place more fun than the
Pitt Rivers. We used to spend days and days exploring all the cases, corner,
drawers and displays, drawing objects that drew our attention and stare at the
shrunken heads in disbelief, fascination and perhaps a little disgust. And now,
years later when seeing Pitt River’s ‘Small blessings’ amulet competition
advertised, I of course had to participate, as it would be an honor to be at
least in some little way part of the museum’s wonderful and strange world.
The museum received a well earned grant in order to catalogue and make accessible one of its diverse and beautiful amulet collections and I urge everyone to head over to the projects homepage and browse the online database and the multimedia section. There you can also see the competition entries, where I am very proud to say the amulet I submitted was described as ‘Pitt-River-esque’ and so one of my childhood obsessions has been materialized right around my neck.
The museum received a well earned grant in order to catalogue and make accessible one of its diverse and beautiful amulet collections and I urge everyone to head over to the projects homepage and browse the online database and the multimedia section. There you can also see the competition entries, where I am very proud to say the amulet I submitted was described as ‘Pitt-River-esque’ and so one of my childhood obsessions has been materialized right around my neck.
Small Blessings – homepage here!
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