Visit to Manchester Museum Thursday 24th of April 2013

Living culture

When we arrived at the Museum we were greeted by the curator of this particular exhibition Mr Stephen Welsh who presented the exhibition Living Culture. I didn't see very much because it was all very dimly lit and because the artefacts are all very carefully preserved.
The first thing Stephen told us about was the high density of twins born in East Africa and when one died the mother carried with her and the surviving twin a wooden replica of the baby who had died. In today's modern age the wooden doll would be replaced by the usual plastic toys which are manufactured all over the world. The next items he described to us were facemasks which are mainly white with large staring eyes and used during celebrations. There was a large wooden figure which is the spiritual leader of that particular village and is revered by everybody there.
After further discussions inside the exhibition we went to the education centre where there was a handling session made available to us; Andrea Winn and two volunteers Neil and Collette helped Stephen to explain and describe the items we were handling.
In the 19th century wealthy industrialists, in particular a local man from Rochdale called Charles Heap, brought back souvenirs which were in the main donated to universities up and down the country, and Manchester was the recipient of very many. We were happy to learn that many of these important historical artefacts had been repatriated to their originating country. We looked at a shield which was made from a crocodile skin, it fitted over the arm and had been dried out to form a very hard protective shield. A very large shield in the shape of a face would have covered the torso as protection during battle. We handled a long-handled weapon that was topped by a spiked mace and another interesting item was a wooden paddle with carved ridges down the side which would have been used to beat bark from a tree in order to form materials.
We handled two boomerangs; one was very large and we understand was used to stun animals the other was about half the size and was used to flush out any animals in dense forest. There were two surprisingly small metal circular shields which were used in Japan as a hand shield to protect the Warriors using their samurais.
After our handling session university staff showed us some sketches which had been made in an effort to enable the visually impaired to look at the picture by feeling the raised outline. We were asked to give feedback on what we thought about our ability to identify the picture, I felt that the picture was much too complex and there was too much detail in it. It would have been easier to identify if the main features such as the ears and shape of the face, nose, and mouth had been more clearly accentuated.

We enjoyed some very nice biscuits and hot cups of tea and coffee after all our deliberations and would like to thank the museum for enabling our visit, Stephen the curator and Ann Hornsby for making our visit extremely enjoyable by the clarity and melodious delivery of their voices describing and explaining the items and artefacts that we looked at and handled. Our thanks to Mary and her very willing volunteers who collected us from home, escorted us around the exhibition and safely delivered us back again.