Sympathetic Magic - Pitt Rivers Museum

 Sympathetic Magic

Pitt Rivers Museum - Oxford

Links used to find and learn about the exhibit:

https://romanmagic.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/magic-the-pitt-rivers-museum-a-reflection/
https://guerillaarchaeology.com/resources/witches-magic-and-medicine-pitt-rivers-museum/
https://romanmagic.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/magic-the-pitt-rivers-museum-a-reflection/
https://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/england/englishness-Object-biographies-details.html

The sympathetic magic exhibition is a collection of artefacts from around the world used in rituals of magical or spiritual nature. The collection was put together by General Augustus Pitt Rivers and was donated to Oxford University. The Pitt Rivers Museum  is a free, public display space incorporating the 18,000 or so archaeology, anthropological and ethnographic objects donated to Oxford University by General Augustus Pitt Rivers  and, subsequently, thoroughly expanded to over half a million individual objects. 



quote directly from the main website:

“In most ethnographic and archaeological museums the objects are arranged according to geographical or cultural areas. At the Pitt Rivers Museum, they are arranged according to type: musical instruments, weapons, masks, textiles, jewellery, and tools are all displayed to show how the same problems have been solved at different times by different peoples. Many of the cases appear to be very crowded, as a large percentage of the total collection is on view. In some instances, the ‘displays’ are essentially visible storage. If you look carefully you will see that actually a great deal of information is provided about individual objects. There are often small labels, many of them hand printed by the first Curator, which are very revealing. Other information was written onto objects and we also have more modern large display labels in most cases.”


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outcomes - 1

Image
 Outcome 1: The birth of the feminine This was a final piece I created on an A1 sheet of plywood. I covered the background with scraps of paper I found laying around in storage in my house to create texture. I stuck this down using PVA. Over the top of this I used a sponge to spread gold and copper paint over the top.  On separate watercolour paper I painted one of my fungi women and cut her out, before using more acrylic paint to stick her in place and create an almost explosion effect around her.  On further separate sheets of paper I used oil pastels and acrylic paint to create skulls which were also cut out and stuck to the bored using paint.  After waiting for this to dry, I used metallic paints to drip down the canvas as well as painting eyes and mouths on the bored in keeping with my motif usage.  Around the edge I used an art nouveau border to create definition and show the piece as finite and boxed in. All of these elements brought together create a whi...
Read more

Artist: Carolyn Clayton

Image
  Carolyn Clayton: Quoted from: https://www.cazamic.com/about-me/   “Hi, I am Carolyn Clayton and I just love to sculpt and create.  I was born in Folkestone, Kent, England but moved to Shropshire in 1996. Since 2004 I have worked as a part time demonstrator at Coalport China Museum. Through my love of making china flowers I have recently developed my ceramic flower people. My love of sculpting started at a very young age. I have always loved to make things or draw. I was a real blue peter kid and used to get though tons of home made salt dough. My art teacher was impressed with my drawing and said I should go to a London art college but I never did.  It wasn’t until I was around 30 that I ‘found clay’ as it were at a local college. I made a number of things which always got ‘woows’ off people. College then led to Wolverhampton university where I had the time of my life learning lots of different ceramic techniques such as screen printing, mold making and making gla...
Read more