The Horniman Museum

A recent trip to the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill (www.horniman.ac.uk) acquainted me with some eye-opening curiousities. Many of London’s more quirky museums emerged from the personal collections of wealthy businessmen with an interest in anthropology or science, in this case the Victorian tea trader Frederick Horniman.

I’ve always had a huge affection for creaky old Victorian museums. One of my favourite places to visit as a child was Dublin’s Natural History Museum (also known as the ‘Dead Zoo’), and I spent many an hour there wandering through its two labyrinthian floors of taxidermy. I recommend a visit whenever in Dublin.

The Natural History Museum, Dublin

The Horniman Museum also has a Natural History section, and one that threw up a few surprises for me.

I am stupidly soppy and sentimental about dogs, so I was quite taken aback by this somewhat disturbing vitrine containing the taxidermic heads of a number of domesticated dogs.  I can’t help but be amused by the Victorian lack of sentimentality that results in the display of severed pet heads in a family orientated museum….

And of course, the poor ol’ Dodo:

Another find that I was particularly interested in was the Haitian Voodoo Altar.

Vodou (Anglicised to Voodoo) seems to be a religion that amalgamates many different religious traditions, including the beliefs and practices of West African peoples, and Roman Catholic Christianity. Vodou was created by African slaves who were brought to Haiti in the 16th century and still followed their traditional African beliefs, but were forced to convert to the religion of their slavers

The altar acts as “the place where the living and the dead, the human and the divine, meet and communicate”

What was striking to me about the altar was the extraordinary mix of mysticism and kitsch. The poverty of the people compelled them to construct the altar from found objects , and imbue these objects with symbolic importance. Hence the beaded and sequinned whiskey bottles, plastic skulls, doll parts and brightly coloured fabrics. The use of dolls was especially intriguing, and to Western eyes gives the appearance of malevolence, and might contribute to Voodoo’s sinister reputation, a reputation that appears underserved. This from Wikipedia:

There is a practice in Haiti of nailing crude poppets with a discarded shoe on trees near the cemetery to act as messengers to the otherworld, which is very different in function from how poppets are portrayed as being used by vodou worshippers in popular media and imagination, i.e. for purposes of sympathetic magic towards another person. Another use of dolls in authentic Vodou practice is the incorporation of plastic doll babies in altars and objects used to represent or honor the spirits.

Voodoo Altar

Voodoo Altar

The Horniman Museum has an wonderful collection of masks from around the world.

My favourite is this one made of red abrus seeds, made by the Agras People of Northern Nigeria in the mid-twentieth century.

Abrus seed mask

Some other things that caught my eye at the museum:

Mask and marionette collection

Tree bark mask

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