News
Monday, 18 July 2011
What use is a brick made of tea?
Made for Trade opens at the Pitt Rivers Museum on 18th July and will feature an extraordinary range of objects, photographs, and postcards highlighting the many ways we exchange and trade goods the world over.
“All the objects have a story to tell not just about their origin but also the people that traded them and the relationships that trade creates. We hope this exhibition will give visitors more insight into these journeys and the changing meanings that travel with them.” Julia Nicholson, Curator.
Items on display include Indian silk textiles, a solar-powered prayer wheel, Maasai jewellery, parrot feather ornaments, moccasins with red ‘Stroud’ cloth, lustrous glass beads from Venice and even a brick made of tea.
It will also feature a contemporary ‘Fantasy Coffin’ of the design used for a shop owner. To accompany this is a film of the coffin being made in the ‘Kane Kwei Coffin Workshop’ in Accra, Ghana. The film highlights the trend for themed coffins in Ghana that relate to the deceased’s trade or aspirations.
The exhibition forms part of a five-year project involving ten major European ethnography museums, entitled “Ethnography Museums and World Cultures - RIME”. The project is funded with support from the European Commission.
