Object Cataloguing and New Library Donation

Object Cataloguing

If you stopped by our Reading Room in the last couple of weeks, you might have seen a few curious objects dotting around the room. We have recently begun to catalogue the Society’s small object collection, which, alongside our artworks and maps, forms part of our Art Collections. Our long-term volunteer, Alex Williamson, is researching and cataloguing these objects – for the last few weeks he has been seen scrutinising objects of various sizes, colours and shapes, from delicate items like small Chinese playing cards (see featured image) to a colourful Central Asian quilt that is big enough to cover the whole dining table.

As some of you may know, in its early years the Society collected items for a museum. Many early members of the Society were generous benefactors, sourcing and donating items of interest from across all regions of Asia, covering anything from Tamil terrestrial globes, Chinese coins and Indian Buddha statues to Japanese chopsticks. In 1869, when the Society moved its premises from 5 New Burlington Street to 22 Albemarle Street, there was, unfortunately, limited space to house its fast-growing library and museum collections. A decision was made by the RAS Council on 15 February 1869 to temporarily store its museum objects in the Museum of the Indian Office on Leadenhall Street, London, with a view for a permanent agglomeration with the Museum’s collection. Collections from the India Museum, encompassing nearly 300 RAS objects, were subsequently transferred in 1879 to the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria & Albert Museum. From that point the Society’s objects saw further dispersal – some stayed with the V&A, some were transferred to the British Museum and other institutions, while some were eventually returned and retained by the Society or put on auction and sold.

Due to this dispersal, and subsequent donations and acquisitions from different sources, the objects that the Society looks after today as a whole are a collection of complex provenances. We know that some of our early objects have survived, such as a pair of miniature obelisks presented by Captain P. Rainier in 1832. But for most parts of the collection we only have a basic idea of what they might be, and have little knowledge of how they might have come into the Society’s holdings.

While further research is required, we have begun to add basic information of these objects to our Library catalogue to make them more accessible to researchers, as we work to increase our understanding of them. Catalogues for a small part of these objects have now been made available, some of which include a set of Chinese money-suited playing cards (RAS Object.001/SD.1); a sword probably of Turkish, Iranian or Indian origin (RAS Object.025); and a Brunei gong that has a possible connection to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (RAS Object.026).

To see a full list of our catalogued objects so far, head to the Advanced Search page, tick ‘object’ under Item Type and search. We hope to add more objects to our catalogue in the near future. Alex will continue to work on this project in the coming months, but in a different capacity: for the coming six months he will be taking up the role of Collections Assistant, supporting the delivery of Reading Room services and undertaking object and other cataloguing projects, so please stay tuned!

James Liu

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New Library Donation

We are delighted to have received a donation of Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves, presented to the Society by Professor Susan Whitfield. Published by Princeton University Press, this nine-volume set presents for the first time in print the comprehensive photographic archive of the Buddhist caves at Dunhuang that was created in the 1940s by James C. M. Lo and his wife, Lucy L. Lo. In total, the set features more than 3,000 original black-and-white photographs and, in doing so, presents an indispensable historical record. We are very grateful for the donation, and indeed for all such gestures by the Society’s members and supporters, which are an important way in which we can enrich our historical collections. In this case, the new addition adds meaningfully to our existing holdings about Dunhuang and the Silk Road, notably our Aurel Stein Collection of photographs.

Edward Weech