120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight for the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1914

The Shell Postcard by Igor Muratov, Curator of Mollusca

Postcards were popular from the late nineteenth century and even now they have yet to be completely replaced by electronic communications. Malacologists (scientists, who study molluscs) have a long-standing tradition of congratulating each other every New Year, by sending “postcards” containing molluscan images.

One of the oldest and most interesting examples is the unusual “postcard” received on the 1^st of January 1914 by Henry Clifden Burnup (1852–1928), the founder of our molluscan collection, from a Japanese colleague. This “postcard” is actually the shell of Sunetta menstrualis (Menke, 1843), a bivalve marine mollusc from the family Veneridae, endemic to the waters around Japan. The outer sides of the shell have been polished, so the light corneous periostracum (outer layer of shell not made of calcium carbonate) remains only in a few places. The inner side of the shell is covered by golden ink and there is the same ink inscription on the outer side of one of the valves.

There is a little mystery here because the inscription on the shell is in Hiragana cursive script calligraphy that isn’t easily translated today.

Chemists, druggists, and theatrics: a new donation for the KwaZulu-Natal Museum

 Mr. Coyne holding one of the items donated: the ‘Dispensing Dept’ sign from the original shop.

Mr. Coyne, still residing in Pietermaritzburg, bought the oldest surviving pharmacy in the city some 40 years ago. The Medical Hall, as the pharmacy was called, was established in 1850 by a Dutch chemist, Nic van Zweel. The original building with its ‘Medical Hall’ sign is still standing in Church Street. 

Mr. Coyne and his father were both pharmacists, known as a ‘chemist and druggist’ back in the day. The Medical Hall closed down two decades ago and Mr. Coyne has now decided to donate some of its surviving wonders, such as chemist bottles from the c1930s, later medicine bottles from c1967, and a green poison bottle.

(a) Medicine bottles from the c1930s (b) green poison bottle

Chemists in the past used to mix and dispense medicines themselves, unlike today where we have ready-made and packaged medicines. Pill (cachet) makers were used to form tablets from powders that they mixed in the shop while the customer waits. Mr. Coyne’s donation of a pill maker was stored in a lovely wooden Fry’s chocolate box from the c1920s, together with handwritten remedy recipes, which Mr. Coyne and his late father used as pharmacists. The Medical Hall was in the Bouttell family before Mr. Coyne took over. The Bouttells also donated medical items to the museum years before. Thanks to these donations of historical significant objects, we can provide the public with a close, almost identical, replica of businesses and homes from more than 170 years ago. 

Fry’s Chocolate box containing the pill maker and associated accessories.

Not only did Mr. Coyne donate items from the last Victorian apothecary in PMB, but he also presented the museum with a wooden box filled with theatre wigs worn by his great (great) grandfather, Joseph Stirling Coyne, who was the most prolific playwright in England from 1835 up until his death in 1868. Joseph Stirling Coyne wrote more than 60 plays, 27 farces, and contributed to several newspapers and journals. He was also one of the editors of the popular Punch magazine. He sadly passed away from cancer at the age of 63, but his legacy lives on not only in theatre but through his great-grandson here in our very own Pietermaritzburg.

One of the many theatrical wigs donated

A visit to Patricia Vinnicombe’s childhood home

"My main aim has been to demonstrate that the Bushman rock paintings are concerned not so much with the commonplace, material aspects of life, but with the deeper philosophies which govern relationships between man and the world he lives in, between man and man, and between man and the Creator Spirit"

Patricia Vinnicombe, 1976: xix

Patricia Vinnicombe was one of the first researchers to look at the social context of Bushman rock art and raise its study from an amateur pursuit to a serious academic undertaking. As a talented artist in her own right, she also had a creative affinity with this imaginative art form and developed a method of copying the art that we still admire today.

Born in 1932, Vinnicombe grew up on the farm West Ilsley near Underberg. Her love of rock art began as a child viewing the paintings on this farm. While still a schoolgirl (she boarded at Girls High School in Pietermaritzburg) she began to take creative inspiration from the art. This ultimately resulted in the publication in 1976 of People of the Eland, lavishly illustrated with meticulous hand-painted copies. Many of these original works are now in the collections of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum.

Sign at the old entrance gate to the farm.

West Ilsley rock art site 2: Two part-human/part-animal figures, also known as therianthropes (left: eland, and right: baboon). Top: natural photograph, middle: digitally enhancement using DStretch, bottom: Vinnicombe’s hand-painted copy of the same pair of figures.

At the end of March Dr Justine Wintjes and Dr Ghilraen Laue of the Department of Human Science, KwaZulu-Natal Museum had the privilege to visit West Ilsley and see three of the six rock art sites on the farm that inspired Vinnicombe’s lifelong love of rock art.

West Ilsley site 2: Various human figures and faded eland.

In the sitting room of the old farmhouse it is possible to see rock-art-inspired imagery that Vinnicombe painted on the raw sandstone walls.