120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120th 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 1st 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.
