Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum

 Some of the treasures in the world cultures collection have been on display for a few months in Bournemouth’s Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum. The fine collection here is not as well-known as it should be – here are some gems:

Annie and Merton Russell-Cotes

 Annie and Merton Russell-Cotes were the founders of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum. Built in the grounds of their business the Royal Bath Hotel, this extravagant villa was created to house their eclectic collection, gathered during their far-ranging travels.

The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum

The couple visited New Zealand in 1885 as part of a wider tour including Japan, China, and India. Their visit was at a time when Māori people were becoming aware of the European tourist market and were beginning to cater for it. As a result, Annie and Merton collected various items from the country, including a model canoe, currently on display in the museum.

A page from Annie's photograph album

Annie’s interest in Māori people and culture combined with her enthusiasm for natural history resulted in her creation of a scrapbook-style photograph album, a common pastime for Victorian women. Here she combined photographs with pressed leaves and plants gathered during the trip. The photographs were purchased, rather than taken by Annie, and include portraits of Māori people, buildings, and landscapes. Due to its fragility, it is not possible to display the artefact itself. As the pages have been digitized, however, it is possible to view the album in its entirety via a screen on display in the museum.

 

 

 

 

The newly displayed Yellow Room

Signs of affection are seldom found in African art; one exception appears to be represented by this figure of a couple, from the Dogon nation of Mali in west Africa – not only are they sitting together, their bottoms are sharing a single stool, and the man has his arm around the woman’s shoulder. However, too much should not be read into this; the figure represents an ancestral couple which was honoured each year, to emphasise the importance of continuity in the family. Each of them has equal responsibility in this, indicated by the similar significance and detail in the carving of each figure. Such figures were used in events celebrating the health of the community, also in funerals. There is a similar figure of a Dogon couple in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  

This large gourd is decorated all over the exterior surface in designs which are likely to be fern-fronds. A paper label is stuck inside: “Te-Oko used for human heads. From Orokora 1825” We have not found a place in New Zealand conforming to exactly this spelling; the most likely possibility is Omokoroa, a district in the Bay of Plenty, northern North Island. Also, there is no evidence for the usage mentioned. The only other example of the large decorated gourd we are aware of is in the British Museum, formerly in the Hooper collection, about which Steven Hooper says “decorated gourd bowls (‘oko’ .. ) were used to serve preserved food to chiefly guests” – emphasising the high status of such an object. The BM piece was probably collected by William Colenso, from Penzance, sometime soon after 1834; there are no details of where he acquired it – Hooper in the publication Pacific Encounters links the carving to tattoos on the face of man drawn at the Bay of Islands in 1769, in the northern tip of North Island; that is some 300k further north from Omokoroa.

Decorated gourd bowl, possibly from Omokoroa, Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand c.1825

 All images © Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth

Jolif Guest & Len Pole; September 2021

Jolif led the re-display of three of the historic rooms at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum. As part of this project she worked with museum consultant Len Pole to develop knowledge of the Museum’s collections. 

You can read more about the re-interpretation project here

Reinterpretation Project - Russell-Cotes | Russell-Cotes (russellcotes.com)