My family had a shrimping business on Blackpool beach, and every day would trawl on the beach for their catch. The shrimps (small, prawn-like shell fish) would then be brought back to the family home, and boiled up in a huge pan in our parlour. This sign advertised the shrimps that could then be bought from my mum's house in Blackpool in the 1930s.
Ms Warbrick, Deputy Head of Sixth Form
This wooden elephant is from the Punjab province of India, and would originally have had little tusks (probably made of ivory) inserted in the holes underneath the trunk.
The person who gave me the elephant explained that they had gone missing when the elephant was packed up for a house move that her parents made many years earlier, but that she preferred the elephant without the tusks, as the ivory would have made her think about the real elephant from which it had been taken.
I was given the elephant by the mother of a friend I met while volunteering in Tamil Nadu at a school in the Nilgiri Hills, and he was working at a local hospital. When we finished our volunteering placements, we travelled from southern India up to northern India, and stayed with his family in Chandigarh. I was given the wooden ornament as a leaving present after my stay; the small elephant inside the larger one represents the safety of a protective place at which you are always welcome, and also the hopefulness of new life.
Ms Dearden, Sixth Form Pastoral Assistant, Cheney School
This is a strategy board game between two players.Many cultures around the world have a similar version of this ‘mancala’ game, including East Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, but this is the version from the Philippines.
Sungka begins with seven shells in each of the small rows of pits. The goal is to take in turns picking up a set of shells, then putting the shells into one pit at a time going around clockwise. Dropping the final shell into an empty pit allows you to capture your opponent’s shells and you win by having more shells than your opponent.
It is a game that has allowed me to keep in touch with my Philippine roots after over fifteen years living in the UK, but I am ashamed to say that I don’t often have any luck with Sungka, as it involves a startling amount of strategy, focus and quick maths. Nevertheless, I have spent many a blissful summer lazying around in Port Meadow playing this over some chicken adobo and oxtail kare-kare shared with fellow Filipinos.
Dr Marco Narajos, Science Teacher at Cheney
This mug was one of a limited run of mugs made by an underground restaurant in Seattle, and given to regular customers.
It was donated to us by Ellen Gersh, Data Manager at Cheney School.
These dolls belonged to our grandmother, who we called ‘Gaga’. Her name was Carol Rose Pesskin and she was born in Johannesburg, capital of South Africa in 1937. Her grandparents had fled persecution in what was then Lithuania from pogroms visited by the Russian imperial authorities on her Jewish Ashkenazi community.
She grew up speaking Afrikaans and Yiddish (a language spoken by Eastern European Jewry which is a mixture of Hebrew, German as well as English and French. We don’t know where she got these Ndebele dolls, but the Ndebele are the local tribe living in the north-east of South Africa (where Johannesburg is), so perhaps she knew some Ndebele people who gave her the dolls, or perhaps she bought them in a market.
The Ndebele women are famous for their bead work, making the colourful neck hoops they wear as well as these bride dolls. Dolls like these two would have been given to a girl the day she married by her immediate family in the hope she would make a big and healthy family.
Lola (Year 11) and Saskia (Year 10) Pesskin
Local Artist Mark James has kindly donated his painting on wood panel, "The Eternal and Infinite Universe" to the Living Museum collection.
He explains:
"This painting, TEIAU 2019, is a smaller 2019 version of The Eternal And Infinite Universe 1994 with the same text (but without the last half - which would have made it too long for this painting). The text simply encapsulates a theory of the universe, or multiverse, according to which our visible universe should be accelerating apart (because it is falling gravitationally out towards the greater mass of the infinity and many other cosmoses).
Historically, back in 1994 when the original was painted, no one thought that the 'universe' could be accelerating apart. It was thought that after the initial expansion of the big bang (whatever caused that) gravity would be slowing the momentum down. There was a mystery in this scenario though, which was that according to the present rate of expansion (aka the Hubble constant) the universe was calculably only 10 billion years old, and many astronomers thought that was not old enough to account for the apparent age and state of evolution of many galaxies in our visible universe.
I figured that if, instead of the expansion having slowed down from a faster time, it had speeded up from a slower time, then that would mean the visible universe was older, and could then account for its state of evolution. Of course I also needed to think of an explanation for why the visible universe would be accelerating part - and that was included in the 94 painting."
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing using a printing press. Many copies are produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper.
This was the normal form of printing text from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century until the 19th century. It remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second half of the 20th century.
Reading and books have been one of the greatest loves of my life from a very early age, and I think this artefact is beautiful (I love just about anything with lots of little cubby holes!) and preserves part of the history of the printing tradition. I also chose it because books and printing are a defining part of the history and way of life of the city of Oxford.
I remember discovering as an adult that "upper case" and "lower case" letters were named after where the small and capital letters were stored in printers' trays. It was really fascinating to find out the way these trays had shaped our language.
Dr Lorna Robinson, Rumble Museum Director
We are delighted to receive an object for the Rumble Museum collection from Will Gompertz, BBC Arts Correspondent. Will has chosen an art placard which was made as part of Britain's first ever Performance Art Festival in May 2008. He organised this festival while he was working at the Tate. He said: "my life started when I began working at the Tate - everything began to make sense while living and working in the world of art and really loving it".
The story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a traditional subject of Ethiopian art, appears in this rendition by Janbaru Wandemu, painted in the 1950s. Recorded in the Kebra Nagast ( Glory of Kings), a literary work preserved in manuscripts from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century C.E., the story may have existed as early as the sixth century C.E. It tells of the descent of the the Ethiopian monarchs from Solomon and Makeda (the Ethiopian name for the Queen of Sheba) and of the bringing of the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia.
The 44 panels, laid out according to a traditional format, progress along the horizontal rows from upper left to lower right. The story begins (panel 1) with Wainaba, the snake dragon at upper right, ruling Ethiopia. The people agree to make Angabo king if he kills this monster (2). Angabo mixes a poison (3), feeds it to his goat (4) and feeds his goat to Wainaba (6). This kills Wainaba (7), and Angabo becomes king (8–9). When Angabo dies (10), his daughter Makedda becomes queen (11).
A merchant takes perfume from Queen Makedda to King Solomon and Makedda travels to Jerusalem. King Solomon sleeps with Queen Mekadda's maid and Makedda. He gives Makedda a ring as a token of faith. Queen Mekadda gives birth to a son called Menilek. He grows up and travels to Jerusalem to see his father. Menilek brings the Ark of the Covenant back from Jerusalem and his mother crowns him and gives him the royal seal. Queen Makedda dies and Menilek sets up monuments to her in Aksum.
It was donated to the Rumble Museum by Professor Judith McKenzie from the University of Oxford.
We are delighted to introduce a guest post by Alice Wilson, Year 8 at Cheney School. The Year 8s are currently doing projects on World War Two in their History lessons, and Alice has been exploring her own family’s involvement and experiences of the war.
A BMX bike is an off-road sports bicycle used for racing and stunts. BMX means bicycle motocross (off-road motorcycle racing). BMX started in the early 1970s when children began racing their bicycles on dirt tracks in Southern California, inspired by the motocross superstars of the time.
The BMX bike in our collection is donated by Duncan Martin, Iris Project trustee and volunteer for the museum.
Duncan said: "I knew that I wanted to donate a bike to the Living Museum because cycling has always been such a big part of my life. It's also a bit part of the life of the city of Oxford. I chose a BMX bike, because this was the first sort of bike I had as a child."