Page 130 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

“Rose-water Upon His Delicate Hands” 115
It reflected the emperor’s role founded on the concept of the Mandate of Heaven
(天C, Tianming) which has its origins in Western Zhou (1046–771 BCE) texts such as
the Book of Poetry (DE, Shijing) and the Book of Changes (周易, Zhouyi).
32 Royal Museum Register of Specimens vol. 5 1880–1884, 242. As of 2015, all of the
Museum registers have been digitized.
33 The presentation of A.1884.80 in the same year and written in the same hand repeats
this omission. Register entries for those of rank and title such as The Secretary of State
for India associated with A.1884.80 suggests that such information was unnecessary being
otherwise easily available.
34 T.C. Archer, Report of the Director of Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art for the
Year 1884. Appendix F. (1884): 255–256.
35 Geoffrey N Swinney, “What do we Know about What We Know? The Museum ‘Register’
as Museum Object,” in The Thing About Museums: Objects and Experience, Repre -
sentation and Contestation. Essays in Honour of Susan M. Pearce, ed. et al. Sandra Dudley
(London and New York, 2011), 32.
36 As Swinney has observed, the primary record of registration was typically some other
document, from which entries were then copied into the Museum Register. Swinney, “What
do we Know about What We Know? The Museum ‘Register’ as Museum Object,” 39.
37 With other entries from the same year, which have all been written in the same hand, we
see that a bamboo fish trap from Swatow (modern day Shantou in Guangdong province)
in China also merits ten lines.
38 Geoffry N Swinney, personal communication cited with permission, October 21, 2015.
By 1912, efforts were made to regulate and standardise the procedures for the registration
of acquisitions. See Swinney, “What do we Know about What We Know? The Museum
‘Register’ as Museum Object,” 39.
39 The Museum title was sometimes written as “The Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh”
highlighting the way in which the Museum was seen as the “northern branch” of the
South Kensington Museum (from 1899 known as the Victoria and Albert Museum).
40 George Wilson, Inaugural lecture, “What is Technology?” delivered at Edinburgh Uni -
versity on November 7, 1855. Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, new series (1855):
3. Quoted from Klaus Staubermann, “For the Public, with the Public, by the Public—
George Wilson and the Edinburgh Industrial University Museum.” International Com -
mittee for University Museums and Collections. University Museums and Collections
Journal (5). 2012: 47. Staubermann also looks at Wilson in relation to the role of artefacts
in building technical knowledge within the Museum.
41 Director of the Industrial Museum of Scotland between 1860 and 1864, and Director of
the renamed museum, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art between 1864 and
1885.
42 80 avoirdupois ounces equals approximately 2,267 grams.
43 Troy ounces are used to measure the weight (mass) of precious metals and gemstones,
and are 10% heavier than avoirdupois ounces.
44 The financial values associated with other artefact entries in the register are always noted
in ink, recording in a ledger-like manner the sum paid for that acquisition. However,
the ewer was a gift, so the retrospective attempt to calculate its value must be linked
either to consideration being given to its insurance value and perhaps therefore its secure
storage, based on value and a corresponding perceived risk of theft, or to its possible
de-accessioning, and a need to reckon on possible market value. The former seems the
more likely of the two given the important associations the ewer had in terms of its
provenance and in terms of its connection with a notable event in Victorian British military
history in East Asia. The calculations may also have been part of a formal audit process
under for instance the Scotch Education Department (SED) which oversaw the Museum
from the end of the nineteenth century.
45 Royal Museum 1880–1884, 221.
46 A. Galletly, Catalogue of Industrial Department (Edinburgh, Edinburgh Museum of
Science and Art, 1869), 47. The two ivories, which were accession in 1866, remain
in Museum collections to this day, identified by the accession numbers A.1866.38.1 and
A.1866.38.2.