Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
vase by Frank Lloyd Wright and a lovely, chequered oak clock with a mother-of-pearl
face, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. There's also usually an impressive array of
avant-garde Russian ceramics celebrating the achievements of the 1917 revolution.
Renaissance and Baroque art
fills room 46, with a ba
ingly wide range of works from
all over Europe (though much of it of British origin). Highlights include a collection of
eighteenth-century Huguenot silver, two pure-gold ice pails that belonged to Princess
Diana's family and the Armada Service, a Tudor silver dining set.
Room 45 contains the
Waddesdon Bequest
, curiosities amassed by Baron Rothschild
in the nineteenth century: a mixed bag of silver gilt, enamelware, glassware and
hunting rifles. Two of the finest works are the Holy Thorn Reliquary (cabinet 1), with
its wonderfully macabre depiction of the Resurrection, and a Flemish sixteenth-century
boxwood altarpiece of Christ's Life and Passion (cabinet 8), just six inches high and
carved with staggering detail.
6
King's Library - Enlightenment
he
Enlightenment gallery
(room 1) runs the length of the east wing. Built to house
George III's library (now in the British Library in St Pancras), it's like a snapshot of
the BM of old, lined with antique display cases stuffed with books and artefacts,
illustrating the magpie tastes of the eighteenth-century colonial collector, epitomized
by Hans Sloane himself, the BM's founder.
Sloane's own collection features everything from priapic statuettes to a black obsidian
mirror used by the magician, John Dee, to conjure up spirits (case 20). And he was not
alone in falling for the bizarre and magical to augment his “cabinet of curiosities”: the
rhino-horn cup which protected the drinker from poison and the Japanese “merman”
(opposite case 14) - a dried monkey sewn onto a fish tail - are not atypical. Displayed
here, too, are some of the museum's earliest acquisitions, brought back from the far
reaches of the expanding British Empire: a piece of bark cloth made by Fletcher
Christian's Tahitian partner (case 22); Tipu Sultan's sword and ring, and a whole variety
of Javanese puppets and dolls (case 23) collected by Stamford Ra
es.
Don't neglect to pop into adjacent room 2, where some of the museum's
oldest
exhibits
are usually displayed, like the thirteen thousand-year-old ivory sculpture of
swimming reindeer and the eleven thousand-year-old sculpture of two lovers entwined,
found in the Judean desert.
Americas
The BM's two American galleries lie to the side of the
Living and Dying gallery
(room
24), which features Hoa Hakananai'a, the giant basalt
Easter Island statue
(originally
TIME AND MONEY
The BM has a number of themed rooms, the largest of which is the Enlightenment gallery on
the ground floor (see above). On the upper floor,
clocks and watches
(rooms 38 & 39)
resound to the tick-tocks and chimes of every type of timepiece from pocket watches to
grandfather clocks. One of the best party pieces is the Polish clock from 1600 (room 38),
featuring a cow that produced liquid from its udders on the hour, and the spectacular ship
from 1585 (room 39), whose concealed organ would announce a banquet.
The
money
gallery (room 68) traces the history of filthy lucre from the use of grain in
Mesopotamia around 2000 BC, through the advent of coins in around 600 BC in Lydia in Asia
Minor to the plastic money of today. The prize for the largest denomination bill goes to the
1946 one hundred million billion
pengö
note from Hungary (cabinet 16). In the centre of the
room, there's a geometric lathe for old £1 notes (cabinet 14), a wonderful Tiffany-designed
National Cash Register till (cabinet 17) and a hoard of fake Roman coins and fake £1 coins
(cabinet 10). Plus ca change.
