I came to make a film about stiletto and I forgot just quite how amazing this place is. Awesome. Hi
it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and I'm in the Pitt Rivers Museum with Bryony,
assistant curator. Hi there. So my first confession is I didn't come to make a film about
the Pitt Rivers Museum, I came to make a film about a stiletto and that's going to come, but
I walked in the door it's been a few years since I've been here and I forgot just quite how amazing
this place is. I mean I've got a smile on my face because it is just..... it's extraordinary,
absolutely extraordinary, so starting at the beginning. Pitt Rivers's Museum in Oxford visit
it. I mean there it is not possible, not possible to walk out of this place going "oh that a bit
dull", there is something for everybody, it's just amazing, amazing place. Medieval, ancient history,
ethnographic, Polynesian, African, Inuit, it's just, I'm walking around, Japanese, I'm walking
around here and it has literally a world of fascination. So Bryony, tell us about the Pitt
Rivers. So we are here on the upper Gallery at the moment which is our top floor of the museum and
that is our space dedicated to weapons, weaponry and armour and this is because that our founder
Augustus Pitt Rivers was a lieutenant general in the Army by the end of his career and his main
fascination was guns and later weaponry. So you were saying he's kind of Crimean War era wasn't
he and then and then after so he was operating after that as well. Exactly so he saw active
service during the Crimean War and after that he was declared unfit for service so he returned to
England and he was very heavily involved in training soldiers in the use of weaponry and
in particular he was quite heavily involved in the use of muskets and different types of
guns for the Army and that naturally led him from quite European objects and spread to the rest of
the world. So we do have objects of warfare from all over the world as his ethnographic collection
grew. But I'm going to stop Bryony there because now we're going to go and have a look at some of
these guns. Right so first random cabinet that I've come to and there are lots of cabinets,
look at this crazy thing at the top I have no idea what it is but it I'm guessing it's sort of like
an Indian combination weapon so this is something that actually we used to do in Europe as well.
Where this one is some sort of a long mace with a fold out, flick out bayonet at the end. Fabulous
ribbed barrel here, hollow mace at the end little what looks to me like a very Indian shield and
it's clearly a gun as well because it's got a gun stock on it. So what I did find out from Bryony
is actually and this is what is fantastically interesting as well is Pitt Rivers split the
museum up on categories of object so this one here this case is combination weapons which I have a
particular interest in, so 19th century Indian combination weapon there, but then if we come
down I don't know what this is.... so that's India again a little axe pistol here, very cute little
thing. But then this one is an American revolver. This particular cabinet here is actually labeled
blunderbuss, in fact actually some of these, some of these are classically blunderbuss some of them
are grenade launchers. For those of you who don't know it, grenade launchers are not a new thing
we have been using them since 17th century, but a lovely one there it's very obviously the case and
this thing which has to be a grenade launcher it says large blunderbuss, but it's got a bore on it
like that. I mean that's going to remove your arm if you tried to shoot that as a gun. Again this
is something I have discovered that I love about the Pitt Rivers is it's a bit like the Wallace
collection in the nicest possible way it's a bit like a jumble sale that you look in a cabinet
and you're just not quite sure what's going to be there. So I just filmed the grenade launchers just
there, just, just, just over there and now I just turn around and I have a helmet made of a puffer
fish from Kiribati, Gilbert Islands, Micronesia. Awesome. We have some fantastic stuff here,
so this is basically medieval as far as I can tell so we've got a hook gun here which is all very
normal, we've got a four barrelled pole gun at the top there which is just an absolute beauty. Really
long one here, some serpentine or something, it's not really my world and then and I love this,
we've got a leather cannon. So yes they really, really did make cannons out of leather. Can't
say it's a normal thing, I suspect they didn't last very long, but there's actually if you're
interested they did a project up at the Medieval Center in Denmark maybe 10 years ago, where I
think they made a leather cannon so go find out how that ended up. So Bryony you were saying that
General Pitt Rivers started this collection basically because of his interest in guns,
now that's quite clearly the case. I've actually to be honest, I've just shown you a fragment of
what's here there's a lot of modern stuff as well so it certainly comes into like second world war
here was there any yeah and beyond that. I'm not an expert in guns in any sense of the word
but yes in the case right by the door there are weapons used very recently in kind of the
Afghanistan Wars and conflict in the Middle East very recently. Okay because actually I kind of I
figured that the Pitt Rivers was kind of a museum frozen in time in a way and that's absolutely not.
Yeah well that's that's a common misconception I think people have about our work, but we are still
actively collecting although on a much reduced scale compared with the kind of collecting that
was going on in the 19th and 20th centuries. But lack of room now as much as anything. Absolutely
and as you will see throughout this video we we have pretty much one of everything already, so the
collecting we do now is far more ethical, it's far more collaborative with modern makers and artists
we have a couple of curators here in the museum who work with different communities to commission
pieces and have them made in a sort of responsive way to various issues and projects that we have
going on. So we are still acquiring although at a slower rate and hopefully in a far more equitable,
less problematic fashion. I'm standing here next to some fantastic Samurai armour, behind me I've
got some more, what looks to be sort of Ottoman stuff or well it is yes Turkish I think and then
just a lot of European stuff here. The method of display here is very much cabinet of curiosity
type, but that was actually a stipulation of Pitt Rivers when he gave his collection of
around 22,000 objects in 1884, he donated them as a gift to the University of Oxford and this gift
did have conditions and one of the conditions was that the university were to build a museum or a
building to house his collection, that they were to fund a professor to teach with the collection
and to teach about the collection and thirdly that the the collection was kept on display in
the same way as Pitt Rivers had arranged it. So you will see cases in the building, primarily on
the in the court which is on the ground floor, that are as Pitt Rivers intended them. This kind
of typological organisation with material from all around the world in one case, so yes that
the sort of jumble that you see with very few labels that is kind of that's Pitt River's brand
of of display. Brilliant, yeah well let's go find something else to look at. Absolutely. So in a way
this case here sums up an awful lot about the Pitt Rivers, so we have some amazing bronze axes here,
we go through to an ancient Greek bronze axe but then we've got northern European ones here,
but then if we come over we've got a stone axe, flint axe from Ireland and then Viking axes
fighting axes working axes some halberds here and again that has to be a very fancy carpenters side
axe judging by the angle on the blade there. So although these are all axes the the time span is
I'm I'm going to say 50,000 years and 5,000 miles, so it's just a fantastic cabinet in
this 15 objects that we've got here so I finally managed to get to the cabinet that I actually came
here about really which is swords and daggers now I'll bring this over in a minute but this is where
the Stiletto came from this cabinet here which is my sole reason for actually coming here in
the first place, but that will be another film so we're going to lay the Stiletto, my repro and the
original cabinet one side by side and see how we do. I'm currently in love with numbers 28 and 29
here, particularly 29. It's absolutely beautiful and here we go again the wonderfulness of the Pitt
Rivers, Maltese Shiavona, Killer Whale dagger from way up in the Arctic. Awesome. And this
little space here next to the navaja, so where we are that's the navaja there, big one that's got to
be 10in blade on that, 25 cm blade, something like that and that is where my little stiletto lived.
Well it's obviously not mine, but you know I can wish. This is really an interesting cabinet for
me as well and these are all African actually, but they are, I don't really know what you call them,
but they're basic forged items for throwing at people. Sort of throwing axe, throwing knife,
spiky bit of nastiness; I don't know. Make people duck that's the point, but they're exactly the
same, visually a bit different, but exactly the same sort of object as the hurlblat or hurlbat,
never quite remember how to say it, 15th century German thing, which looked basically like this it
was just basically cut out a sheet with lots of spiky things and you hurl it at somebody,
makes people duck at the last moment. We will be doing films on those in the future:
lovely. So here's a cabinet of Japanese, Chinese and some other Asian pieces,
but again Pitt Rivers you know they got a lot of stuff and not that much space. Just look above,
just cabinet after cabinet of all the stuff that they haven't actually got room to display in their
cabinets and this what you can see here, just goes down the length of the showcases. So we've
come to this cabinet here of blow pipes which is these are really interesting as well actually so
we'll come to that in a moment but before we were just talking about how this collection
was accrued basically. Yeah so I'm familiar with Wallace collection and what makes me quite amused
about that whole thing is my understanding of it was he inherited some money, and then he
blew his money in a year and a half and he went to the collectors in Europe and he just went,
I want this, this, this and this and the Wallace collection was basically put together in about a
year and a half. Do you know the time scales of this one? I'm not entirely sure how long it took
Pitt Rivers to amass the original collection that he donated what was about 22,000 objects in 1884
but the majority of those were in his personal collection and were collected during his time
after leaving the military so probably 30 to 40 years worth of collecting but other than his brief
stint in the Crimean War we don't believe Pitt Rivers actually traveled very extensively. Instead
he relied quite heavily on other collectors and sort of antiquarian networks to acquire material
from further a field than just Europe. So he obviously had some good some good contacts in
sort of auction houses who were acquiring material for him as his collection expanded beyond just
European. Often knowing what kind of stuff he's interested in I think so they put things in front
of him that they knew he might be interested in. Yeah I think he clearly knew what he was looking
for and he clearly knew what to collect to build his collection in certain areas but I think he
was yeah perhaps not always entirely sure what it was that he was purchasing if he was getting
things in bulk from London and I think that was often the way actually and that's where how a lot
of fakes slipped through actually and this I'm guessing actually is not really this collection,
is not really prone to fakes in the way that other collections might be which are very purist on arms
and armour and things. I mean why would you go to the effort of faking your blowpipe it'd be more
expensive to fake it than it would be to buy one. Exactly what I find really interesting actually
is there's a number of these have well either spearheads or bayonets depending on what language
you'd want to use but so you've got your blowpipe which is presumably you know pretty hard wood so
it's going to be quite stiff quite strong anyway uh and then it's got bayonet on the end um or
spear on the end which I didn't realise they were dual function but this lovely one on the end has
a wooden cover uh safety cover on the blade but then the other thing about these is a lot of these
of course we use with poison arrows poison darts yeah and those darts are there and you can still
see that they've got Gunk poison presumably on the ends of them yeah that sort of viscous tar looking
substance on the end we're not going to test it but we're assuming that they are we work on the
assumption that they are poisoned things because my understanding of that poison as well is that it
doesn't just fade off over time you know and you you were saying that it's actually the opposite
it seems to get more potent over time I think so I think we recently found out that arborous
Pretoria seeds are sort of little red berries that were often crushed for some poisons I believe they
get more potent over time rather than less. So now we're into a very familiar world for me here
so there is a lot of crossbows and I am seeing ua windlass bow here, goats foot levers, very
nice ones a lovely composite I'm guessing German Circa 1500, crossbow, some pellet bows at the top,
later ones here. Actually a very Chinese, okay Chinese pellet bows . So pellet bows got imported
to Europe as far as we can tell from China so the first ones earlier a couple hundred years earlier,
came from China and then it became fashionable thing here so fashionable in fact there's actually
pictures of Elizabeth first shooting them but she's shooting a stag if I remember rightly which
is not the weapon you'd choose, so it might be a bit fanciful and fantastic. Crossbow bolts here
come and have a look it's not a big cabinet this one but amongst everything else there is just so
much to see here but one thing that I have really felt about this place is Pitt Rivers, General Pitt
Rivers was a man out of his time, partly he was in his time that he just acquired stuff,
you know and there's politics about that now, but he seemed to really care about what he was doing
and had an interest, he wasn't just in a way I felt with the Wallace collection, the guy just
went that's pretty I'll buy it, sure I get get more of a feeling of empathy here, I mean would
you say that sort of. I think that would be a a really nice way of painting pit Rivers I think he
later in life was really interested in archaeology he was conducting his own excavations on his land
um but he was very keen to collect everything and record everything from a dig he wasn't just
taking the shiny bits the treasure the gold so in a modern sense the the context of it so so
he would look at where it came from and therefore know a lot more about the object beyond the object
itself yeah and he he was very interested in in sort of everyday and in Technologies so how things
were made how things were used throughout time he was of his time in that part of that motivation
was to show um primitive cultures in comparison to civilized cultures so there is an aspect of that
sort of racist science in his work um but to put a a more positive spin on that it enables us to
see objects from around the world together and kind of celebrate that shared humanity and and
the similarities that a lot of this material has um but he did do a lot for archaeology he
influenced for example mortim whe so Mor wheeler was early 20th century massively important guy
wasn't he yeah so sort of um early 1900s when he was Excavating and that ripple effect has
has affected lots of other archaeologists today the sort of methodology of collecting everything
and recording where it was from well you have collected everything so when I came in here
actually you said we have one of everything and it's like I think you pretty much do have one of
everything actually yeah um yeah no spacecraft but you know other than that well not yet not yet not
yet there you go that's ambition but briy thank you so much actually for for allowing me to come
here but in fact this this whole film this whole film that you've just watched has been a massively
enjoyable sideline from why I actually came here and that was to have a look at the Stiletto that
they had in the collection and I'd already made a reproduction which is this one here and we're
going to put them side by side and see if I've done a good job or not uh and I will make my
excuses or agulate myself either way we'll find out all right see you again next time bye so we
wrapped this film up you just saw that but anyway I'm on the way out walk past another cabinet got
to show you so this is the thing and this is not a slight on the pit Rivers at all but pit Rivers
has 22,000 objects in it you can't know everything about everything and you can't update everything
all the time so some descriptions are old now I'm guessing the description on the dagger I'm
about to show you was probably done way way back . Maybe by General Pitt Rivers himself. So look at
this dagger here so that is an English Hammerhead dagger late 15th century maybe about 1460 1490
very similar to the Wakefield hanger style so on no way in the planet is that Iron Age but then
this one here is also listed Iron Age as well and again it's double-sided blade really heavy looks
like to me a rondel blade but actually that guard is not, so it could be a late reasonably high
status bollock dagger it could be a Swiss German basilard of some kind, little bit difficult to
tell, could be something else completely entirely. Again what it's definitely not this one here is an
Iron Age dagger you have to forgive museums for this they can't keep up with everything all the
time and new knowledge comes all the time but you know they'll update it sooner or later and they'll
and it'll be right and then we can all move on, but in the meantime gives me a little chuckle.