European Museums

[A. G. Maisey]

I have not posted to this discussion group for about two months.

During this period I was in Europe:- Italy, Germany, Denmark.

I had some duties to undertake in Italy, and then I traveled to Germany and Denmark.

I visited museums in Florence, Venice, Dresden, and Copenhagen, and also had the opportunity to view some private collections.

In all cases I found the curators and other staff of the museums I visited to be extremely helpful and cooperative, and in a couple of cases absolutely delightful.

No barriers were placed in my way, and one curator was actually quite disappointed that because of constraints on my time, I needed to limit my visit to the collections in her care to only one day, or one day and a few hours. She had set aside three days for me to view the collection in the museum magazine (warehouse).

Sometimes I have read comments made by contributors to this Forum, and by other people whom I know, that indicate some difficulty with getting access to museum stored collections. As noted above, I did not experience this. I would suggest that those of you who are fortunate enough to live in close proximity to some of these great European museum collections would be well advised to make the effort to get to see them.

But this does require planning and forethought.

Make your approaches in writing, and present a strong case to support your approaches. Be flexible in respect of the timing of your visit. Make your request well in advance of when you would like to make the visit. My own negotiations with these museums extended over approximately a 5 month period of time.

I believe you will find that the effort involved will be well worthwhile.

Although I was permitted to closely examine, and to photograph everything I examined, I was also required to sign undertakings not to publish my photographs, and in fact, not even to provide copies of those photos to any other person, the reason being that although I had agreed not to publish, any other person would not have signed any similar agreement.

[Jean]

Hi Alan,
Welcome back to the forum and it seems an eternity since you disappeared, and we have missed you a lot!
Bad luck for us that you are not allowed to show any kris pictures but in due time we hope that you will tell us or publish an article on what you have observed and learnt from the visit regarding the origin and features of the krisses brought to Europe during the 17th Century, any plan in this regard?
Welcome back again and best regards
Jean

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks Jean.

No, I do not have anything at all like that in mind. My examination of these early pieces was only one very small piece of research that is tied to something I've been playing with for around 30 years. The examinations were not towards an end in themselves, but only to help me understand a very small side issue a little better.

Of course I did note a few things, such as, for instance, a very complex twist pamor in a pre-1600 keris. Something I really would not have expected---so much so that my feeling at the time of examination was that somewhere along the line somebody had possibly got their catalogue numbers mixed up.

But as I say, this sort of thing was not really uppermost in my mind, I was looking at very specific things, and trying to relate these things to other things.

I've probably got a few months work in organising the notes and pics, and then some concentrated thinking to do.

[David]

Welcome back Alan. Glad you had some success in your journey.

[A. G. Maisey]

Thanks David.