Economic Botany blog

I recently spent a fascinating morning at Kew investigating the buildings which made up the former Museum of Economic Botany at Kew. As a PhD student at Royal Holloway, I’m researching the history of this intriguing institution and I’m keen to find out where its collections came from and how they ended up at Kew. I’m planning on following the ‘lives’ of a range of objects in the collection and reconstructing their ‘biographies’.

As a historical geographer I’m especially interested in the effect of place and space on how scientific knowledge is produced. Much of my time is spent with old documents in Kew’s Library and Archives, and at the National Archives just down the road, so this was a welcome chance to enjoy a sunny (if brisk) morning walking in the Gardens.

Kew’s museum buildings

With that in mind, and accompanied by Collections Manager Dr. Mark Nesbitt and my PhD supervisor Professor Felix Driver, I set out to recapture a sense of what visitors must have experienced when they toured the museums. Kew fans may know that there were once four buildings:

Museum No. 1, which occupied a purpose-built museum opposite the Palm House. Despite its name, this was the second museum building, opening in 1857. The building now houses the Schools education programmes (and some adult education courses – a chance to enjoy the fabulous views over the Palm House Pond), but the ground floor retains some of the original cabinets, and now houses the Plants+People exhibition, open every day to visitors to the Gardens.

Museum No. 1, seen in the late 19th century. The model indigo factory in the nearest case is still on display.

Museum No. 2, a converted fruit store which opened to the public in 1847. The building now houses the School of Horticulture. The interior is not open to visitors, but the unassuming exterior will be familiar to anyone who has been to the adjacent Davies Alpine House.

Museum No. 3 was the Timber Museum, housed from 1863 to 1953 in William Chambers’s Orangery. Many Kew visitors will now know this as a café.

Museum No. 4, the Museum of British Forestry, opened in 1910 in Cambridge Cottage. This later became the Kew Gardens Gallery, but is now mainly used for functions. Members of Kew will know these elegant rooms from their monthly coffee mornings.

The Orangery and Museum No. 2 closed in the 1950s, but the other museums were open until the early 1980s. By 1988 all the collections were renamed the Economic Botany Collection and were moved to a purpose-built research store in the Sir Joseph Banks Building, where they are now accessible by appointment.

Our tour

Two views of Museum No. 2, seen in the late 19th century (top) and today (bottom).

Arriving at 8am ahead of the crowds, and armed with old photographs and plans of the museums, we were able to see areas not normally accessible to the public and make a wealth of discoveries. Particularly exciting was the former Museum No. 2 - now the School of Horticulture. Most of the original wall display cabinets are still in place, some with the numbering which visitors could refer to in their guide books to learn more about the exhibits. Many people comment on the resemblance of this museum to the wonderful Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford in its architecture and displays, but the Kew museum preceded it by some 37 years!

Museum No. 1 feels much more like a purpose-built museum, with long rows of large windows to give ample light. In the upstairs galleries (now used for teaching) one can get a sense of just how large these galleries were. We spent a lot of time looking at the indigo factory model, recently moved back onto public display in the Plants+People exhibit. Even in the old museum buildings there were always problems housing large exhibits, and it is notable that this model appears in old photos in both the Orangery and in Museum No. 1.

We ended our tour with coffee and cake in the Orangery. Now light and spacious, some imagination is needed to envisage its time as a museum (see image below), crowded with giant wood specimens, and with two galleries (since removed) installed on the walls.

The Orangery as a wood museum

The history of Kew’s Museum of Economic Botany and its successor, the Economic Botany Collection, shed much light on Kew’s links to the British Empire and to the networks of science, education and government during a key period in British history. I’m looking forward to finding out more about it and its rich heritage.

Myself and Mark would like to hear from anyone with memories of working in or visiting the old museum buildings at Kew, before they closed in the 1980s. You can reach us via the Economic Botany Collection at Kew by emailing ecbot@kew.org.
 

Spring has finally arrived at Kew. The sheets of colourful bulbs are a welcome reminder that we'll soon see the Japanese cherries flowering in the Gardens.

This year, we also have our own spring display of flowers and fruits in the Economic Botany Collection. This follows the return of our Japanese xylarium (that's an old term for a wood collection) from conservation.

The panels in our collection are an intriguing combination of Japanese art and craft and a western approach to plant anatomy and botanical names. It includes 26 wooden panels, each made from the wood and bark of a different tree species and painted with the foliage, fruits and flowers of that species. The example below is made of pear wood (Pyrus communis).

The history and condition of our Japanese panels

Most items in Kew's Economic Botany Collection are very well documented, but so far we have not been able to find out exactly when these panels arrived at Kew. From talking to some longer serving members of staff at Kew, we know that the panels were in the collection by 1970. I think it was most likely that they arrived at Kew shortly after the second world war, when the Economic Botany Collection was less well-documented.

When they arrived, the Japanese panels were covered in a thick layer of grey dust. This suggested to me that they had been stored at an inner-city location, perhaps a university, before they arrived at Kew. The panels were also very shaky, perhaps because they were made from fresh and unseasoned wood. The image below depicts the condition of two of our panels, before conservation:

• pear (compare to the 'after' picture above)
• chinese soapberry (Sapindus mukorossi) - notice the splits in the wood and how the bark has fallen off part of the panel.

Thanks to a generous donor, each panel in Kew's collection was sent away to receive vital conservation work. There are only a few workshops in the UK with the skills and tools needed to handle the mix of wood, paper and paint that makes up these historical artefacts. We sent our panels to Plowden & Smithbased in Wandsworth. This company is well-known for the restoration work they did at Windsor Castle, following the fire of 1992.

The process of conservation

To remove the unsightly splits in the wood, the panels were taken apart and rebuilt using brass screws that will not corrode. The wide slots used for the screws, allow for the natural movement of the wood over time. The tempera paint proved too fragile to clean, but the wood grain and paper labels were cleaned with smoke sponges.

The photos below show the back of the soapberry panel after repair, and the front, after cleaning. We considered replacing the missing bark with a coloured wash, but decided this would be too great an intervention for such a historic object.

A new lease of life

Following conservation, our Japanese panels glow with colour. They are also in a good enough condition to study and carry out further research. Thanks to research by Walter Lack and Hideaki Ohba (PDF), we know for instance that the panels were made for Chikusai Kata, an illustrator at the botanic garden in Tokyo in 1874. But we still don't know how they came to Britain.

There are two other collections of Japanese panels like ours. The first of these includes 152 panels and is located at the Botanical Museum in Berlin. The second is a set of 10 panels owned by a private collector in Britain. Because all three sets contain duplicate species, it is not likely that they were part of one set, that was later broken up.

There is also an untold story about the place of the panels in the establishment of western botany in Japan around the 1870s. This crucial historical period saw the opening up of links between Japan and the West after nearly three centuries of self-imposed isolation. Japanese scientists were quick to engage with western botany, as developed at institutions like Kew.

- Mark Nesbitt -

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Discover more...

• Read more about our Japanese panels in Kew Magazine - Download the PDF
• View all 26 panels at Kew on Flickr
• Explore Kew's work in South East Asia and Indochina

Collections research

• Article - Die Xylothek des Chikusai Kato (The xylotheque of Chikusai Kato), by Lack, H. W. & Ohba, H (1998), Willdenowia 28: 263-7 - German language article (PDF)
• Article - Plant Illustration on Wood Blocks – A Magnificent Japanese Xylotheque of the Early Meiji Period, by H. W. Lack (2004), Curtis's Botanical Magazine 16(2): 124-34 -  Subscription required (PDF)  

Kew’s Economic Botany Collection holds several thousand fibre and textile specimens, from at least 350 different plant species. It is a striking contrast to world fibre production today, with just four plant species dominating the industry: cotton, flax, sisal and jute.

A recent visit from students at the London College of Fashion offered an opportunity to further explore this topic. Although just the second year of the College’s MA in Fashion and the Environment, the course has attracted 19 highly enthusiastic students. It is a timely venture given the huge interest from consumers and industry in sustainable “eco-fibres”.
 

Image: Students among compactor units in the Economic Botany Collection

After spending the morning looking at textile plants in some of Kew’s iconic glasshouses, the students came to look around the Economic Botany Collection, located in the Joseph Banks building at Kew Gardens.

We started the tour looking at cotton, which is by far the most important plant fibre. The distinctive flattened, twisted seed hairs of cotton have an unusual combination of strength and softness. Specimens in Kew's collection demonstrate the complete production process, from harvesting the cotton bolls (fruits), via cleaning and spinning, to weaving and making clothing, such as the beautiful jacket from India (see image below).

The jacket from India that we explored together was made by poor schoolgirls in Bihar, India, as part of a training programme in the early 20th Century. It is a good reminder of the importance of natural fibres to livelihoods in the developing world. Cotton remains problematic as an eco-fibre because of concerns over its high water and pesticide consumption as a crop, and labour conditions in textile factories. This is a topic that came up several times in our tour – how can one assure sustainability throughout the production cycle of a fibre, from field to shop?

Image: The group looks at a jacket from India

Moving on from cotton, we looked at ramie (Boehmeria nivea). Like many members of the nettle family, Urticaceae, ramie has tall, straight stems that are a rich source of strong, lustrous fibres. It was once an important textile fibre, and still turns up as a blend in high street shops.

We talked about the reasons why ramie is no longer as popular, such as the rise of synthetic fibres and the difficulty of getting more marginal crops into world markets. The stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is another member of the nettle family with tall, fibre-rich stems. There have been centuries of experiments in fibre extraction, but it has proved hard to get consistent quality. However, improved varieties of stinging nettle are now being grown in Leicestershire, and we have recently been given sample fabrics for the Collection at Kew.
 

Image: Handling blocks of blue indigo dye

Dyes are another important aspect of textile production, and we looked at the wide range of plants from which blue indigo dye is extracted around the world, ranging from Indigofera in India to woad (Isatis tinctoria) in Europe.

The afternoon certainly gave me, as a curator, fresh insights into the collection and its relevance to current debates. For example, it is clear that some of the local materials that we looked at, such as Jamaican lacebark or some of the dyes, might well have a role in high-value, individual fashion, even though they will never enter large-scale trade. Such high-value uses could help preserve traditional uses of plants that are in danger of disappearing.

Most of the teaching we do in the Collection at Kew is at Masters level, and one of the great strengths of this is the life experience that students at this level - such as these from the London College of Fashion - bring to their course. Some of the Masters courses with whom we work are:

• MSc in Ethnobotany, University of Kent
• MSc in Conservation Science, Imperial College
• MSc in Conservation for Archaeology and Museums, UCL
• MA Conservation, Camberwell College of Arts
• MA History of Design, Royal College of Art

Image: LCF students in front of the Temperate House 

-Mark-

Discover more...

• Discover Kew's Economic Botany Collection
• Explore plants and fungi with Kew
• Building global networks - Kew's work in China & Central Asia

This is the time of the year when we show student conservators around the Economic Botany Collection. It’s partly an opportunity to show them the wide range of plant-based materials used in historic artefacts, and it’s also a chance to tempt a few into choosing items from the Collection for their student project.
 

Student projects benefit both sides: our objects get careful attention from enthusiastic students, working under close supervision by leading experts; students get to work on ethnographic artefacts that are well documented, often of satisfyingly complex construction, and which have real historical and cultural significance.

In modern object conservation, understanding the object is as important as any physical intervention. Without knowing how something is made, and how it was used, there is a risk of removing “damage” that is in fact evidence of use. Better still, it’s often possible to identify the source community for an object, allowing contact to be re-established and consultation on conservation treatments to take place. As a result, not only does Kew gain an object that is in better physical shape, ready for display, and safely packed for centuries to come, but we also benefit from lasting insights into the meaning of the object to its makers, and its subsequent history.
 

An example of student work

Last year, Emily Brennan, an undergraduate conservation student at University of the Arts, Camberwell, took on this lacebark bonnet from Jamaica (Catalogue No. 44939). It arrived at Kew in the 1930s as a shapeless mass with little background information.
 

As you can see from the above image, this was a complex project as the bonnet had lost its original shape, there were extensive areas of soiling, the lacebark (a natural lace from Lagetta lagetto) was brittle, and the vermilion dye in the silk is highly fugitive (susceptible to movement in water).

Emily surface-cleaned and humidified the bonnet, used netting and stitching to support fragile parts, and reshaped the wire making up the bonnet’s framework to reinstate the true form of the bonnet. By consulting costume historians, Emily was able to show the bonnet must have been made in about 1850. Lacebark was a hugely important plant to Jamaica’s black communities, used both for indigenous clothing and for in a thriving souvenir industry, but the craft seems to have died out in the 1950s. The finished result can be seen in the image below.
 

This project helped Emily secure a well-served first class degree, the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers Prize, and funding to travel to Jamaica to further research lacebark through oral history.
 

Other projects by students

Other projects at Camberwell included a bark rain-vest from British Columbia and a tree-fern mask from Vanuatu, while at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology Libby McCormick worked on a fascinating incised Maori gourd from the North Island of New Zealand. Sadly one long collaboration has come to an end with the closure of the Textile Conservation Centre in Winchester. Its students worked on well over 100 pieces in the Collection, and we’ll really miss their contribution. Some ex-TCC students now teach at Camberwell, so the connection continues.

This year three of the final-year students at Camberwell have chosen Kew projects: Jessica is interested in feathers, and will work on a stunning head-dress brought back from the Amazon by one of Kew’s recent directors, Sir Ghillean Prance, and a set of 12 poison arrows (seen in image below) collected in the Amazon a hundred years earlier by Richard Spruce. Vania has chosen a group of papyrus artefacts from ancient Egypt, including a fast-disintegrating papyrus sheet (it looks blank but might reveal writing under UV light) and some head-rests, while another student will treat a group of Japanese fans, some unopened since being collected in the 19th century. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they find out.
 

A note on terminology: conservators care for things; in contrast, conservationists care for living organisms. The two professions require very different training!

 -Mark-  

Kew's Economic Botany Collection (EBC) contains 85,000 examples of plant use around the world, from ancient Egyptian wreaths to Traditional Chinese Medicines gathered last year. It's the successor to the Kew Museum, set up by Sir William Hooker in 1847, and covers just about every possible use of plants, in most parts of the world.

To reach a wider audience, we regularly lend to exhibitions, at big museums - the Science Museum and the Musee de Quai Branly - and small, such as Orleans House nearby in Twickenham. Since the summer, we've been talking to another small museum about a different and rather larger kind of loan.

The Haslemere Educational Museum has been running a year of activities based on the International Year of Natural Fibres, a major initiative sponsored by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. In fact, I met Jane Downham from the Museum at our ethnobotany day at Kew in March, which also celebrated natural fibres.

We've agreed to a joint exhibition called Fabulous Fibres with Haslemere Museum, featuring about 40 historic objects from the EBC - textiles, baskets, cordage, netting and more, together with modern sustainable fibres such as nettle and hemp, sourced by Haslemere. It was difficult to narrow down the choice of objects from Kew's collection, but we decided to go for small ones, so as to fit as much diversity as possible into Haslemere's display cases. We've managed to get 25 plant species represented and the objects, though small, repay close attention.

The exhibition is free and the details of opening times are listed at the bottom of this blog. You can also view the catalogue and interpretation panels online here as PDFs.

The exhibition aims both to be fun - there are beautiful objects, and two handling tables of natural fibres - and educational, assisted by ten panels of information on plant fibres and labels colour-coded by plant part (bark, leaf, stem, seed & fruit). Another major theme is the role of textile conservation, drawing on our many years work with students from the much-missed Textile Conservation Centre, and a new relationship with the University of the Arts at Camberwell.

Have we got it right? Come and see for yourself! We think there is enough in the exhibition to justify a trip from London or elsewhere in the southeast, and Haslemere Museum itself is an unusually rich museum for a small town, complete with a mummy, stuffed bear, dinosaur lair etc.

Details:

• Admission: Free
• Museum opening times: Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm (please check for holiday closures/openings)
• Exhibition talk: On Saturday 5 December I'm giving a gallery talk at 2.30pm, with Jane Downham (Haslemere Museum) and Emily Brennan, who conserved the fabulous lacebark bonnet that's on display.

-Mark-