Many of the V&A’s Ethiopian objects were acquired following the British Expedition to Ethiopia (1867 – 68), during which the British Army carried out a punitive raid on Emperor Tewodros II’s palace at Maqdala.
During this campaign, a vast quantity of objects were looted from the palace and its surrounding area, before being taken back to Britain and sold or exchanged through a variety of channels.
The aim of my placement was to focus on the objects with incomplete provenance recorded in the museum’s collections database.
One of the most exciting outcomes of this research was uncovering records for objects that had effectively become hidden within the collection.
For example, I found archival evidence relating to a pair of silver-gilt slippers belonging to Queen Terunesh, who had been married to Emperor Tewodros II.
Although the V&A’s collection contains jewellery and clothing that had belonged to the Queen, these slippers had been miscatalogued as ‘Turkish’ and transferred to the Middle Eastern section of the Asia department in 2011.
They have since been transferred to V&A East Storehouse, where I was able to go and see them. Using archival documentation, I confirmed their correct provenance and updated the museum’s records accordingly.
