Description (Labels & Markings)
Thomas label adhered to frame reads: '51 | 1769 / Mirror Frame (ourzugegbe) round, with two heads on top, wood, carved. / Okpe.'
Event Date
Author: Katrina Dring

Description (Labels & Markings)
Luggage tag attached with string reads: '1769 | Mirror Frame / (ourzugegbe) / Okpe'
Event Date
Author: Katrina Dring

Description (Physical description)
Catalogue card: 'Round, wooden mirror frame, with two heads on top'

Event Date
Author: maa

Context (Related Documents)
See E 1910.118 and E 1913.3 records for further details about the Thomas Collection from Nigeria. [T. Cotterill]
Event Date 7/5/2001
Author: maa

Description (Physical description)
There are two metal staples in the side and holes on the inside of the frame. There is a long fibre cord attached to one of the metal staples. [K. Sutton]
Event Date 12/6/2001
Author: Katrina Dring

Description (Physical description)
A circular, wooden mirror frame with two heads on top and a plaited fibre handle. The frame has a circular recess at the front with a cowrie-patterned border, and a smaller circular recess on the back. The two heads are carved from the same piece of wood and both have conical hair or headdresses. There is a metal loop or staple at either side of the heads, one of which has a long length of plaited fibre tied to it for suspension. There are many holes drilled around the edge of the main recess, two in the central portion, some around the circumference and one through each of the heads. There is also a small nail at the bottom of the recess and some fibre remains in one of the holes. The whole is covered with a dark pigment and there are signs of insect debris.
Event Date 28/9/2018
Author: Katrina Dring

Context (Amendments / updates)
Record updated as part of the Museum Affordances project 2018-2020.

Event Date 28/9/2018
Author: Katrina Dring

Loan (Exhibition)
Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, 14/10/2020 to 19/12/2020, [Re:]Entanglements
[Loan cancelled]
Event Date 14/10/2020
Author: Katrina Dring

Loan (Analysis)
Department of Conservation, UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-4 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0TY , 27/02/2020 to 30/06/2020, Museum Affordances Project
Event Date 27/2/2020
Author: Katrina Dring

Conservation (Remedial)
CON.2020.4376 | Remedial
Event Date 9/3/2020
Author: Kirstie French

Context (Display)
On display in [Re:]Entanglements: Colonial collections in decolonial times 22 June 2021 – 20 April 2022.

Display text noted 'The colonial anthropologist’s photographs were exposed on glass plate negatives. Fragile, like mirror glass, their fractured images cause us to reflect.
Objects and materials travel. European mirror glass was imported into West Africa and was widely traded. Installed in locally carved wooden frames, mirrors became status symbols. They were sometimes used in ceremonies; windows into the world of the spirits.
Ethnographic ‘specimens’, such as these decorative mirror frames collected by Northcote Thomas in Southern Nigeria, were brought to Europe. Displayed in museums; they provided windows into the worlds of other cultures and ways of life.
How distorting were these views?'

Event Date 22/6/2021
Author: rachel hand