Context (Field collection)
Collected by Rebecca Empson for MAA from the 'Eternal Art' Antique shop, Ulaanbaatar, on the 24th of August 2007. The chest forms a pair with 2016.10. The two lions on these chests should be facing outward when displayed together, to protect the household. Originally from Hentii Aimag, 20th Century.
The chest has a deep scrape on the lid, which occurred during the exhibition installation of 'Assembling Bodies' at MAA.
The chest has been marked with its accession number but still needs a top coat of B67 applied over it.

Event Date 24/08/2007
Author: Remke Velden

Context (References)
Herle, Anita, Mark Elliott and Rebecca Empson. Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology University of Cambridge, 2009, p.71.

Event Date 2009
Author: Remke Velden

Context (Display)
Exhibited in 'Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination' in the Andrews Gallery, MAA March 2009-November 2010. Exhibition label text:

Household Chest
MAA Installation, 2009
Composed of items collected by Rebecca Empson 2007, Mongolia

Mobile herders in Mongolia may be separated from family members throughout the year, but people remain attached to a particular house, even after death. Household chests are a political medium for displaying and maintaining different relations attached to a single household.

Ancestral portraits, photographic montages and pieces contained inside the chest extend the agency of people and assemble family and friends, so that people are not just where their bodies are but in many different places simultaneously.

The household chest is also a site where different concepts of the body meet. The body in Mongolia is not simply composed of parts or substances. It also contains forces such as luck, might, fortune, and spirit/soul that fluctuate in and out of balance according to a person’s actions.

Many of the objects regulate and manage these forces, such as the fortune bag, religious icons, butter lamps and prayer wheels. The calendar tells of fortuitous days, according to astrology.

Female household members feed the display with daily offerings of milk libations and attend to and change its form. In so doing they tend to the people attached to a house.

Permission to reproduce the photographic montages and ancestral portraits displayed here have been sought from a household in Mongolia.



Event Date 03/2009
Author: Remke Velden

Description (Physical description)
Wooden household chest decorated with red pigment on lid. The front of the chest is highly decorated. In the centre a lion can be seen with its head to the right and a blue serpent-like creature in its mouth. This image is set in a larger, orange coloured rectangle with a flower motif in each corner. That rectangle is surrounded by a border containing various scenes of plants and flowers. The chest is front opening with a metal clasp for a lock. Once the clasp has been opened the top segment of the front of the chest lifts out, providing access to the interior.
Event Date 30/3/2016
Author: Remke Velden