Description (Physical description)
Catalogue card: 'Five grass cloth squares'

Event Date
Author: maa

Context (References)
cf. Johnston, Harry (1910) George Grenfell and the Congo: A history and description of the Congo Independent State and adjoining districts of Congoland, together with some account of the native peoples and their languages, the fauna and flora, and similar notes on the Cameroons and the Island of Fernando Pô. (New York: Appleton & Co.), Vol.II p.792, Fig. 450
Captioned: Grass - cloth squares used as a currency on the north bank of the Lower Congo From B.M.S. Ethnographical Collection'.
[Image shows three folded lengths of raffia cloth]
Event Date 1910
Author: rachel hand

Context (Related Documents)
See MAA correspondence archives for a letter from J.B. Hurry, 3 February 1921, offering the museum additional material collected by Rev. John Lawson Forfeitt. A large proportion of the collection had been selected by Curator Baron Anatole von Hügel in 1911 with Hurry originally reserving 'for my private museum about a quarter of the collection and I now write to offer to you most of the remaining specimens.'

Dr Alfred C. Haddon subsequently selected from material listed in a catalogue that Hurry had forwarded. Hurry then wrote to Haddon on 1 November 1921 to send on the material with the exception of the 'big hat and the heavy collar, which is the original of the illustration in Johnson's Grenfell', which Hurry's family was loath to part with. These were later donated to MAA in 1926
Event Date 1921
Author: rachel hand

Context (Production / use)
Catalogue card for 1921.1015-1018 reads "Five grass cloth squares - used as currency in the N. bank of the Lower Congo. cf. Johnston. Vol. II. p.792."

Event Date 1921
Author: maa

Context (Field collection)
Recorded as collected by Rev. John Lawson Forfeit, Secretary to the Baptist Mission Society.
Event Date 1921
Author: rachel hand

Context (Amendments / updates)
The catalogue card for 1921.1015-1018 was originally made out for four grass mats. A later amendment, in von Hugel's hand, changed this to five mats with 1921.1017 being split into suffixes A and B. In 2001, two mats were found labelled 1921.1018. One of these has been assumed to be one of the missing 1921.1017 mats, and is now recorded as 1921.1017 A. 1921.1017 B is currently missing.

Event Date 25/11/2022
Author: Katrina Dring