ART on view Archaeological Association beginning in 1844 and served as its secretary and later as vice president. At their regular 84 meetings he delivered papers on a wide variety of subjects and lectured to members about many objects from his collection. Henry described his passion for ethnographic objects in a letter to Sir Samuel Meyrick in 1842: I was cradled and nurtured amongst curiosities … my love for them—a love which few can conceive, and none can surpass, is an inheritance which has been increased and nourished by a collection formed by my father; and by the constant practise of frequenting museums. Cuming championed the care and classifi cation of ethnographic collections other than his own. In the same letter to Meyrick he claimed credit for saving the collections of the London Missionary Museum. The collection, he wrote, was not only suffered to remain in an utter state of chaos, but, even to rot and perish from neglect, and damp, till I sounded the alarm-bell in the ears of the Directors of that Institution: and although completely unconnected by any feeling, or tie in the most remote degree, which would give me infl uence with a single member belonging to that body; am proud to say, I have been the means of saving this Collection from entire destruction. I did not cease from “agitating” till they employed a person (Mr Stutchbury of Theobalds Row) to set it in order, and I myself lent my humble aid, in naming a vast number of the specimens. The ethnological section of the British Museum was an institution that he felt was lower far in the grade of wretchedness, than any other … to the shame of England. ... In another room is a very large case fi lled with specimens from all parts of Australasia, and Polynesia, thrown together; forming one confused and heterogeneous pile of what appears absolute rubbish, but which are in reality things of very great interest if they were properly displayed. FIG. 8 (left): Ball-headed club. Eastern Woodlands, North America. Wood. L: 56 cm. Cuming Museum, C3200. FIG. 7 (below): Club with painted decoration. Nuu-Chahnulth, Northwest Coast of North America. Wood, pigment. L: 57.5 cm. Cuming Museum, C3187. FIG. 10 (above right): Pair of women’s ear ornaments. Zulu, South Africa. Before 1839. Ivory. D: 2.3 cm. Cuming Museum, C6095/6. Formerly in the museum of Robert Francis Seale (1791–1839), Secretary to the Government, St. Helena. FIG. 6 (right): Snow goggles. Inuit. Before 1851. Bone, fi ber. L: 15 cm. Cuming Museum, C2646. Formerly in the collection of Thomas Dawson of Grasmere, sold at Christie’s London in 1851 as lot 531. FIG. 9 (above): Bracelet. Prince William Sound, Northwest Coast of North America. Before 1778. Whale bone, dentalium shell. W: 7.2 cm. Cuming Museum, C6072. Collected on Cook’s third voyage and subsequently in the Leverian Museum, where it was sketched by Sarah Stone. The buyer at the Leverian sale is unknown, but a label on the inside of the bracelet confi rms its Leverian Museum provenance. It was rediscovered in the 1970s in a crate containing rubble and objects cleared after the museum was struck by a bomb during WWII. FIG. 11 (below): Two dolls. Cree, Great Lakes, North America. Before 1806. Hide, cloth, wood, fi ber, porcupine quills, beads, hair, pigment. H: 33 cm. Cuming Museum, C2337/8. These dolls were sold as lot 3645 in the Leverian Museum auction in 1806 and were described as “two small fi gures dressed in the costume of the N. American Indians.” They were purchased by Atkinson. They later appeared in the sale of the collection of Peter Dick in 1821 as lot 90 and were bought by an unknown buyer. In 1842 they were presented to the Cuming by G. Bonner.
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