Clarkson's Chest Research
EBC and The Wisbech & Fenland Museum
November 2021- Ongoing

In this collaborative research project between EBC, Kew and WF Museum myself and Kew Senior Research Leader Mark Nesbitt were invited to conduct the first in-depth study on the seed trays of Thomas Clarkson's Chest - an 18th c. collection of West African artefacts held at museum. The chest was assembled by Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) - a prominent slave trade abolition campaigner.

In 1787 Clarkson toured numerous British ports collecting West African objects and commodities that to him demonstrated a potential for 'Legitimate Trades' with Africa – trades in natural products like palm oil, dyewoods, and ivory that abolitionists advocated for, as an alternative to the Transatlantic slave trade. An early example of a traveling museum, Clarkson’s Chest was exhibited across Britain during the Abolitionist Campaigns, and even presented as evidence against Transatlantic slave trade to the British Parliament in 1789.

As part of this project I photographed the botanical contents of the chest and conducted ethnobotanical and identification studies on previously unassessed spice material from this collection.

Seed tray images:

Photographing the collection:

The Clarkson Chest:

I am currently working on a paper that explores the concept of fertility within the context of natural history collections, and the temporal multi-species relationships evidenced in this particular collection. This piece will address the implications of pests and pest management to object conservation, and propose pathways for thinking through and around pest damage in botanical collections, and ways to account for the 'invisible objects' that emerge as a result of the unwanted multi-species entanglements within this context.