Stuart Black at the University of Reading is currently undertaking a scoping exercise into animal skins and furs held in Army Museums across the UK.
Animal skins/furs are preserved within museum collections with many of these in military museums as adornment and as such these represent a ‘hidden archive’ that could help with modern animal conservation. For example, understanding the long- term diet variability of animals is important from a re-wilding perspective, but is difficult to explore from natural history collections as they do not always have the time depth perspective in their collections required for this approach1. Bearskin hats worn by Grenadiers in Britain have been used for over 200 years, all have been sourced from Canada. What is not widely known is that are more bearskins in the form of adornments/clothing in military museums than there are in all the natural history collections (own data), and they offer a unique archive of changing bear diet, environment and geographical location over time that is locked away (see Fig. 1).
We aim to put together a project that will have the following outcomes:
Connect the lives of the people and the animals represented in their clothing by understanding both in more detail.
Fig. 1. Potential animal fur and skin records in military uniforms. Samples of fur/hair from each area will show diet, environment and geographical location data using isotopic and element fingerprints when analysed.
We will communicate the findings of the project via a participatory research approach, involving members of the museum community, The National Army Museum (NAM), The Army Museums Ogilby Trust (AMOT), The National Museums of Scotland (NMS), The Natural History Museum (NHM) and other military organisations (representatives from the army, the regimental museums, trusts and supporters) as well fashion (College of Arts, The British Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum) through a series of workshops during the project. We will also coordinate with the Royal Armouries and The Imperial War Museum. The research will involve all the stakeholders, and we will offer to engage with as many people as want to be involved.
We firstly, want to create a database of all bear and panther species held in military museums and collections. We will integrate this into existing databases, such that they can be searchable online. Secondly, we will then collate the history of the garments, the personal wearing them and the animals together into a unique series of biographies.
Academic outputs will include a team-authored open access book, alongside a series of single and co-authored journal articles. Exhibitions and educational programs will be co-created with a dedicated artist on the project and will involve input from all our interested parties. Dr Rebecca Jewell will create art based on the project and as a renowned natural history artist https://www.rebeccajewell.com/about and Fellow of the Zoological Society of London (FZSL) and of the Linnean Society (FLS) will produce unique pieces that will be available as part of a travelling exhibition at the end of the project to highlight the outcomes of the research.
References
1 Schindel DE, Cook JA (2018) The next generation of natural history collections. PLoS Biol 16(7): e2006125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2006125
2 Ministry of Defence statement https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/602285