Excavation in the museum

Why bother with auctions and the like when there's so much already in the basement?

AT FIRST glance they have little in common except their antiquity and being buried away for too long in dusty cupboards and basement storage boxes.
But the Royal Museum of Scotland has now "rediscovered" a range of national treasures that are going to be put on display to the public.

They include an antelope net used by Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone during his travels in Africa and a rare "hobby horse" bike that was the plaything of the 19th-century aristocracy.

Other extraordinary finds include a fossilised tree, around 250 million years old and linked to the great Scottish naturalist John Muir, and an 18th-century illustrated guide to Scotland.

The objects are among the four million items collected by the museum, in Edinburgh's Chambers Street, since it opened in 1868. But its curators have only been able to put a fraction of its treasures on display at any one time.

Full article here. The hobby horse is particularly interesting:

The biggest item is the hobby horse, or draisine -- named after its German inventor Baron Karl von Drais -- which was made for the 13th Earl Of Eglinton in Ayrshire around 1822. . .

The last time it was seen in public was in a parade in 1897. Then it was found by an estate worker in a shed in the 1930s and was donated to the museum.

Posted by David on December 29, 2007 10:55 PM