Helen Wang
Helen Wang is Curator of East Asian Money at the British Museum. In addition to
researching Money on the Silk Road (2004) and Textiles as Money on the Silk Road (2013),
she’s worked collaboratively with lots of IDP friends to produce
important reference works on the collections of Sir Aurel Stein.
These include the Handbook to the Collections of Sir Aurel Stein in the
UK (1999, revised 2008); Sir Aurel Stein in The Times (2002); Catalogue to the Collections of Sir Aurel Stein in
the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2002)
and its Supplement (2007); and Sir Aurel Stein, Colleagues and
Collections (2012). Her chosen item is a photograph of
Stein’s assistant Miss LorimerPhoto 1280/1(1).
Helen Wang writes:
I’ve chosen Miss Lorimer (Stein’s
Recording Angel, or R.A.) in recognition of her outstanding
commitment and contribution to Sir Aurel Stein’s projects and
undertakings. Miss Lorimer worked with Stein for thirteen years,
spending nine years at the British Museum, and four years in
India. Although Stein was an exceptionally competent keeper of
records and accounts (if in doubt, take a look at his papers in the Bodleian Library), it’s quite clear
that he preferred the open air to the office. After all, how
many ‘Education Officers’ are able to spend months on
expeditions away from their desks? And how many archaeologists
of no fixed abode are able to keep such close tabs on their
recording team?
When the shipments arrived in London, it
was the small team of Mr Andrews and Miss Lorimer who set to
work on the collection. Stein joined them when he could. At the
British Museum, the Stein Collection had its own space, with its
own lock and key, and it was here that Andrews and Lorimer
unpacked the finds, stored them safely, and created the slips.
These were long strips of paper, once used like index cards in
the museum, and now superseded by spreadsheets and databases.
Each object had its own slip, which typically recorded the
object’s ‘Stein number’ (his unique system, combining upper and
lower case letters, and Roman and Arabic numerals to indicate
the precise context of a site find, purchase or gift), its
measurements and a description. The slips served as the basis
for the thousands of object descriptions published in Stein’s
publications, and they were essential for managing the
collection. Some parts of the collection travelled, and Miss
Lorimer, in particular, had to keep track of everything. For
example, in 1911 over 400 Chinese manuscripts were sent to Paul Pelliot in Parisfor cataloguing, and
remained there throughout the First World War.
The Stein
Collections are phenomenally important — for the wonderful
objects and manuscripts, of course, but also for the meticulous
recording of the contexts in which they were found. This does
not happen by itself. Without the painstaking efforts of people
like Miss Lorimer, who mostly work behind the scenes and are
seldom acknowledged, our understanding of the Silk Road would be
so much the poorer.
Link to original post on IDP blog.