Finding and Founding research project

The History of Science Museum holds the world’s largest and most significant collection of astronomical instruments from the Islamic world, yet their provenance, channels and mechanisms of acquisition are largely unknown.

As our museum strengthens its relations with source communities within Oxford — and its growing online presence reaches people within Islamic countries — we increasingly receive the same pressing question from our public, researchers and students:

“Why does the History of Science Museum possess these objects?”

The Finding and Founding Project forms a pilot effort to investigate the provenance of these instruments from the Lewis Evans collection for the first time.

Assembled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these objects constitute the most comprehensive and historically significant collection of early astronomical instruments from the Islamic world. They range chronologically from the 9th to the 19th century and geographically from Muslim Spain to colonial-era India — yet they are all kept in Oxford.

In a moment in which decolonisation movements increasingly press our University and our institutions for answers regarding provenance and the modes of acquisition of our objects — as well as their potential connections to colonial exploitation — it is paramount that the History of Science Museum is able to account for its collection.

The Finding and Founding Project addresses four central research questions:

1. Which countries did the objects originally come from, and where did Evans acquire them?
    
2. In what circumstances did Evans acquire the objects and what was the role of the dealers, collectors, and scholars who helped him?
    
3. What were the social and political circumstances in the countries of origin which brought about the dispersal of these instruments?
    
4. What drove the sudden interest in Islamic artefacts at the end of the 19th century (an interest visible in the concurrent acquisitions by other museums and collectors in this period, such as the V&A)?

The primary method of addressing these questions is connecting objects in the History of Science Museum’s Lewis Evans collection to archival material held within HSM and across other institutions.

The Evans manuscript archive at HSM forms the initial source base to connect a group of people, dealers, scholars, and fellow collectors, to the sale and acquisition of objects from the Islamic world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Using national, e.g.

• British Library
• National Archives
• National Art Library

and international, e.g.

• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Archives nationales de France
• Library of Congress, USA)

archives, Dr Braund will trace the personal connections that underlie the provenance of HSM’s founding collection and establish the modes by which the objects entered the European art markets.

Dr Braund will engage academic and public audiences over the course of this project.

In addition to a paper to the annual symposium of the Scientific Instruments Commission, Dr Braund is preparing two articles for submission to academic journals.

Dr Braund is engaging public audiences with the Finding and Founding project through a regular blog series:

As a pilot project, the Finding and Founding Project breaks new ground at the History of Science Museum and positions the museum as a leader in this research in History of Science collections.

Significantly, this project brings this research beyond academic audiences, engaging HSM’s visitors on-site and digitally. Dr Braund is reaching these public audiences through on-site workshops at HSM and through social media: