Our World Storage

I recently visited Brighton Museum & Art Gallery’s stores to photograph and help document some of the World Art collections that are kept there.

When we arrived I was shown around and taken to the World Art section. After locating the boxes we had come to find, we put on gloves and photographed the contents.

Home made football made from banana fibre

Knife in decorated sheath

The first box contained two footballs from Cameroon in West Africa that are made from the fibres of banana skins. These were fascinating because they provided an insight into the daily life of young people in another country whose lives are in a lot of ways similar to my own.

Another object we looked at was a knife in a beautiful sheath from Sierra Leone in West Africa. The pattern on the sheath is stunning. I was surprised at how something that is essentially a weapon could be so elegantly decorated.

The trip to the stores was intriguing as well as a lot of fun. It also provided me with a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.

Vicki Tambling, World Stories volunteer