Photographs
Paper - Early twentieth century
Photographs of clay pots being made, Tanzania
These ten photographs were taken in Tanzania. They show the making of clay pots and were taken by William Arthur Cunnington, a British zoologist who led a 1904 scientific expedition to Tanganyika (which is now part of Tanzania).
Like many scientists at the time, Cunnington also collected material culture from the places he travelled to, and donated many of these objects to local British museums. That Cunnington watched the pots being made and took photographs of the process indicates that he took an active interest in the cultures of the places he visited. In the late 1930s he donated a collection of objects from Burundi to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, and his daughter donated a small number of objects from his 1904 expedition to Tanganyika to Reading Museum in the early 2000s.
Museum object number