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Stow visits the Mantle Room

A detail from a painted sketch by Stow that he used in creating his collages, collaged onto a photo of the Mantle Room collection of kimberlite specimens.
Looking for kimberlites

A kimberlite specimen from the Mantle Room, superimposed on a detail from Stow’s Geological Survey of Griqualand West
A curious request...

"Dear post-graduate researchers in Geological Sciences I am a lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, and have brought my Honours in Curatorship students almost annually to visit the Mantle collection that forms part of your department. Dr Janney usually chats to us, and shows us the kimberlite specimens... As of recently, I have been doing research on George Stow, a British born, South African geologist and ethnologist (who was also a poet, historian, artist, cartographer and writer) and who, during the 19th century, was responsible for documenting the rock art he found in the caves and shelters of South Africa. In 1872, he was employed by Sir Henry Barkly, Governor of the Cape Colony, to survey the territory of Griqualand West. On this subject he read a paper before the Geological Society in London in 1873 (""Geological Notes on Griqualand West""). Two years later, Stow undertook the task of studying the geology of the country surrounding the diamond fields of Kimberley, travelling down to the junction of the Orange and Vaal rivers and beyond, in order to connect this research to the previous work he had done in the area. I have attached a map he drew up during this time and would be very interested to know what a contemporary geologist makes of it... I welcome any insights - and would especially be interested to know whether there are materials in the department which could possibly relate to it, such as specimens in the Mantle Room, or other maps perhaps? Or maybe you can just point me in the right direction and I can chat to someone else in the department or further afield? I am keeping my fingers-crossed... Regards, Nina Liebenberg"
||kabbo's song on the loss of his tobacco pouch

The loss of ||kabbo's tobacco bag, which was stolen by a hungry dog, belonging to !gou !nui, named 'Blom'
!nue

1. shana, 2. "pot", 3. da a "fire", 4. ya ||gu, 5. !nue ("bag"), 6. Ngoba ≠ko ≠ko, 7. shana |ne ≠nauwa ya. Shana fruit which has fallen upon the ground., 8. shana |ne, 9. shana go, 10. shana !gua, shana leaf, 11. ≠ko ≠ko tsema, 12. ≠ko ≠ko |nu |nu ||a, 13. ≠ko ≠ko tchu, 14.!ku (Ngoba !ku), 15. Ngoba tchu, 16. ||gu yo, water pot, 17. !nu tsema, 18. ngoba (necklace), (19. shana |ne), (20. !kan ssin), (21. gomi |no), 22. skin fastening of necklace, 23. yo tsema, 24. !kan tsema, 24. leaves which have fallen to the ground
Sound from the Thinking Strings (installation detail)

'Sound from the Thinking Strings' was comprised of twenty etchings created by Skotnes that drew on southern San mythology, archaeological and historical research and rock paintings; poems by the late poet Stephen Watson that interpreted extracts of nineteenth-century recordings of |xam cosmology compiled in the Bleek and Lloyd archive and pre-selected by Skotnes; and historical and archaeological contextualisations of these recordings in the form of essays by archaeologist John Parkington and historian Nigel Penn. The exhibition also displayed associated visual material that Skotnes sourced from the UCT and State Archives, the UCT Archaeology Department and the SAM.
Sound from the Thinking Strings (installation detail)

'Sound from the Thinking Strings' was comprised of twenty etchings created by Skotnes that drew on southern San mythology, archaeological and historical research and rock paintings; poems by the late poet Stephen Watson that interpreted extracts of nineteenth-century recordings of |xam cosmology compiled in the Bleek and Lloyd archive and pre-selected by Skotnes; and historical and archaeological contextualisations of these recordings in the form of essays by archaeologist John Parkington and historian Nigel Penn. The exhibition also displayed associated visual material that Skotnes sourced from the UCT and State Archives, the UCT Archaeology Department and the SAM.