The Cheeseman–Giglioli correspondence, and museum exchanges between Auckland and Florence, 1877–1904

Abstract

Letters between Thomas Frederic Cheeseman of Auckland Museum (New Zealand) and Enrico Hillyer Giglioli of the Florence Natural History Museum (Italy) spanning 27 years (1877–1904), document repeated exchanges of natural history and ethnographic objects (consignments received at Florence in 1879, 1885, 1887, 1890, about 1895 and 1899, and at Auckland in 1882, 1888, 1891, 1896 and 1904). Extracts from the correspondence are used to give a chronological account of the transactions as a detailed case-study of a nineteenth century museum exchange between institutions half a world apart. Emphasis is given to land vertebrates, of which some 150 New Zealand birds were sent to Florence, and more than 600 Italian and foreign birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians were sent to Auckland. Giglioli especially sought Maori and Pacific ethnographic items and persistently requested these. He could offer royal acknowledgement of Cheeseman's efforts, and the latter received a Galileian silver medal of merit from the Florence Faculty of Sciences in 1887. The exchanges show what could be achieved over time by relatively few letters, despite the slow postal service, the need for agents, and the vagaries of freighting by sailing ship and steamer that included port strikes, unscheduled transhipment and the loss of ethnographic items by pillage en route.