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The significance of Schuver's collection The Schuver Collection is the oldest assembly of objects from the Sudan held by the RMV. In addition, when compared with the other collections mentioned above, it is also the largest collection dating from the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. The Schuver Collection contains objects not acquired by other collectors of that period. Nowhere else can we see Zande stools, for example. Schuver seems to have a particular interest in these items, and he also collected the only two Mbole stools held here, such items being extremely rare even at the time they were collected. The Riebeck Collection contains several Sudanese dishes made from gourds, but that is all. The fifteen dishes Schuver collected are thus striking for their large number. They seem to be products that, because of their practical usefulness, could be purchased by local inhabitants as well as by tourists. Small boxes, dishes, and dish stands produced by the Zande, form only part of Schuver's collection. The objects he collected among the Kwama, and in the Sudanese/Ethiopian border region, are unique. The manuscripts are especially valuable, including Schuver's observations on the customs and usages of the peoples whose territories he crossed. An enormous number of items of cultural value (in both the material and spiritual sense) were permanently lost to the world, for many different reasons. These could include migration, whether forced or voluntary; changes in borders; Ethopian colonisation; a rapidly increasing rate of Arabisation and Islamisation; and above all, a long-drawn-out, devastating civil war. Schuver's notes on the culture and language of particular ethnic groups, and a proportion of the objects he collected, are thus the sole remaining witnesses to the past history of south-eastern Sudan or south-western Ethiopia. | |
