{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O108395"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O108395/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006BA1015/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006BA1015/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2006BA1015","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O108395/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O108395","accessionNumber":"415-1869","objectType":"Hair pin","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"This silver hair pin belonged to Tiruwork Wube, also known as Queen Terunesh, second wife of the Ethiopian emperor Tewodros II and mother of Prince Alemayehu. It was amongst a selection of Terunesh's clothing and jewellery that were brought to Britain after her death in May 1868, a month after the destruction of Maqdala by the British Army in April 1868. The deceased queen's possessions were sent to the Secretary of State for India at the India Office in London, and given to the South Kensington Museum (which would later become the V&amp;A) the following year. Items looted from Maqdala by the British army were also acquired by the South Kensington Museum from 1868 onwards.","physicalDescription":"Hair pin, silver, the head ornamented with an openwork cross in a circle.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Unknown","id":"A1848"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"silver","id":"AAT11029"}],"techniques":[],"materialsAndTechniques":"Silver","categories":[{"text":"Africa","id":"THES49019"},{"text":"Jewellery","id":"THES48930"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"MET","id":"THES48599"},"images":["2006BA1015"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"024","id":"THES407958"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"Pin","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Ethiopia","id":"x35090"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"before 1868","earliest":null,"latest":"1867-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Given by the Secretary of State for India","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Length","value":"15.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"<u>Provenance</u>: Queen Terunesh (d. 1868); Stafford Northcote, Secretary of State for India, 1868; given to the South Kensington Museum, 28 April 1869.\r\n\r\nThis silver hair pin belonged to Tiruwork Wube, also known as Queen Terunesh, second wife of the Ethiopian emperor Tewodros II and mother of Prince Alemayehu.\n\nIn 1863, Tewodros took hostage around thirty European diplomats and missionaries stationed in Ethiopia. He took this action after letters he had written to Queen Victoria in 1857 and 1862, requesting military assistance from Britain, had gone unanswered. Following failed diplomatic attempts to secure the release of the hostages, a large-scale British military expedition was launched from Bombay in October 1867. The expedition was led by General Sir Charles Robert Napier, and comprised around 12,000 British and Indian troops.\r\n\r\nThe expedition reached Maqdala in April 1868, where the British army quickly overwhelmed the Ethiopian troops with enormous firepower. On 13 April, Napier’s forces launched the final attack on Maqdala that saw Tewodros’ armies entirely defeated. The Emperor took his own life.\r\n\r\nContemporary reports record that the widowed Queen expressed a wish to ‘be escorted as far as her native province of Semyen, in the north-west part of Tigreh [but] … when the head-quarters’ camp reached Aikhullet, on May 15 [1868], this poor lady died’, apparently of lung disease. ‘Her funeral took place next morning in the great church at Chelicut … The women of her household, showing her robe, her ornaments, her slippers and her drinking cup, beat their breasts, tore their hair, and scratched their cheeks, shedding tears of real grief as they bewailed her death’ (<i>Illustrated London News</i>, 27 June 1868).\n\nAn inventory of the Queen's possessions compiled in February 1869 includes a mention of '1 silver pin'. Her possessions were sent to the Secretary of State for India at the India Office in London, and were given to the South Kensington Museum (which would later become the V&amp;A) in April 1869. Items looted from Maqdala by the British army were also acquired by the South Kensington Museum from 1868 onwards.\n\nAccession register entry: 'Pin. Silver, the head  ornamented with an openwork cross in a circle; belonging formerly to the Queen of Abyssinia. Abysinnian. Given by the Secretary of State for India. April 28th 1869'. (Note: Abyssinia was a term historically used outside of Ethiopia to refer to the country).\n\r\nDisplayed in <i>V&amp;A Africa: Exploring Hidden Histories</i>, 15 November 2012 - 3 February 2013","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Hair pin, silver with decorative finial, Ethiopia, before 1868","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Heavens, Andrew. <i>The Prince and the Plunder: How Britain Took One Small Boy and Hundreds of Treasures from Ethiopia</i>. Cheltenham: The History Press, 2022."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Jones, Alexandra. \"Ethiopian Objects at the Victoria and Albert Museum.\" <i>African Research and Documentation</i> 135 (2019): 8-24."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Patrizio Gunning, Lucia, and Debbie Challis. \"Planned Plunder, the British Museum, and the 1868 Maqdala Expedition.\" <i>The Historical Journal</i> 66, no. 3 (2023): 550-72."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Stylianou, N., “Producing and Collecting for Empire: African Textiles in the V&A 1852-2000” (PhD thesis, University of the Arts London, 2012), 349-50."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Stylianou, N., “The Empress’s Old Clothes: Biographies of African Dress at the Victoria and Albert Museum,” in <i>Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice</i>, ed. C. Nicklas and A. Pollen (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 82."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Watson Jones, Alexandra. \"Maqdala and the South Kensington Museum: 150 Years Later.\" In <i>Intersectional Encounters in the Nineteenth-Century Archive,</i> edited by Rachel Bryant Davies and Erin Johnson-Williams, 71-87. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"'Set of Articles of Deceased Queen of Abyssinia' and related correspondence, British Library, IOR R/20/AIA/503."}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[{"text":"Looting of Maqdala (1868)","id":"V92"},{"text":"1867-8 British Expedition to Ethiopia","id":"AUTH407033"}],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["415-1869"],"accessionNumberNum":"415","accessionNumberPrefix":"","accessionYear":1869,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-02-05","recordCreationDate":"2005-01-06","availableToBook":true}}