The Field Collector, Ethnographer, and Scholarly Networker: Annie Marion Rivett-Carnac and her Collection of Indian Jewellery

Abstract

This article explores the significance of gender in understanding the formation of Indian collections in European museums, and how the activities of a single collector sheds light on the role of the individual and wider society. It focuses on Annie Marion Rivett-Carnac’s (1843–1935) contribution to multiple European museums over a period of over forty years. She amassed a personal collection of 6,000 to 8,000 items, brought together during her life in India alongside her husband. Her assemblage consisted of Indian body ornaments, jewellery, and items used in religious and daily practices, which she used to form networks with eminent figures in anthropology and ethnography in Europe, some outside of Britain’s traditional networks of British imperial collectors. While her husband has a prominent presence through his donations to museums, membership of learned societies and publications, little is known about her. Her contributions to museum collections in Britain, Germany and Sweden have largely gone unstudied, which this article seeks to address. It argues that Rivett-Carnac used her collections and the emergence of ethnography in Europe and British India as a way to position herself as a serious and respected scholar.