Something about this doll’s face and design immediately stood out for me – I had seen nothing quite like it and relished the opportunity to start investigating.

One of the things I am finding most interesting about my weekly research for this project is how my relationship with (and understanding of) museums is evolving and becoming more complex. I was, of course, very aware that institutions like the British Museum, the Met or the Louvre carry with them a heavy historical, colonial baggage, and issues regarding ownership of and entitlement to a more than substantial section of their collections – if not virtually their entire collections – are well-known, and eloquently discussed elsewhere.

The purpose of this project is to focus on each plaything, but the approach proves disconcerting and difficult when the object brings up so many unsettling questions about its journey and what it represents.

In addition to housing all of the artifacts on display, museums such as these also act as huge depots for hundreds of thousands of artifacts from a wide range of time periods, which are very frequently out of context. There are whole collections of objects gathered by 18th-20th C Europeans or Americans who visited so-called ‘exotic’ places (interestingly, I noticed that ‘Africa, Oceania and the Americas’ is a single department at the British Museum) and donated or sold them to museums on their return.

What do we do with all of these objects? A large number of these items may not seem particularly interesting – not everything old or ancient is, and why should it be? We only need to look at our own surroundings. But there are some truly wonderful things to be discovered. Do we have time or resources to dedicate to every little object like this one, to try and work out its story? Should we?

The vastness of these collections is staggering and vertigo-inducing. Browsing them is proving fascinating and often sad – thousands of objects with no clear provenance and extremely scarce information; whole histories lost, ripped out clean, taken out of context with no proper records, so that a few select people in the past could delight in a feeling of exciting curiosity and worldliness. It makes for a sort of colonial fast-food smorgasbord of otherness, now mostly sitting in storage.

I came across this doll while looking specifically for African toys at the British Museum. The information on the file tells us it used to be at County Museum, Truro, and was purchased by the British Museum in 1986. It states it was made in the late 19th century in Mahikeng (sometimes referred to as Mafikeng or Mafeking – the site of a long siege in the second Boer War in 1899-1902), in modern-day South Africa. The ‘production ethnic group’ is stated as Tswana.

At first, I was mostly frustrated – I wanted to know more! The online collection at the British Museum is expertly photographed and easy to search, but I could not understand why the information on an object such as this one was so brief. What kind of wood is it? Do we not know how the museum at Truro came to acquire it? How do we know it is late 19th C and made by Tswana people? Who has studied it? And I wondered to myself, what is the purpose of a museum purchasing a wonderful object like this, not displaying it, and not sharing more information about it?

I spent hours searching the Internet for Tswana crafts, and found absolutely nothing similar (please contact me if you know of anything). I looked for 19th C wood crafts in the area and came up with no information. I looked for crafts made locally, possibly for the English and the Boers – nothing. I looked for earlier and later periods, and further afield, but came out empty-handed. It is very possible I was looking in all of the wrong places, but that in itself is interesting. The rules that have applied to my other playthings did not apply here.

I put the doll to one side – what could I possibly say about her? She had been plucked out of context. I wondered how many similar objects are dotted around the world, sitting in private collections, or in storage in museums – maybe not many at all, or maybe enough to be studied and get a better idea of the history of Tswana art and craftwork (all I have been able to find so far is focused on basket weaving).

But I kept coming back to her, too intriguing to let go. She seems to be wearing either English or Boer clothing, and her features seem to be white. What delights me especially is the stylised shape of the dress, with lines that would have made the cubists go weak at the knees. The most wonderful thing is that she is part of a little group of objects, all with the same description (probably Tswana, from Mahikeng, late 19th century). They are all made from the same wood (if anyone knows what it is, please let me know) – there are some toy male figures (also with seemingly white features, see here – is that a moustache? –, here and here, ), some toy chairs (see here, here and here), a toy table, a wonderful toy umbrella, several toy dishes, some spoons and ladles (one of them has ‘Mafeking Native’ written on it, presumably by someone at the museum in Truro), and a really delightful anteater character who I reserve the right to write about on a separate occasion.

She is a decent size (over 20 cm tall). Take a look at her again and note that the British Museum has a band at the bottom of the page, with photos you can scroll through showing different angles. Here you can see her superb profile and the detailed back of the dress.

Could she have been the inhabitant of a doll’s house? Could she have been the lady of this house? Who was playing with these toys? Were they made for white children, or were they made for Tswana children? I am left with many questions, and a lingering feeling of frustration and disappointment on several levels.

She was made not long before the lovely Shoe Doll – what would the owner of the latter have thought of our smart Mahikeng Lady, I wonder? She has a kind face and a Mona Lisa smile, and the intricate pattern on the back of the dress tells me she might have been a hit. For the moment, it might be fun to imagine them both at a tea party – the Lady telling Shoe Doll about Mahikeng, and the Shoe Doll telling the Lady about London. What would they say to each other? Come nearer. If we eavesdrop, we might learn more about our smart Lady from Mahikeng.