Enter the 19th century

The Pitt Rivers Museum is everything that a museum is no longer supposed to be. Its ranks of glass cases in a large dark room (I've lightened the picture) have ‘a high density of objects on display' (in Wikipedia's wonderful words) often with small handwritten or typewritten labels. They are drawn from the 22,000 archaeological and anthropological items collected from around the world by Lt-General Augustus Pitt Rivers and donated to the university in 1884, plus a further 480,000 items donated by travellers, scholars and missionaries or bought by the museum.

Objects are unfashionably arranged according to how they were used, rather than according to their age or origin since Pitt Rivers intended his collection to show progression in design and evolution in human culture from the simple to the complex. So one display case can contain many examples of, say, drums, or baskets, or fans, showing historical and regional variations.

You can never be quite sure what intriguing juxtapositions will present themselves but best of all in this curious place is that under the display cases are unlabelled wooden drawers. Open one at random and find a heap of smoking pipes from around the world, or combs, or tools for cutting nails.

It’s a huge treasure hunt and I love it.