Talk:Water pipe (Kew EBC 67634)
More actions
Discussion for: Water pipe (Kew EBC 67634) • View • Links • Related changes
Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.
Discussion
Inclusion
Kew's own record names cannabis for this object twice. The artefact name, the parts held and the use all read Pipe for smoking cannabis. The label transcribed in the notes reads Pipe for smoking 'Insangu' Cannabis sativa L. Neither is hedged, so the attribution is Stated. The infobox quotes the label, which is the older of the two witnesses.
The object was first drafted as an accession, on the ground that Kew files it in the same collection and record shape as three accessions from Natal. That draft was withdrawn before deployment: an accession records cannabis material; this is a made object. Kew's filing is Kew's; the page type follows what the object is.
Evidentiary scope
The record lists no plant material among the parts held. The pipe documents the smoking of cannabis in Zululand by the time Kew entered it in 1888; it does not document a plant, a population or a living holding. Landrace, feral and conservation fields do not apply to an artefact and are not set.
Kew publishes no image of this object. Its record page reads No Image. Kew's help page says the Economic Botany Collection has no in-house photographer but can sometimes have objects photographed to order for research and publication.
Editorial treatment
The entry book number dates the acquisition, not the object. Kew's help page defines an Entry Book Number as a number assigned to each group of specimens at the point of acquisition, running in a series each year. This object's number, 75.1888, means it was entered with the seventy-fifth group of 1888. The date acquired is therefore 1888 and the date made is left empty: the record gives no date of making. Kew's Museum Entry Books, which the help page says give at a minimum the donation date, place of origin and collector name, are held in the Economic Botany office. What the Entry Books record for 75.1888 has not been seen; the enquiry drafted for Kew asks.
No culture is recorded. Kew's record names no people as makers or users. Its geography line reads Zululand, which is a place, not an attribution. The culture field is empty and the article attributes the pipe to no people.
The determination stops at family. Kew's plant name is 153.04 CANNABACEAE, with no genus. GBIF determines the object to family rank and gives no genus either. The label's Cannabis sativa L. names what was smoked in the pipe; it is not a determination of the object. A census of Kew's holdings run at genus level does not return this object; it has to be found at family level.
The name recorded is the plant's. The local_name field carries Insangu, the label's name for what was smoked in the pipe. It is not a name for the pipe. The label gives the pipe no name of its own.
The label's spelling is kept. particlly is Kew's transcription and is quoted as it stands.
The donor is identified from two witnesses. Kew's donor field reads Medley Wood J. The British Museum's mat from the same entry names J. Medley Wood Esq. and J. Medley Wood on its labels. A Kew memorandum filed with it refers to Mr. Medley Wood’s Cypercea 3993.
No coordinate is asserted. The record gives no locality finer than Zululand. Zululand is a historical region that does not correspond to a present-day province, so no province is given either.
Where the object is
Kew's help page says that in the 1960s some Economic Botany specimens were transferred to other museums. It names the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Horniman Museum. Its link for the first goes to the British Museum's own collection search, so the Bloomsbury museum is meant, not the Natural History Museum. All three catalogues were searched on 24 September 2026, each with a control that returned known Kew material. None holds an object that could be this pipe. The British Museum holds the mat from the same entry, 75.1888, as Af1960,20.111. The museum records the mat as part of Kew's transfer of 1960. Its term page for J. Medley Wood lists that mat and nothing else.
Kew's own record still lists the pipe, with a storage category and no note of a transfer. The help page says the database was compiled in the 1980s from the information present with each specimen. That is consistent with the pipe having stayed at Kew when the mat left, but it has not been confirmed with Kew. An enquiry to Kew about where the pipe is and whether it can be photographed has been drafted but not sent.
These notes were recorded during artefact preparation. Source citations remain in the article. Éloise 20:37, 27 September 2026 (+07)