Fritha

Rhinoceros specimens from the London Natural History Museum displays.

Collection and cataloguing notes dating 1917-18 and pertaining to the mammals collected on the American Museum Congo Expedition. Lang and Chapin left for the (then) Belgium Congo in 1909, planning to only be two years. Their primary objectives were to collect specimens of the okapi, the short-necked forest giraffe, and the endangered northern white rhinoceros, C. … Read more 74

The ‘Versailles rhinoceros’ arrived in France in 1770 from India, where he remained for 20 years on display in an enclosure of approximately 240m2 in the Versailles menagerie. He was studied by many, including George Cuvier, Petrus Campus and Comte deBuffon. His death is controversial, as it is thought that he drowned in his pond, but … Read more 73

Petrus Camper  was one of the first Enlightenment scholars to be interested in comparative anatomy. He is best known for his theory of prognathism, where, with a line drawn from the chin to the forehead, he suggested that facial angle affected development. As a forerunner of phrenology, he claimed that Europeans demonstrate a facial angle of 80°, … Read more 70

Belgian cartoonist, Georges Remi, known as Hergé, first published The Adventures of Tintin in 1929 as a serialised comic strip for Le Petit Vingtième. In 1930 it was suggested by his editor that he set a story in the Belgian Congo (now DRC), with a propagandistic agenda: to encourage colonial aspirations amongst children and promote the Belgian colonial administration. While conducting … Read more 66

A collection of vials that contain the fingernails of famous rhinoceros hunters and collectors.  Rhinoceros horn is largely composed of keratin, a tough, fibrous protein found in hair and nails, while calcium and melanin are secondary components. The horn is constructed from densely packed hair filaments with a density of approximately 7 mm−2. The hairs are bonded … Read more 65

Nkisi n’kondi are wooden figures into which metal nails, blades and pegs are inserted and come mainly from the northern part of the Congo region. N’kondi translates to ‘hunter’ and is often are invoked to find and punish to criminals. Each individual insert represents either an agreement between two parties, a commitment to protect against … Read more 64

The Berlin Zoo opened in 1844 when Frederick Willem IV gifted his menagerie to the city. It has a chequered past that includes the exhibition of humans between 1878 and 1931 and the looting of European zoos during WW2. Lutz Heck was the Director of the Berlin Zoological Gardens between 1932 and 1945. He was … Read more 63

Metal object reminiscent of a bronze rhino horn grater – Han period, China 206Bc – 24 AD. In 2015 artist Julian Gasson made a patina print from a copper deep-etched object based on this grater and presented it on the travelling “Rhinos are Coming’ exhibition. https://frithalangerman.com/rhino/ Keratin rhino horn when carved and polished becomes translucent and … Read more 57

In 1955 Peter Beard joined Charles Darwin’s great grandson, Quentin Keynes, to work on a film about black and white rhinos in the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve. Beard continued to photograph African game, mist famously in his 1965 book, The End of the Game.  Many of the images in this book were taken in Kenya’s Tsavo … Read more 58