From My Files 2: Henna in the Museum

From My Files, week 2! Let's keep the momentum going.

Building off of last week's post, which featured a genipa fruit in a 17th century museum, this week I thought I would share some examples that I've come across of henna in museums around the world. Feel free to add in the comments: have you ever come across henna in a museum? As a student of Museum Studies, I've always been fascinated by combining two of my interests, and I would love to plan a museum exhibit on henna around the world... One day! What would you put in a museum exhibit on henna?

Of course, there are many examples of art depicting henna in museums around the world (for some examples previously examined in the blog, see here, here, and here), but we are not going to attempt to survey this in this brief post. Another category that we could put in our hypothetical henna exhibit are what might be termed henna paraphernalia, or objects related to henna or used during henna application. 

Henna gourd from West Africa, Smithsonian Museum of African Art

For example, in this post I have an example of a zunguru, or calabash gourd filled with henna paste, used in West Africa to cover the arms with henna; this post has an example of a sang-e ḥanā, "henna stone" or stool to rest one's feet on after they've been hennaed, which was common in Persia and the Ottoman Empire; and this post shows a Jewish henna cloth, known as pishandaz-e ḥana, from Afghanistan.

From My Files 1: Some Jagua History

It's been a while since my last blog. The truth is that I've been very busy with my doctoral program and I haven't had time to research and write the lengthy articles as in the past. But I'm going through my henna files in preparation for HennaCon 2017 and thought I'd post some shorter snippets of interesting history... So welcome to the first instalment of this "From My Files" series! My goal is to post one a week from now until Henna Con — that's only 12 weeks away!!! Can you believe it? So feel free to check in every week (you can subscribe by email, or follow us on Facebook), and let the countdown begin!