The objects collections are gradually being catalogued and photographed and uploaded to the museum database where they are available for all. Please note that the language used by original collectors may not be appropriate or acceptable today. Usually the objects in the BECM collection link to photographs, films and archive material in the Bristol Archives collections. Using the BECM accession number in the search our collection keyword search (eg 2000/084) will bring up objects, film and photographs in that donation. Or you can use the detailed search link, selecting British Empire and Commonwealth Collection from the pick list and entering a description such as food and drink, religion and ritual, uniform, doll, to find individual or related objects across the whole collection. We hope that people using the database will share their knowledge with us, and send us information about objects to add to the descriptions and make the catalogue more useful to all users.

Image: Dolls made by a Rebecca Magg, a freed enslaved woman, in the 1780s or ‘90s, in Grenada. It was apparently the custom for a freed enslaved person to make a doll for their former owner (2007/038/001-003)