Three years ago V&A conservators and curators uncovered a surprising skeleton riddle on a South American Barniz de Pasto cabinet. Now with further research (including the help of commenters here on YouTube) V&A furniture curator Nick Humphrey explains the painstaking steps he took to crack the mysterious puzzle and decipher the hidden memento mori message.
Nick shows the work undertaken by conservators at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the incredible rebus puzzle they uncovered. He explains how to read a rebus, using examples of other rebus puzzles in English from the museum's collection, before exploring the possible readings of the hidden message in Spanish. Finally he asks for further information about rebuses in Spanish from this time, and the specific iconography from the Spanish speaking world of 1650.
- 00:00 Nick Humphrey, V&A Curator, Furniture & Woodwork, introduces a mid-seventeenth-century South American cabinet, and the ten years of research that has gone into uncovering its mysteries
- 01:03 A brief introduction to mopa mopa resin and Barniz de Pasto techniques
- 01:19 Removing 20th century varnish, and finding a hidden skeleton motif during an x-ray of the cabinet
- 02:57 The final reveal of the conserved cabinet
- 04:16 What is a rebus picture puzzle?
- 06:05 Shepheard Buss, an Elizabethan rebus embroidery
- 06:50 A letter in the form of a rebus from 1799
- 08:18 How to go about solving a rebus in Spanish from the seventeenth century, and the collective effort from the community
- 08:55 Cracking the code in detail - what could each emblem and picture mean
- 13:39 What could the mystery motif be? Is it a cloud, a plume or feather or bubble? Or even another skeletal figure?
- 17:06 The over all meaning of the rebus and the message of life and death
- 18:37 How does the new memento mori on the cabinet fit with the scheme of the rest of the decoration
- 19:43 A book of Emblems from the 1600s with wisdom for personal behaviour or identity
- 21:12 How would the original user of the cabinet have seen these motifs and messages? What would it have meant to them?
- 22:22 Do you have any more information about rebuses in Spanish? Or the iconography on the box?
