Museums and other institutions with string figure artefacts

- an inventory of string figures mounted on card, string figures on film, string figure photographs, and recordings of string figure songs

Compiled by Martin Probert

Other Archives with String Figure Artefacts
Survival, Origin and Mathematics of String Figures

Acknowledgement: It is a pleasure to thank Mr Hans Rashbrook and the staff at the Museum of Mankind Library (Department of Ethnography) for their considerable help in connection with the A.C. Haddon collection in particular, and with research into string figures in general. In addition Jill Hasell, Museum Assistant (Pacific and Australian collections) informs me that relevant archive photographs may reside in the collections, but this cannot be confirmed until completion of the computerised catalogue.

8 Torres Strait string figures mounted on card (A. C. Haddon collection)

• Collected by Alfred Cort Haddon in 1888 in the western part of the Torres Strait.
• One of many exciting finds during the compilation of this inventory was the discovery, in 1999, of these eight mounted string figures in the British Museum collections.
• For more information on these figures, see the abstract of "The Torres Strait String Figures in the British Museum A. C. Haddon Collection".
• The names of the artefacts are given below in the spellings adopted in The Torres Strait Collections of A. C. Haddon (Moore, D. R. 1984: 52. London: British Museum Publications).