Sloane's Treasures

From the time of his voyage to Jamaica in the 1680s, Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), physician, natural historian and man of letters, began to gather together one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of 'natural and artificial rarities' ever formed.

Sloane was later Physician to Queen Anne, George I and II, President of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society, and his manor in Chelsea included the Apothecaries’ Garden (now the Chelsea Physic Garden). At the centre of a worldwide network, he created an encyclopaedic collection of mineral, botanical, and zoological specimens, ethnographic objects, antiquities, prints, drawings, books and manuscripts, often inheriting or purchasing entire collections formed by others.

On his death in 1753 Sloane’s collection was acquired for the nation by an Act of Parliament which created the British Museum. But as the Museum re-organized its collections and acquired further objects, Sloane’s collection was dispersed among different departments and eventually also to the Natural History Museum in 1881 and to the British Library in 1973. This dispersal has hindered the study and understanding of ‘Sloane’s Treasures’, their sources, and their historical relationships with each other. This project will begin to address these problems.

Research questions

• What are the methodological challenges associated with researching museum collections from the perspective of a dialogue between culture and science?
• Art and/or Science: what was the nature of image making and what role did it play in understanding and classifying nature for Sloane and his contemporaries? How do we value, organize and understand these images today?
• Can the scientific study of Sloane’s collections reveal changes in ecology and the environment?
• How can objects best be studied in order to reveal information about wider social, cultural and scientific issues such as slavery, 17th and 18th century commerce and markets at home and abroad, medical practices, and first encounters?
• Is it possible to establish how Sloane’s collection was organized, displayed and employed for natural history research in his home and how it changed when a private collection became a public one?

From Books to Bezoars: Sir Hans Sloane and his Collections, Michael Hunter, Alison Walker, and Arthur MacGregor (eds), (British Library, 2012)

British Library: The Sloane Printed Books project 

University of Saskatoon: Sir Hans Sloane’s Correspondence Online 

Natural History Museum: The
Sloane Herbarium