A Co Limerick woman is working to fulfil her father’s final wish by returning his collection of African and Aboriginal artefacts to their respective countries of origin.
Isabella Walsh, an artist and sculptor working in film and based in Limerick city, has contacted embassies and consulates of South Africa, Australia, South Sudan and Sudan in her effort to return the artefacts, which include spears, leather shields and Aboriginal sticks.
The artefacts came into Ms Walsh’s possession after the passing of her father, Larry Walsh, in 2013. Mr Walsh worked as a curator at Limerick Museum for 30 years.
“He collected these particular items on his own,” Ms Walsh explained. “He would have travelled around to auctions of big houses. In the ‘80s, a lot of these big houses were being sold, house and contents, at auction. He would have gone to view various specific items for the museum.”
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Ms Walsh believes that some of the artefacts came from an auction at Thornfield House, a 19th-century period home in Ahane, Co Limerick once occupied by Sir Richard Bourke, a British Army general in the Napoleonic Wars and a former Governor of New South Wales in Australia.
Her father was very passionate about indigenous and pre-industrial societies, Ms Walsh said. “He really loved the craftmanship in the objects themselves.”
Initially, however, Ms Walsh was at a lost when she tried to take steps towards returning the artefacts.
“I had no idea where to begin with, when he passed away,” Ms Walsh said.
After reading an article in The Guardian about other people hoping to return artefacts to their countries of origin, Ms Walsh contacted Dr Christos Tsirogiannis at the department of archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
“I just sent him an email with some photographs of the objects and asking if he had any advice he could offer on how to go about identifying them.
“Within a week, he’d come back to me with identification of where they all came from and advised me to contact the nearest embassies for each of the countries.”
For Ms Walsh, successfully returning the artefacts would mean fulfilling her father’s final wish.
“He did have a series of unusual requests for his will and we whittled him down to this one,” she laughs.
“He very strongly believed that these are artefacts belonged to their cultures that they came from – he would have seen himself as a temporary custodian. I knew he wanted them to go back to where they came from.
“It’s part of their history, not part of ours,” she said.
