Plants and their Products: Biocultural collections at Kew Gardens and the South Kensington Museum during the long nineteenth century

Two Victorian-era museums—Kew Gardens and the South Kensington Museum—built vast collections of plant specimens alongside the tools, textiles, and objects made from them, and this project will examine how those collections shaped colonial science and commerce. The research addresses a gap in museum history: biocultural collections—which mix natural specimens with human-made artefacts—have been treated as separate categories, but in the nineteenth century they were deliberately assembled together. By reuniting these plant-based materials and finished products, the project will show how botanical knowledge, industrial design, and imperial economics were intertwined. This matters because contemporary museums now grapple with the legacy of extractivism—the removal of natural resources and cultural objects from colonised regions—and need historical evidence to inform repatriation debates and new curatorial approaches. If successful, the project will provide a framework for reinterpreting museum collections as records of environmental and colonial history. This could change how institutions like Kew and the V&A display plant-derived objects, and offer curators and policymakers concrete examples of how past collecting practices linked biodiversity loss to global trade. The research is primarily historical and analytical, with no immediate practical application, but it could inform future decisions about which collections to prioritise for conservation or digital access.