Around the world in 80 objects

Nick Trend introduces our new series with a curation of curiosities – from the humble tuk tuk to the Obelisk of Luxor in Paris – that help define a place and fuel our wanderlust

It is more than a decade since Neil MacGregor gave his highly entertaining series of radio talks, A History of the World in 100 Objects. He demonstrated with incisive brilliance how individual treasures – both famous and obscure – can shed light on the past.

Taking inspiration from his remarkable achievement, we at Telegraph Travel began to ponder how objects can also give us insights into the habits, preoccupations and cultures of the people and places we experience when we travel. So, to start the New Year, we have developed our own version of

MacGregor’s idea. We have gone for 80 objects rather than 100 – it seems a more resonant number for a tour around the world. But we have drawn our parameters as widely and we will try to cover as many destinations as we can in the coming weeks and months.

What constitutes an object? We don’t want to be too prescriptive. It might have a practical use or be decorative; it might be ancient or new, big or small. Some objects may be prized museum exhibits, others for everyday use. We want to choose things which are rich in associations, which touch on key moments of history and culture. We also have to be realistic. One object can’t capture the spirit of an entire place. How could you sum up London, or Moscow, or Delhi? Our aim instead is to have some fun, to find examples which will spark a traveller’s imagination.

Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be turning to our experts around the world for their insights – and to you, our readers, for your contributions.

But here we kick off with a selection of 10 objects from all around the world. Some are beautiful in their own right, some mundane, but instantly recognisable. Some have political or religious significance or emotional associations with a great individual, others a surprising side-take on every day life. We’ve included a tiny model of a cabbage in Taipei and some empty immigrants’ luggage in New York, the oldest Biblical texts in existence and the chair which links Queen Elizabeth II to Edward I.

Our objects range from a tuk tuk to an obelisk in a Paris square, to a broken pot found in a cesspit in Amsterdam. They all have a fascinating story behind them.

I call them tuk tuks – as they do in Egypt and Thailand. But in Khartoum they are known as Raksha, in Jakarta as Bajay. Three-wheeled autorickshaws have developed different names and different variants all around the world. You find them anywhere there is a need for cheap transport in a hot climate.

They have radically different characters. In Pune, in India, they are a sober black and yellow and carry an official licence number. In Havana, Cuban versions are referred to as Cocotaxi because of their hoods, shaped like rounded coconuts. Filipinos – whose tuk tuks were initially developed from an adaptation of a Harley Davidson with a side car – are some of the most enthusiastic at kitsch and colourful customisations, while among the more unnerving versions are the pram-like Indonesian bentors, many of which are powered by a motorcycle at the rear. The passengers perch precariously at the front as though they have been scooped up en route. God knows how the driver – who has to peer between their heads – manages to see where he is going.

But the concept is the same – the flimsy, sheet metal superstructure, the open sides (and often open top) and the driver’s kamikaze approach to road safety. Memories of the ride will stir in most travellers who have tentatively flagged one down and been roared off into the crowded streets of some exotic city in a heady rush of nervous adrenalin, hot air, traffic fumes and near misses. It’s not a feeling you would get close to in an airconditioned taxi.

So where did they come from, and how did some develop with so much wonderful variety? Hand-drawn rickshaws existed in 17th-century France, but also became popular in Japan in the mid-19th century. But the motorised version wasn’t developed until 1930 when Mazda started producing a three-wheeled open truck, aimed at small local traders. It was distributed around southeast Asia in a programme of soft diplomacy and the potential for taxiing locals through crowded streets swiftly led to local adaptations.

Tuk tuks died a death in Japan in 1965 when three-wheelers were banned, but variants were developed and built in several other countries, especially in Thailand, India and Italy, where the Piaggio Ape is used mostly by small farmers and market traders zipping around the steep and narrow streets of historic hill towns. These are far more likely laden with tomatoes, cavolo nero and radicchio, than with passengers – to experience a true tuk tuk ride, you really need to head to Asia, Africa or South America.

GANDHI’S GLASSES

Delhi

In a simple display case in one of the galleries of the National Gandhi Museum in Delhi is a small collection of artefacts that used to belong to Mahatma Gandhi, the famously ascetic Indian leader. A sign above the case says, simply, “World Remains” and it contains a handful of items from his day-to-day life – cutlery, evoking his vegetarianism, a pocket watch, a walking staff, and a pair of his glasses.

Those simple round spectacles, which he always wore, are surely the most evocative reminder of the man whose charisma, self discipline and commitment to peaceful aceful change was central to his country ntry winning independence from British itish rule. They sat high on his beaky nose, ose, intensifying his sharp-eyed stare, underscoring the determined furrows s of his frown and echoing the bald dome me of his head.

Gandhi started wearing glasses in the 1910s when he was living in England and chose one of the most fashionable styles of the he time (they were also highly practical because in those days ays it was easier to make circular lenses). But he didn’t n’t start wearing them in his s public appearances until November 1921, a critical moment in his life when he was fasting g in Bombay in protest est against communal nal riots which were ere sweeping the city. . It was also at this time me that he made the symymbolic decision to give ve up Western clothes and started to wear a simple Indian loincloth or (for warmth) a shawl made ade out of cotton he had woven himself. It was a symbolic mbolic move to identify y more closely with poor r rural communities around nd India.

He owned several ral pairs of spectacles, but they hey were always the same shape hape and those on display in the Gandhi Smriti were the ones s he was wearing on the last day of his s life. The museum is housed in the former rmer residence of the wealthy industrialist rialist Ghanshyam Das Birla, where Gandhi andhi was living in a spartan room on n the ground floor from September 1947, 947, in the wake of Indian independence, nce, and during the terrible riots and tensions between Muslims and Hindus us stirred up by the partition of the country. ntry. It was here in the Birla mansion that, hat, on Jan 30 1948, he was shot by a Hindu fanatic as he walked into an evening ning prayer meeting on the lawn.

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The Coronation Chair, in a chapel at the west end of Westminster Abbey, has been damaged in symbolic attacks by suffragettes and Scottish nationalists was a clever move – the French had been obsessed with ancient Egypt ever since Napoleon’s campaign there a generation earlier and the ancient designs and motifs had a big influence on French styles in the 19th century.

It also helped solve a particular and intractable local difficulty. At the time, the Place de Concorde was a problematic space. Marie Antoinette had held her wedding celebrations there in 1770, in the shadow of a monumental equestrian statue of Louis XV after whom the square was then named. After the 1789 revolution, it was renamed Place de la Republic and the statue was replaced with a plaster version depicting Liberty alongside an enormous guillotine where Marie Antoinette, along with many others, was executed.

Then it became Place de la Concorde, only to be renamed after Louis XV in 1814 and then Louis XVI in 1826. A plan to install a statue of Louis XVI was thwarted by the 1830 revolution when its name was finally settled as Place de la Concorde. The obelisk provided a grand and venerable centrepiece in the most controversial public space in Paris. Place de la Concorde (en.parisinfo.com)

5

THE CONCUBINE’S CABBAGE

Taipei

It is only about eight inches high, but this incredibly lifelike carving of a Chinese cabbage is one of the most popular exhibits at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Fashioned out of a piece of naturally-occurring white and green jadeite – a form of jade – the colour change in the stone mimics exactly that of a pak choi as the stems sprout into the flush of curly leaves. And there is something about the translucence of the polished stone that brings the whole piece to life. There is a sense of fun about it too – the unknown sculptor has hidden a grasshopper and a locust among the leaves, a long tradition in Chinese art.

The cabbage, which was made during the 19th century, was first recorded in 1889 at the Eternal Harmony Palace of the Forbidden City in Beijing. This was home to Jin – one of the official concubines of the last adult emperor of China – and so it probably belonged to her.

It is popular primarily because of its charm, but also because of the huge value, both financial and cultural, attached by the Chinese to jade, which has always been associated with wealth, luxury and treasures made for the imperial family by craftsmen of consummate skill. Its popularity is undimmed – the best quality jade now costs more per ounce than gold.

But the pak choi is also a poignant reminder of the turbulence of Chinese history over the last century. As Mao Tse-tung swept to power in 1948, the then President Chiang Kai-shek fled south to Taiwan, and also shipped out the former Imperial collections in Beijing, including the jadeite cabbage. This may have saved them from possible destruction during the Cultural Revolution when Chairman Mao directed the destruction of the The Four Olds: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Customs. But it means that many of the greatest treasures of Chinese art – including the pak choi – are to be found not in mainland China, but at the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Representing one of the staple foods of China, created from one of its most revered substances by a craftsman of supreme skill, owned by the emperors, appropriated by Chiang Kai-shek, still claimed by the communist leadership on the mainland: it’s just a small stone cabbage – but it encapsulates the epic and still fractured cultural history of the most populous nation on earth.

through on their way to work are less susceptible to the propaganda. But every now and then, as they rush past, someone will reach up and run their hand over the muzzle of the bronze dog that sits at the feet of a crouching soldier. While the rest of the figures have oxidised to a deep dull brown, the dog’s nose is kept shiny by the constant rubbing.

It’s just a superstition. Any Muscovite will tell you that touching the dog’s nose will bring you good luck and many do so with habitual regularity. But it’s a poignant detail of everyday Moscow life and surely telling that this programme of socialist indoctrination and idealism has been reduced to an old wives’ tale. Moscow metro (mosmetro.ru/metrotour/en)

Amsterdam’s extraordinary charm – its concentric network of canals and the gabled houses which line them, that sense of being both a small town and a sophisticated city – is rooted in the 17th century when many of the canals were dug and when much of the centre was laid out. At the time, it was the richest, most powerful and most sophisticated city in Northern Europe.

Its navy rivalled that of the British; its merchants dominated trade with the Far East and they used their wealth to beautify their city and decorate their houses. Above all they were art-lovers and as the prosperity of Amsterdam and other Dutch towns soared, its artists rose to the challenge, producing some of the most beautiful and seductive paintings of everyday life ever made.

The greatest of them all was Rembrandt, whose life was a story of extraordinary highs and terrible tragedies, but whose work seems as relevant today as it was nearly 400 years ago. The house that he lived in at the height of his career has been brilliantly preserved and restored and is one of the best places to get a sense of the city’s past. You don’t go there to see his paintings (although there are often exhibitions on the top floor). The place to see those is the Rijksmuseum. You go to the Rembrandthuis to see the studio where he worked, how he mixed his paints and made his prints.

But until recently, there was something missing. Although the house and paintings are original, nothing survived that connected us to the everyday life of Rembrandt. Until a couple of years ago that is, when the curators decided to take a closer look at two 17th-century glazed cooking pots which were found during an excavation of the old cesspit in the courtyard of the house in 1997.

Analysis showed that one pot contained a chalky substance which many artists used to prepare wooden panels. The other contained a specific mixture developed by Rembrandt himself for preparing canvases, including the one he used for his most famous painting – The Night Watch, which he made while living in the house.

No other artist of the time used such a mixture, so it is virtually certain that this pot – and surely the other one as well – was used in his studio upstairs. It’s an extraordinary link to the everyday life of the greatest artist of his time. Rembrandt’s House (rembrandthuis.nl)

THE BELVEDERE TORSO

Rome

The Belvedere Torso is a fractured remnant of a marble sculpture made at the height of the Roman Empire about 2,000 years ago. A great slicing blow – perhaps delivered by a Vandal’s sword – has smashed off the head, and the arms and most of the legs are missing. But there is no mistaking the powerful physique of a muscular male figure, a little larger than life-size.

It stands in the middle of one of the main galleries of the Vatican museums in Rome, where it has been for nearly 500 years, making it one of the longeststanding exhibits in one of the oldest museum in the world. But why has it achieved such status? Why do all the tour groups stop in front of this stained and mutilated example, when there are so many better preserved antique sculptures to see?

After all, we can’t be sure whom it represents. The only clue to his identity is that the figure is sitting on what may be a lion’s skin. So he has traditionally been identified as Hercules, who killed the Nemean Lion in one of his 12

Those simple round spectacles are the most evocative reminder of the man

Call them tuk tuks, Raksha or Bajay… from Khartoum to Jakarta, these three-wheeled autorickshaws have different names and characters

One of a pair, the Obelisk of Luxor in Paris is better known than its counterpart in Egypt

Vandalised? The Belvedere Torso in Rome once had a head and limbs – severed by a blow that perhaps came from a Vandal’s sword The Dead Sea Scrolls are housed in the Israel Museum, whose domes echo the shape of the jars in which the relics were found by Bedouin goatherds

The bronze dog, sitting with its military master, has had its nose rubbed by thousands of superstitious passengers at Moscow’s Ploshchad Revolyutsii underground station