Are you a collection manager or conservator and have you found a strange object in your care? Amulets, talismans and grimoires – it sounds rather like the contents of Harry Potter’s backpack, but these kinds of objects were constructed in Dutch medieval times and onward by wizards and black and white witches. Unrecognizable to a layman’s eye, many of these objects are now collecting dust in the storages of Dutch museums. Magic expert Dr Sándor Chardonnens aims to find these mysterious objects and helps museums identify and contextualise them.
Museum collaborations
Do you work at a museum, house of antiquities, archaeological depot or an archive and does your collection include a mysterious object? Do you suspect it might be an occult object? If so, complete the form below or send an email to samenwerken [at] let.ru.nl (samenwerken[at]let[dot]ru[dot]nl). Sándor Chardonnens is happy to examine the object to identify, study, describe and contextualise it. With his expertise, he offers museums, archives and depots a unique opportunity to attract the attention of a scientific and popular audience.
Dr Sándor Chardonnens, magic expert
Dr Sándor Chardonnens (PhD Leiden, 2006) is a researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History. His research focuses on early modern European magic in books and objects – an area that is not yet widely known in the Dutch museum world. “Some countries have entire museums dedicated to magical objects, but Dutch museums still lack knowledge about these objects. The fact that they are hardly ever exhibited is partly because collection managers often do not have enough information about the objects to recognize and adequately describe them,” Chardonnens says. Using his expertise, he seeks to change this, by collaborating with conservators and collection managers to identify and describe these objects, and thinking of ways to bring them to light.
