Pair of short man’s gloves, pair, 19th c.

Pair of short man’s gloves, 19th century, Sardinia. F-Rouen, Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (MS Inventory 57).

Sea silk, plain right knit, width wrist ca 11 cm.

Label: “Gants en soie marine ou poil de nacre faite avec le byssus de Pinna, Sicile, 282″

The Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Rouen was founded in 1868. It is – after Paris – the second largest natural history museum in France. It grew out of a Cabinet d’Histoire naturelle, which had belonged to a school in the former Sainte Marie convent (17th century) since 1828.

In the museum records of 1888, there is a CATALOGUE DE LA COLLECTION D’ANTHROPOLOGIE ET D’ETHNOGRAPHIE, which lists all the gifts given to the museum. Among them in the section Europe – next to a Merovingian skull, a skeleton and furs from Lapland – on page 31: “Gants en soie marine ou poil de nacre, faits avec le bysson [sic!] de Pinna (Sicile)” with the number 282.

The gloves are displayed in a showcase in the staircase of the museum, marked Utilisation des Mollusques. Besides the gloves, it shows two shells of the Pinna nobilis, a smaller Pinna species with byssus, and two pearl oysters with pearls and a freshwater mollusk.