{"id":"MUS2026-189","label":"Johannesburg sandstorm bullroarer","people_or_site":"Johannesburg (maker's community unrecorded)","country_current":"South Africa","historic_region":"Johannesburg / Witwatersrand, Transvaal Colony","macroregion":"Africa / Southern Africa","local_name":"","source_term":"bullroarer / 412.22 whirling aerophone","source_language":"English","object_description":"Flat wooden blade, 440 x 47 x 17 mm, tapering toward the proximal end where a 1.25 m vegetable-fibre cord is tied.","function_summary":"A boy's own making, swung for the joy of it.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"horniman_12_161_johannesburg","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://www.horniman.ac.uk/object/12.161/","page_or_plate":"Horniman 12.161","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Johannesburg city anchor standing in for the museum register's 'made or collected' place; the maker's community is unrecorded and no findspot or use site is documented, so the point locates the acquisition, not the object's home.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In Johannesburg around 1905, a boy carved a flat wooden blade nearly half a metre long, tied on a fibre cord, and set it roaring — and as he swung, a sandstorm rose, 'to the great joy of the maker.' Did he mean to call the wind, or did he simply glory in the coincidence? The anthropologist A. C. Haddon preserved the story along with the object, and the Horniman Museum bought both from him in 1912, the cord still knotted in place.","pull_quote":"","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"","term_gloss":"","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, 12.161 (register note initialled A.C.H.)","url":"https://www.horniman.ac.uk/object/12.161/","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20250318072934/https://www.horniman.ac.uk/object/12.161/"}],"source_citations":"Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, 12.161 (register note initialled A.C.H.)","source_display":"Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, 12.161 (register note initialled A.C.H.)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Flat wooden blade, 440 x 47 x 17 mm, tapering toward the proximal end where a 1.25 m vegetable-fibre cord is tied.","function_display":"A boy's own making, swung for the joy of it.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"johannesburg","display_name":"Johannesburg sandstorm bullroarer","image":{"full":"assets/objects/MUS2026-189_horniman_12_161_johannesburg.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/MUS2026-189_horniman_12_161_johannesburg_thumb.jpg","credit":"Horniman Museum and Gardens © Heini Schneebeli (12.161)","license":"© Horniman Museum and Gardens; no reuse terms stated on the object record — rehosted low-res for non-commercial research","source_page":"https://www.horniman.ac.uk/object/12.161/","rehosted":true,"representative":false,"caption":"Johannesburg boy’s bullroarer with its fibre cord, now in the Horniman Museum."},"slug":"mus2026-189-johannesburg-maker-s-community-unrecorded"}