The Story of the Amulet: Locating the Enchantment of Collections

This article traces the stories of a group of amulets and charms from the early 20th century that were gathered together from different locations in Britain by the folklorist Edward Lovett. Through the sale of these objects, Lovett fostered a close working relationship with staff at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. In the museum, the amulets and charms were displayed as ‘scientific’ specimens as part of an attempt to trace the ‘history of medicine and mankind’. However, drawing on recent work reappraising the relationships between magic, authority and modernity, and, by recognizing the magical qualities of the objects involved, it is argued that these objects retained the potential to enchant, haunting the space of the museum and disrupting the narratives of evolution and progress presented in this context. A study of the amulets' lives beyond the locus of the museum also sheds light on the potential agency of such objects and the spatialities of magical materialities in an era of modernity.