Skip to content
Pitt Rivers Museum

1992.5.1.1

Model lock, made of wood. Rectangular in shape with a rectangular recess in the centre with a thinner rectangular channel coming off of this. There is a bolt within the lock that has three holes drilled through, which allows the key to slot into to push the bolt across. The key associated with this lock is numbered 1992.5.1 .2 [ASh [OPS move] 05/09/2016]


1992.5.1.1

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Terms and Conditions

If you wish to order a high-resolution image and/or licence its use for print or web publication, exhibition, film, promotional product or any other use, whether in the academic or commercial sector of any print run, then please visit photographic services.

Collection type
Object
Description
Model lock, made of wood. Rectangular in shape with a rectangular recess in the centre with a thinner rectangular channel coming off of this. There is a bolt within the lock that has three holes drilled through, which allows the key to slot into to push the bolt across. The key associated with this lock is numbered 1992.5.1 .2 [ASh [OPS move] 05/09/2016]
Geographical reference
Xinjiang Shache (Yarkand)
Person
Field collector Unknown Collector
PRM source C.M. Gill
Date / Period
Date made: 1800-1900
Date collected
?Prior to 1880
Acquisition information
Purchased: 1992
Materials and processes
Material Wood Plant, Process Carved, Process Carpentered, Process Perforated
Dimensions
Length: max 302 mm, Width: max 75 mm, Height: max 75 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1992.5.1.1 PR no.: 7/11495
Research and responses

It is not stated in any of the primary sources which object [and where it was] the lock was modelled on. It was presumably used as example of a missing link in one of the series [AP]

Model of wooden tumbler or pin-lock and key, modern at time of recording.

Model presumably made by or for General Pitt Rivers, in imitation of an example in the India Museum.

Old PR No. 7/11495

Purchased SR Battle Sussex 1991 10 30

Note that this item is part of Pitt Rivers overall collection but not part of the founding collection of this Museum. It may have been displayed at Farnham Museum

Associated publications
Illustrated as Figures 13b and 14b in Plate III in On the Development and Distribution of Primitive Locks and Keys, by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers (London: Chatto and Windus, 1883). Caption (opposite) reads: 'Figs. 13b and 14b. Modrrn wooden tumbler of pin-lock from Yarkand (India Museum).' Pitt-Rivers also refers to the lock on page 8 of his introductory text: 'Figs. 13b and 14b, Plate III., shows an exactly similar lock in the India Museum, obtained by Sir Douglas Forsyth at Yarkand, a facsimile of which is in my collection. This kind of lock is also used in Turkey....' [JC 8 10 2009]

Search terms: Lock, Model, Key, Lock Tumbler