A Farewell Gift for Prof. Julian Talko Hryncewicz in the Collection of the National Museum in Kraków

Abstract

Julian Talko-Hryncewicz (1850-1936) was a Polish physician, anthropologist and ethnographer. At the beginning of the 1890s, he took the position of a district physician in Troitskosavsk in the Transbaikal region. During his stay there, in addition to his medical practice, Talko-Hryncewicz conducted anthropological research and excavations in Siberia. At that time, along with some educated inhabitants of Kyakhta, he founded the local Department of the Imperial Geographical Society. This article discusses a gift donated to him by members of the Troitskosavsko-Kyakhtinsky Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in Saint Petersburg in recognition of his work for the local community. The gift consisted of a diploma (so-called “address”) in a decorative binding and a luxurious document folder inserted into an imposing case. It was handed to Talko-Hryncewicz on April 29, 1908. The reason for the gift was his departure for Kraków where he was to take the chair of anthropology at the Jagiellonian University. In 1932 the new owner then donated the gift be added to the collection of the National Museum in Kraków. It is currently stored in the Department of Decorative Art and Material Culture.