



'TERRA NOVA' EXPEDITION, 1910-1913 A silver pendant depicting the Terra Nova held in ice against a sunburst background, attributed to Omar Ramsden, made for Edward L. Atkinson, c.1913
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'TERRA NOVA' EXPEDITION, 1910-1913
Footnotes
A FINE TERRA NOVA SILVER PENDANT BROOCH, FROM THE FAMILY OF EDWARD LEICESTER ATKINSON, the Expedition's surgeon and helminthologist, who as the sole remaining officer after the death of Scott in 1912, assumed the leadership of the expedition, "and led the search party which found and buried the bodies of Scott, Edward A. Wilson, and H. R. Bowers" (ODNB). The design of the brooch is closely based on one of Herbert Ponting's iconic photographs of 'Terra Nova icebound in the pack' (see D. Hempleman-Adams, et al. The Heart of the Great Alone. Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic Photography, 2009, p.94).
Provenance: Edward Leicester Atkinson (1881-1929); gifted to his aunt Catherine Leycester [Leicester], later Lady Nicholson, of Banff, where "as a schoolboy, Atkinson spent some of his vacations in her home because his parents were living in the West Indies" (The Journal of the Helminthological Society of Washington, Vol. 61, No. 1, p.5, 1994), and after whom he named a parasitic tapeworm (Tetrabothrius catherinae) found in a petrel in Antarctica; Edward's younger sister Emma Maud Adams (born 1894), the above information all recorded in a note from Emma Maud inserted in the box holding the pendant; by descent to the present owner, who remembered that "during my childhood, the photographic album of Ponting's images of the people and Antarctic, which each member of the expedition were given, was there for us to look at. This included the image of the Terra Nova stuck in ice used for the pendant, and I remember a photograph of Atkinson's frost bitten hand which was particularly fascinating for us children".