Jointly curated by Avril Horsford, V&A African Heritage Guide and member of the V&A Decolonising and Reading and Listening Group, and Janet Browne, Senior Producer Africa and Diaspora, V&A Academy, the trail explores a rich and growing part of the museum's collections. Bringing together objects that reflect lives shaped by movement, exchange, ambition, creativity and resilience, it takes you on unexpected journeys across galleries, centuries and continents, uncovering stories that are often hidden in plain sight.
Click on the links to find each object on our digital map.
Stop 1: 'The Warrior' bracelet, 1974
Trinidadian jewellery designer Barbara Jardine was educated in England from the age of ten. She made this bracelet as part of her post-graduate degree show at the Royal College of Art. Mixing traditional materials with natural resources, including iridescent beetle shell, it evokes the horseshoe-shaped Manilla 'bracelets', which were traded as a form of currency during the colonial enslavement of Africans. For me, the traditional silver bracelets worn by millions of Caribbean people today are similar to these culturally iconic Manilla bracelets.
Stop 2: Portrait miniature of Henry Swinburne, 1775 – 80
Henry Swinburne (1743 – 1803) was a celebrated British travel writer. While in Paris, he married Martha Baker, whose family wealth came from colonial property in the Leeward Islands. Although they never lived there, Swinburne benefited from plantation profits built on enslaved labour. British and French rivalry for Caribbean territory met fierce Indigenous resistance. During the Carib Wars (1769 – 73 and 1795 – 97), the Kalinago people disrupted British efforts to expand colonial control and plantation slavery. This portrait presents Swinburne in a favourable light, perhaps to promote the status of a senior colonial figure. Yet his elegant image sits uneasily alongside the wealth he enjoyed through the exploitation of enslaved people.
Stop 3: Portrait miniature of an unknown man, about 1800
When this miniature was painted, images of people of African descent were often shaped by the prejudices of enslavement and empire. But this depiction offers a powerful counterpoint. Probably painted aboard a ship in Caribbean waters, it portrays a well-dressed man with confidence and presence. His fashionable coat and fine linen shirt suggest his wealth, while the intimate scale of the portrait and the heart-shaped pin he wears hint at it being a cherished keepsake. Yet the man’s name and story remain unknown. Who was he? What life did he lead? This remarkable work reminds us that many affluent Black and mixed-heritage individuals participated in elite traditions of portraiture. It invites us to continue restoring their identities to history.
Stop 4: Sugar box, 1683 – 84
Sugar was a sought-after luxury in Britain, yet its production was rooted in the brutal enslavement and exploitation of Africans on Caribbean plantations. Wealthy households kept sugar under lock and key in elegant vessels like this. Crafted in silver and decorated in fashionable Chinoiserie style, it reflects both its owner’s social status and the high value placed on sugar. Between 1640 and 1713, enslaved people on Britain’s ‘sugar islands’ repeatedly revolted and resisted their enslavers. As awareness of the violence underpinning the sugar trade grew, abolitionists organised sugar boycotts, encouraging consumers to reject West Indian sugar for East Indian sugar, which was promoted as ‘free-grown’. These campaigns were an early example of consumer choices challenging exploitation and driving social change.
Stop 5: Clarks Desert Boots, 1994
Originally designed as practical, comfortable military footwear by the British manufacturer Nathan Clark in 1949, Clarks Desert Boots became one of the most recognisable shoes in the world. They assumed a particularly iconic status in Jamaica. After the Second World War, Jamaicans returning from England took the boots home, where they quickly gained popularity. Family, friends and local communities embraced the look, making the boots a symbol of individuality, fashion and identity. Their transformation from functional footwear to a cultural icon shows how everyday objects can acquire meanings far beyond their original purpose.
Stop 6: Althea McNish, Trinidad fabric, 1960
Inspired by the colours, plants and light of her native Trinidad, Althea McNish brought a vibrant Caribbean perspective to British textile design in the post-war years. Her work brightened homes, public spaces, shops and ships, while commissions for leading companies like Heal's and Liberty established her as a pioneering figure in modern British design. Equally adept at creating bold, energetic patterns and more subtle decorative schemes, McNish demonstrated remarkable artistic versatility. This design, Trinidad, reflects the enduring influence of her Caribbean homeland and the distinctive 'tropical eye' that shaped her celebrated career.
Stop 7: Huren Marsh Akuaba chair, 1985
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1951, Huren Marsh moved to Britain as a teenager and trained in furniture and product design at Kingston Polytechnic. As a designer, educator and curator, he has explored the connections between design, culture and identity. The form of his Akuaba dining chair is inspired by Ghanaian akua'ba fertility figures, characterised by their distinctive disc-shaped heads. Bringing together influences from African art, European Cubism and modern furniture design, Marsh created a chair that is both sculptural and practical, balancing cultural reference, skill and comfort.
Stop 8: Neil Kenlock’s photographs of modern Caribbean history, 1970s
Neil Kenlock (born 1950) moved from Jamaica to London in 1963. He became known for photographing Black life with pride and agency, at a time when British Caribbean communities faced widespread discrimination. After photographing protests in the 1960s, Kenlock turned his camera to everyday family life in the 1970s. His photographs showed not only how people lived, but how they wanted to be seen. Often sent to relatives in the Caribbean, these images showed the lives people were establishing in Britain. Like studio portraiture, they reveal carefully composed identities, modern homes, personal style and a sense of achievement, offering a powerful counterpoint to negative representations of Black people often seen in mainstream media.
Stop 9: Hew Locke, Souvenir 4, 2019
Hew Locke (born 1959), a British artist of Scottish and Guyanese heritage, explores the legacies of empire, power and identity in his work. In Souvenir 4, he took a familiar royal souvenir and turned it into a reflection on authority, memory and nationhood. Drawing on Caribbean masquerade traditions, he transformed a Victorian Parian ware bust of a British royal with cowrie shells, masks, skulls, lace, replica medals and military insignia. These layered adornments disrupt the idealised image of empire, bringing to mind histories of trade, colonial expansion and cultural exchange, and their continuing impact today.
Stop 10: Francis Williams, the Scholar of Jamaica, about 1745
Although not enslaved himself, Francis Williams, whose wealthy parents had been enslaved, was greatly affected by the impact of slavery. A Jamaican mathematician and classicist, his achievements are proudly showcased in this painting, where even the title emphasises his unique status as 'the Scholar of Jamaica'. After journeying to Britain and studying at Cambridge University, Williams' inheritance allowed him to live as an English gentleman, before he tried to gain political office in Jamaica. He lived with limited success in both cultures during a period of great social, cultural and racial upheaval.
Stop 11: Tortoiseshell combs and case, 1673
In the 17th century British entrepreneurs journeyed to the Caribbean with ambitions to make their fortunes from the emerging sugar industry there. This new 'Plantocracy' – the successful plantation owners who were regarded as the dominant class – commissioned luxury objects to promote their elevated status back home. Hawksbill turtle shell was a highly prized material, valued for its rich colour and glossy finish. Turtles were hunted and killed for their shell plates, which were heated and flattened to make combs, jewellery, snuffboxes and furniture decoration. Paul Bennett, Port Royal's only recorded combmaker, may have made these combs and case, decorated with Jamaican plants. They survived the 1692 earthquake that destroyed much of Port Royal.
Stop 12: Toussaint Louverture print, 1802
For conservation reasons, this object is kept inside a cabinet. Please ask a member of staff to open it for you.
The Black struggle against imperialism and colonialism has produced many freedom fighters. Like Nelson Mandela in South Africa years later, Toussaint Louverture was the most significant rebel leader of his time, not just in Haiti, but also across the Caribbean. Born into slavery, the charismatic and articulate Louverture led the Haitian independent movement to victory. This print, depicting him ready for battle, sword held high, served as a call-to-arms for his followers from the 1791 Slave Rebellion, which briefly established Haiti as a Black-governed French Protectorate.
