A number of pieces in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery collection have been donated to us by private collectors. This donkey harness from Italy was presented to us by Estella Canziani (1887-1964) in the 1930s, along with a major collection of water colours, tempera paintings, sketchbooks, costumes, ceramics, archive material, and jewellery.Estella and her mother, Louisa Starr Canziani (1845-1909), were both artists who frequently travelled around Europe. The anthropological approach that Estella brought to her painting and collecting established one of the most extensive insights into traditional rural life, and the role of the traveller at a turning point in the early twentieth century.