Exhibition 'Warehouse of the World 1840 - 1939' in Museum of London Docklands
Between 1840 and 1939 the sheds and warehouses that lined the river housed every conceivable commodity: spices, drugs, grain, sugar, meat, fruit, coffee, cocoa, tea, wines, spirits, tobacco, shells, furs, feathers, leather, skins, hide, timber, paper, jute, wool, oriental carpets and more.
This gallery gives a flavour of that cornucopia of goods. It features a tobacco weighing station, a recreation of a bottling vault and exhibits about the tobacco, timber, grain and sugar trades.
There is also a 'cabinet of curiosities' packed with commodities. An interactive touch-screen explores the more exotic of these - ivory, turtle shells and ancient curios. An opium pipe, ingeniously hidden in a section of a sailor's bunk, hints at a darker side of overseas trade.
