Treasures of the Ashmolean Museum [antikvár]

Introduction On 21 May 1683 the Duke of York (later King James II) and his Duchess, accompanied by the Lady Anne (later Queen Anne), inaugurated the freshly installed Ashmolean Museum on Broad Street in its newly completed building next to the Sheldonian Theatre. They inspected the 'rarefies', partook of a sumptuous banquet, and then were shown (downstairs in the 'Elaboratoiy') 'some experiments to their great satis- faction1. Three days later, on 24 May, there was an open day for all doctors and masters of the University; some came, some did not. Some, according to Anthony Wood, antiquarian and historian of the University, were delighted. Others were not ('baubles'). From Christ Church, according again to Anthony Wood, there came no one at all. The foundation was not greeted with undue reverence in all quarters. Oxford does not always welcome the new with enthusiasm, even when, as in the nature of museums, the new includes rich repre- sentation of^the old. Since 1683, the fortunes of the Ashmolean have waxed and waned and waxed again. The founding collections, which Elias Ashmole [frontispiece) had promised by gift to the University of Oxford in 1677, and which were supplemented in his bequest of 1692, consisted predominantly of those 'rareties' that the royal gardeners, the Tradescants, John I and John II (overleaf) had accumulated in the first half of the seventeenth century. For that collec- tion, Ashmole and Dr Wharton had compiled the first museum catalogue to appear in Britain, the Musaeum Tradescantium, published in 1656. In 1659, three years before his death, John Tradescant II made the collec- tion over to Ashmole by deed of gift. The former, with no surviving male heir, had been concerned, but uncertain, about the future of the family collections; one of his ideas had been that it might go to Oxford or Cambridge. Ashmole had become a member of Brasenose while in Oxford during the Civil War, and it was to Oxford that the collections came. Ashmole's views as to the role that his museum should play are recorded in some detail, though not all his ideas were to be realised. His Tradescant cata- logue records a collection that may seem entirely in the tradition of the old 'Wunderkammer', those mis- cellanies of 'rareties' that princes and some learned men all over Europe were prone to accumulate during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - the spoil of voyages over an expanding globe no less than of human ingenuity and art; exotic natural curiosities, freaks, relics. It includes a dodo, shells, precious stones, weapons, shoes, Chinese lanterns, red Indian hunting shirts, fish, coins and medals. Yet the cata- logue is set out according to a scheme of classification; even if rudimentary, it does herald those processes of intellectual and scientific ordering that were to lead to the catalogues of modern museums, to storage of information in computers. Later on, when Ashmole was brooding on the ways in which he would expect his museum to be developed by his University and drafted its 'Statutes, Orders and Rules' (1686), his concerns were very much in key with those of that new body of scientists, the Royal Society, of which he was indeed a very early member. C.H. Josten has noted his 'zeal for the pro- motion of the natural sciences . . . also his appreci- ation of the importance of factual, as opposed to speculative, research'. He insisted on the need for 'the inspection of Particulars, especially those as are extraordinary in their Fabrick, or usefull in Medicine, or applyed to Manufacture or Trade'. This last con- cern, for the service a museum might offer to 'Manu- facture or Trade', almost anticipates the aims of the South Kensington Museum following on the didactic and improving aims of Albert, Prince Consort. In fact, the 'elaboratory' in the lowest floor of the Ashmolean, where the Duke of York had viewed 'experiments' with such satisfaction, was to be the focus for much of the study of natural sciences in Oxford throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. The collections, however, declined rather than flourished. Ashmole had been aware of con- servation problems, of the inevitable decay of organic specimens, but his stipulation that if a specimen had to be destroyed, a drawing should always be made of it first, was unfortunately not acted upon. A very great deal was lost, the most celebrated item being the remains of that bird described in the 1656 catalogue as 'Dodar, from the Island Mauritius; it is not able to flie being so big' - diagnosed as noisome and con- demned, though its dessicated beak and other frag- ments still survive, now in the University Museum. Nevertheless, the Ashmolean as Museum was far from forgotten. The standards of its curatorial prac- tice may have been recorded by various visitors as (to