Treasures of the Ashmolean Museum [antikvár]

FOREWORD Elias Ashmole in his most prescient moments, with all astrology at his command, could not have foreseen the shape and character of his museum in 1970. Still less could those two eminent gardeners and botanists, John Tradescant father and son, whose "closet of rarities" Ashmole acquired, have pictured the transformation of their miscellanea, known to Londoners as "Tradescant's Ark", into a university museum of art and archaeology. It was Tradescant's Ark which formed the bulk of Ashmole's collection. Gathered early in the 17th century it became his by gift of the younger Tradescant in 1659; after some legal difficulties with Mrs. Tradescant it entered Ashmole's house in 1674. It did not stay there long. Almost immediately Ashmole began negotiations to present the whole collection, as John Tradescant had wished, to Oxford University. He added to the gift a cabinet of his own coins and medals, some portrait paintings and miscellaneous antiquities. He also bequeathed to the University his books and manuscripts and a group of gold ornaments received from sundry royal patrons in exchange for presentation copies of his chief literary work, The Institutions, Laws and Ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter. Ashmole died in 1692 and was buried in St. Mary's Church, Lambeth. A memorial tablet erected over the grave predicted the immortaUty of its occupant "durante Musaeo Ashmoleano". The converse would have been nearer the truth. For Ashmole's name and personal memorials have endured, even drawing to themselves treasures of which he and his contemporaries knew nothing; but as to the rarities, described by their first curator as "naturae aerarium, históriáé physicae compendium", it is Ashmole's name that has preserved the remnant remaining in the museum from dispersal or extinction, not vice versa. The earliest catalogues written in the hands of Dr. Robert Plot and his assistant, Edward Lluyd, give a fair picture of the museum then housed in the elegant building designed for it beside the Sheldonian Theatre. There in 1683 twelve cartloads of rarities were brought by river from Ashmole's home in Lambeth. In the upper floor was the "Musaeum", a Noah's ark filled with zoological specimens, the dodo, monsters, minerals, medicaments and aromatics, with the beginnings of an antiquarian collection—arms, costumes, idols, sacrificial and mortuary vessels, coins, pictures and other "notable rarities". Below, in the main floor, was the "Schola Naturalis Históriáé", official domain of the Professor of Chemistry; in the basement a chemical laboratory. Here for the next century and a half was the centre of scientific activity in Oxford. Art and archaeology as academic pursuits lay far in the future. Immediately the collections began to grow. Ashmole had foreseen this, and always intended his gift as a nucleus to which prized possessions of the University might be added. The Alfred Jewel was one of the earliest. It was discovered in Somerset ten years after the museum was opened and entered it by bequest in 1718. Throughout the next hundred years there were accessions and losses; but the miscellaneous and predominantly scientific aspect of the collection remained unaltered. Apart from the chemical laboratory