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Stephanie Brown
Eastern Religions REL 1111
Professor Hayden
November 29th, 2020
Experience Project
I decided to do a ‘virtual’ museum visit of the Ashmolean museum. It was founded in
1683 and is the museum for the University of Oxford located in England. I specifically went
through their website to research their eastern art collection and was very surprised to find they
had so much covering the eastern art. They have items from the Islamic Middle East, China,
Japan, Southeast Asia, Indian and the Himalayas to represent a diverse variety of eastern art.
The Islamic middle eastern art that is within the walls of Ashmolean is over 4,000 objects
– I don’t think I’ve ever been to a museum that even holds a total of 4,000 items or they just
don’t put all of them on display! Some of the Islamic piece date back as far as the 8th century.
Actually, a majority of their ceramic collection for the Islamic middle east art gallery was a gift
from Sir Alan Barlow and Gerald Reitlinger. And the textile artwork was donated by Percy
Newberry – giving the Ashmolean museum one of the largest collections of medieval Islamic
embroideries in any museum in the world! These textiles even provided evidence that the Indian
Ocean trade was a real thing!
One of my favorite objects to view on the website for the Islamic middle east art gallery
was the Islamic Lamp. Known as the light of the heavens, the glass oil lamp was used to light a
designated area for someone – typically a mosque or building, and they were hung from the
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ceiling to illuminate the entire place. There are blue enamel highlights containing two
inscriptions, one from the chapter of the Holy Qur’an, called surat al-Nur which compares God
to the light. Then you have a red, green and yellow enamel that is applied afterwards containing
the patron, Sultan Muhammad Qala’tun. To be quite honest, I didn’t even really see the yellow,
green and red until you zoom in on the ceramic piece and I certainly would have mistaken it for a
vase instead of an oil lamp. But the painting detail on this piece is magnificent, I can’t imagine
how long it would have taken to fill a mosque with 100 of these all sharing the same amount of
detail.
Next, I viewed the India and Southeast Asia gallery at the Ashmolean museum. In 1686,
Sir William Hedges of the East India Company was the first person to present the museum with a
stone sculpture who happened to be of Vishnu. It was the first Indian sculpture to enter any
Western museum. The Ashmolean has quite the collection of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain
sculptures that happen to be made of stone, terracotta and bronze. The India from AD 600 was
the specific gallery I focused my time on and the detail alone they put into the site had me
gushing to want to visit this museum. The amount of detail in these sculptures is incredible. The
elephant in particular, was quite incredible. But they also had a cow, decorated in ‘jewelry’
accents. Every detail offering exquisite markings making them so beautiful and unique. But the
elephant… I can’t imagine how long that must have taken someone, especially in earlier
centuries. Or even how they accomplished to carve anything like that to begin with!
The China gallery within Ashmolean museum has a very broad collection. But their
ceramics gallery is beyond impressive. It has some of the most important collections of
greenware celadons that are outside of China itself. Most of the porcelains the museum has were
added in the 19th century and some were even presented by Elias Ashmole in 1683. I decided to
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view the gallery of the China to AD 800 – the Khoan and Michael Sullivan gallery. This specific
gallery has more than 3,000 of Chinese culture through their artifacts. In particular, the “Seal,
Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644” sculpture was quite incredible to look at. I couldn’t tell if I was
supposed to be looking at a ton of dragons or not, but the way they were all wrapped together
like that is very pretty.
Finally, the last area I viewed on the Ashmolean museum website was Japan. Mainly
known for their Buddhist sculptures and woodblock prints the collection the Ashmolean museum
has is from the earliest stages of their history. Actually, in their earliest inventory they had an
item called “sandals made of twins” – later they found out it was a pair of Japanese zori. I
decided to focus on the “Ceremonial Suit of Armour for a Samurai” piece. This was intended for
a ‘period of peace’. First off, I would love to point out that the stitching detail that goes into this
piece is incredible. My hands would be bleeding by the end. The suit of the Japanese armour was
made during the Edo period when samurais wore armour only on ceremonial occasions to show
their ranks, also known as a domaru. Many individuals in the community were involved in
making the suits, the skirts alone were made of small plates of lacquered metal that were laced
with silk cords. They also incorporated a shishi lion dog on the head of the helmet, to represent
and symbolize fierce animals of power of the wearer of the suit.
There was so much more to the Ashmolean museum and if I ever make it to England, I
think this is a museum I actually would not mind visiting one bit. They have quite and extensive
collection. I was actually wondering how in the world they can house so much stuff so I decided
to google how large the museum is. The building has six stories, with a floor area of almost
30,000 sq feet. Approximately 110,000 sq ft total for the building. I can’t even imagine how you
can get through the whole place in one day!
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References:
https://www.ashmolean.org/eastern-art
https://www.ashmolean.org/islamic-middle-east-0
https://www.ashmolean.org/islamic-lamp
https://www.ashmolean.org/india-and-southeast-asia
https://www.ashmolean.org/india-ad-600-0
https://www.ashmolean.org/china-0
https://www.ashmolean.org/china-ad-800-0
https://www.ashmolean.org/japan
https://www.ashmolean.org/ceremonial-suit-armour-samurai
https://micaarchitects.com/projects/ashmolean-museum#:~:text=The%20new
%20building%20has%20six,)%2C%204000m%C2%B2%20(13%2C100%20sq.
