People and their collections

Robert Plot 1640-96 - scientist & antiquary

Many of the natural objects and man-made artefacts donated by Elias Ashmole to The Ashmolean Museum in 1683 survive within the University of Oxford museum collections, namely at The Ashmolean Museum itself, The Pitt-Rivers Museum and the University Museum of Natural History.

The Tradescant collection at The Ashmolean Museum contains a small number of ceramic vessels, some of which are illustrated here.

In all they consist of two complete earthenware Romano-British pots, of the second and fourth centuries AD; a fifth-sixth century hand-made earthenware Saxon burial urn; two late sixteenth-century highly-decorated Chinese jars, one earthenware and one porcelain (the later with a canework casing).