Ashmolean Museum: PotWeb

Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology		The Collections:
PotWeb:	Ceramics online @ the Ashmolean Museum	•	Early Europe & Near East
		•	Classical to Medieval
		•	Europe from 1500
		•	Oriental & Islamic

Prospectus -- Ceramics in the Ashmolean

Ceramics are ubiquitous among the civilisations of the past. For ten thousand years, ceramics have combined practical and artistic expression.

Many of the ceramic collections at the Ashmolean, spread across three departments in the Museum, are among the finest of their type in the world.


	Europe from 1500
		Italian Maiolica
			This outstanding collection of the art of the Renaissance potter, assembled by the Victorian scholar C.D.E. Fortnum, is one of the most representative in the world
		English Delftware
Maiolica			The Warren collection in the Museum contains particularly fine 18th-century work. It is supplemented by 17th-century archaeological finds from Oxford
		Staffordshire Salt-glaze
			The highlight of the collection of Staffordshire pottery of the 17th and 18th centuries is the salt-glazed stoneware from the collection of Sir Arthur Church
		Chelsea Porcelain
			The Museum also benefits from the loan of what must be the finest private collection of Chelsea porcelain
Staffordshire Salt-glaze		French and German Porcelain
			The European porcelain collection includes fine examples of Meissen as well as other German factories and early French soft-paste porcelain
Worcester Porcelain		Worcester Porcelain
			The Marshall collection of First Period polychrome Worcester porcelain is one of the most representative to be found anywhere.
		Studio Pottery
			The collection of British 20th-century Studio Pottery began with two recent bequests, and already contains fine examples of the work of Dame Lucie Rie, Alan Caiger-Smith and Michael Cardew


Oriental and Islamic
	Chinese		Chinese
		The Chinese collection is particularly strong in the Greenwares and other ceramics of the 3rd - 12th centuries AD. It also includes an extensive collection of later porcelain
	Indian
		These relatively small collections range in date from Indus Valley wares (c. 2000 BC) to late 19th-century Indian Art School pottery	Islamic
	Islamic
		The collection offers a concise but comprehensive overview of Islamic pottery from the 9th - 18th centuries AD. Highlights include 17th- and 18th-century Persian Blue-and-White wares
	Japanese		Japanese
		The Museum has one of the finest collections of Japanese export porcelain, and one of only two collections of pre-export porcelain from the first half of the 17th century, together with stonewares made for the domestic market from the 16th century onwards


Greek	Classical to Medieval
		Greek
			A comprehensive collection from Neolithic to Hellenistic. the Classical period is represented by a wide range of vessels for wine drinking, decorated with scenes of religious, sporting and everyday life
Roman		Roman
			Roman ceramics include Mediterranean fineware, Arretine and North African Slipware The collection is especially strong in local pottery from an important Roman industry centred on Oxford itself
		Byzantine
Medieval Europe			The Byzantine section includes a substantial collection of pilgrim flasks, dating from the 4th-7th centuries AD, and ceramics from the cargo of a ship wrecked in the 12th century off the island of Skopelos
		Medieval English
			Collections include a splendid range of Anglo-Saxon burial urns from East Anglia and the Upper Thames Valley of the 5th - 7th centuries AD, and vessels from the most accomplished medieval ceramic industry of England, the Brill/Boarstall potteries in Buckinghamshire. These date from the 13th - 16th century AD


Early Europe and Near East
	Egypt and Nubia		Near East
		A comprehensive array from some of the earliest pottery-making cultures, which include the original type series from which the chronology of prehistoric Egypt was established
	Near East
		This is the most representative collection in the UK outside the British Museum of pottery from ancient Palestine to Mesopotamia, dating from c. 6000 BC to c. 4500 BC	Prehistoric Europe
	Prehistoric Europe
		Includes the first pots in the Balkans (c. 8000 BC) to an important collection of British funerary vessels of the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age date up to the beginning of the Roman period

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last updated: jcm/28-mar-2003