Oxford Trip
Tony’s tours led our cohort to Oxford for a day trip filled with visiting museums. I have to admit by the end of the trip I felt quite over-stimulated however the day was great. We started off by getting a private tour of the History of Science museum. The amount of historic relics in this museum astounded me, I was completely fascinated with the astrolabes. The craftsmanship of the objects themselves reeled me in and then the story behind the mathematical purposes of the device intrigued me further. The objects were just purely fascinating to me and I loved the line they toed between beautiful craft and mathematical function. These objects stood out to me mostly because of the fact that they are beautiful yet they still have a function.
The next stop of the tour was the Pitt Rivers museum. We were given a short introduction of how the museum came to be and how these objects were collected. The dark past of the museum stayed with me as I wondered around the several floors of artefacts. The sheer amount of objects that are in this museum is daunting, and to think that most of them shouldn’t necessarily be there. I remember feeling the weight of the museum while walking around (could’ve also been the long travel and walking that I was feeling). I looked at most objects and tried to imagine how they got to the museum. I also questioned the way certain objects were shown. Was this the correct way to honour this object? Is this description of the object fair or obsolete? Still with the heaviness of the museum’s past, most of the objects are amazing to witness in person. Some of the display boxes are so full that it’s hard to see everything in them. We spent several hours in this museum and I think this is where the over-stimulation started to get to me. With so many objects to look at and descriptions to read, I started to feel numb to the objects. It was at this time that a couple other students and I decided to go over to the Ashmolean Museum.
We only spent about 20 minutes in the Ashmolean because they were about to close, however I was very intrigued by the collection of stringed instruments they had on display. The craftsmanship of the guitars was astounding. There is an incredible amount of detail in the inlays and the type of inlays that they used was so flashy in a way. I typically like more simplistic items, but the detail in these instruments was so immense that I can’t help but love them. I guess when I see these details, I imagine the maker and how long it took for those inlays and details and that’s why I like them in this case. It’s less about the way they look and more about the attention to detail the maker had.
