Oxford is happy to cash in on the fact that the Bodleian Library was used as a set in the Harry Potter movies. The tourist shops seem to have as much Hogwarts memorabilia as Oxford memorabilia. However, they are totally missing out on the latest craze. The idea for the game of Pokemon came from the traditional Chinese sport of cricket fighting. Male crickets are stimulated to aggression and put in the same container to fight until one runs away. Between fights, crickets are kept in cages, some of them extremely finely made.

The Ashmolean museum has several of these, but is entirely failing to promote them as the original Poké Balls. The best way to stimulate aggression in crickets these days is to tape them to the blade of a ceiling fan and turn it on for a while. I must say, having that done to me would piss me off, so I recommend it to Pokemon trainers, too.

This morning we rode our bikes along the towpath to Isis lock where the Oxford Canal joins the Thames, and then walked into town. We visited the outdoor market and then headed back to the Ashmolean Museum. We took a tour with a trainee guide, who ran long but was great fun. Anyhow, here in no particular order are some more goodies from the collection.

Guy Fawkes’ lantern.

Yep, this is the one that he was going to use to light the fuse to the gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament.

This little 16th Century statuette is called Nymph Cutting Her Toenails
.
I wonder about the others in the series. Nymph Brushing Her Teeth? Nymph Shaving Her Legs? Or perhaps Nymph Picking Her Nose? It’s French, which probably explains it.

This is the Alfred Jewel.

It was probably commissioned by Alfred the Great as a gift for a monastery he had founded. At the bottom in this picture the design includes an animal head with a snout, which was probably used to keep track of where you were when you were reading, so you didn’t get your grubby medieval fingers on that nice illuminated manuscript. Being able to read without having your finger on the text and saying the words out loud was a skill known only to the greatest scholars back then.

Are you ready for some boredom? Here’s the Great Pre-Raphaelite Gothic Bookcase.

It was painted by a bunch of artists mostly Pre-Raphaelite artists around 1860 and picked up by Kenneth “Civilization” Clark for fifty quid around 1930 when he was curator at the Ashmolean. He got it for a song because who would want something like that in their home?

For a closer look at Pre-Raphaelite existential boredom let’s take a look at one of the panels in more detail.

On the right we have Sappho the well known lyric poet and dyke, and Phaon, a boatman given the gift of youth and beauty by Aphrodite. You will notice that the boat is not going anywhere, and neither is their relationship. In some legends Sappho drowned herself because of her love of Phaon, but I think it was because she was bored to death of being stuck on a boat with a pretty boy with a seventies hairdo and mustache. That mustache doesn’t look very ancient greek to me. I can imagine a conversation something like this.

Patron of the Arts: I say, Artist Chappie, that Phaon looks a bit effeminate.
Artist Chappie: It’s the Pre-Raphaelite style. Very fashionable.
PotA: We don’t want people to think we’re giving credence to those rumors about Sappho, though.
AC: Well…
PotA: Can you do anything to make him a bit more butch?
AC: I could give him a mustache.
PotA: That should do the trick.
AC (to models): All right, you two, let’s call it a day. Come back in six weeks when George has grown a mustache.

In the left hand panel the wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen is Queen Rhodope. She angered the gods and was turned into a mountain, which has to be a more interesting live than being in a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

I’ve been complaining about the fact that we don’t bother painting statues any more, but here one where a few touches of color make an immense difference.

The artist is Eric Gill of course. I have very mixed feelings about Gill. On the one hand his typefaces and sculpture are things of great beauty, and on the other hand had incestuous sexual relationships with his sisters and young daughters, as well as a number of other women and occasional men in his circle. He was a creative genius, but if the price of that genius was abusing his daughters, I would rather do without his work.

On to something more cheerful. Here’s a beautiful Sixteenth Century model of a sailing ship.

Yes, I do have that the right way around. The model was made in the 1500s. The Golden Hind would have looked like this.

These Anglo-Saxon brooches are two or three inches across. They are gold, shell, garnet, and glass.

There is a lot of other fine Anglo-Saxon stuff in this and other museums that was not around when I was a kid. Thank you metal detectorists.

Another relatively recent metal detectorist find, this is one of only two coins known that feature the otherwise unknown “Emperor Domitianus”.

In fact, when the first coin turned up in France a hundred years ago, everyone thought it was a fake because there was no other record of this emperor. However, one was found in 2003 in a large hoard of other buried coins, with no possibility of it being faked. So, somewhere in Gaul during a time of confusion, Domitianus claimed to be emperor for just about long enough to have some coins minted, but not long enough to attract the attention of historians.

Here’s a fragment of the script known as Linear B, from Crete, about 3,400 years ago.

Linear B was not deciphered until the 1950s. Like many early documents we have, this is an accounting record. There is another early Cretan script known as Linear A which nobody had managed to decipher yet, so if you are looking for a hobby, have at it.

This is David Garrick, the most successful actor of his time.

I love the fact that he chose to be depicted without his wig, with his head shaved to make the wigs fit better. Though the masks of tragedy and comedy lie in his lap he has no theatrical pretensions. “Here I am. I can be anyone you want, but this is the real David Garrick.”

Ok, here’s some Oxford architectural eye candy. You can make up your own stories about them as I am getting tired.