Textiles Gallery - The Ashmolean Museum
NEW TEXTILES GALLERY
AFOR THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM
Silk embroidery on
linen, Egypt,
13th-14th century AD
Painted shroud for a
boy named
Nespawtytawy, Egypt,
1st-2nd century AD
O
This is about to change with the
The
NE OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM’S bestkept
secrets is its large collection of textiles. Looking
at what is currently on display – five tapestries, an
embroidered wall-hanging, a late medieval cloth of
gold, and some small pieces in the Antiquities and
Western Art galleries – who would guess that the
overall number of textiles comes to over 4,000 pieces?
Museum’s proposed redevelopment,
within which a major new textile gallery
is planned. For the first time this will
provide space to display our important
collections. With approximately 3,500
pieces, the Department of Eastern Art
has the largest holdings. Just over 2,200
of these textiles came to the Museum in
the 1940s as a donation from Professor
P.E. Newberry, in his time a prominent
Egyptologist. He and his wife also had a
keen interest in textile history, and
while living in Egypt they assembled a
unique study collection of more than
1,200 Indian medieval trade textiles and
over 1,000 early Islamic embroideries.
The Newberry collection is by far the
largest of its kind in any public museum
worldwide.
Department also has visually
stunning garments from 19th-century
Central Asia, collected by the English
explorer Robert Shaw in 1868/69
during an expedition to Kashgar and
Yarkand, at a time when the region was
independent from China. It is one of
the few 19th-century Central Asian
collections with a certain provenance
and date, and it is exceptionally well
documented. Additional material comes
from all parts of Asia and the Islamic
world, from Ottoman Greece to Japan.
India, China, and Islam are well
represented with well over 600 items,
many of them large garments or
hangings.
The Antiquities Department holds
some 800 pieces, including fragments
retrieved from archaeological sites, and
Embroidered silk cap,
Egypt, 15th century AD
items such as embroidered gloves,
footwear, and clothing of historic or
ethnographic interest, reflecting the
Museum’s origins in a ‘Cabinet of
Curiosities’. The majority of the
textiles, however, again come from
Egypt, where conditions of climate have
made their survival possible; they
illustrate over 4,000 years of textile
production.
From earliest times Egypt was famous as
a flax-producing country, and samples of
woven linen in the collection go back to
2800 BC. The large quantity of
mummy wrappings include ‘bandages’
inscribed with spells that would enable
the deceased to pass successfully into
the afterlife, as well as painted shrouds.
The collection is particularly rich in
Late Roman and Byzantine (Coptic)
textiles: there are tunics and hangings
with tapestry-woven decoration,
embroidered cloths, and pieces of
sturdy furnishing fabrics in compound
weaves. The latest of these textiles were
made after the Arab conquest, and the
proposed gallery will allow them to be
seen side by side with the Islamic
embroideries in the Newberry
collection.
The Western Art Department
is home to a smaller yet exceptionally
fine collection of textiles. Outstanding
is the embroidery collection bequeathed
by John Francis Mallett in 1947, which
includes 17th-century English
embroidered pictures, samplers, and
other textiles. Costume, including a
doge’s hat, gloves, and waistcoats, as well
as three pieces of Opus Anglicanum,
complete the collection.
Indian cotton textile,
traded to Egypt,
13th century AD
The Temptation of
Adam and Eve
(detail), Embroidery,
England, mid-17th
century
The ultimate fragility of textiles
sometimes lets us forget that initially
they are far more durable than ceramics
and glass, and are of course more
portable than either. Fabrics have
historically been among the most
important manufactured goods to move
between cultures. Chinese silks had a
profound effect on the arts of Persia
and Byzantium, and finely printed and
dyed Indian cotton textiles were in
demand in East and West alike, so much
so that they became the most widely
accepted currency of exchange in the
medieval and early-modern maritime
spice trade.
The proposed new gallery explores
these cross-cultural connections; the
Ashmolean’s collections are especially
suited for this interpretation. The
display will focus on the purpose of
textiles as dress, furnishings, and
ceremonial displays. They have been
and remain markers of social identity
and status. In medieval times they were
one of the major industries, generating
substantial wealth: a skilled weaver in
15th-century Florence was often paid
more than a painter. The gallery will
also facilitate the use of the
collections for teaching and
research, as well as for the
education of school
groups, with the
processes involved in
the textiles’ manufacture
explored alongside their
aesthetic and cultural meanings.
Gold and silver
embroidered coat
with ikat lining,
Kashgar, pre-1869.
Shaw Collection
Rag doll from the
burial of a child in
the Roman cemetery
at Hawara, Egypt,
4th century AD
With these collections of both visual
splendour and historical importance,
the Ashmolean’s redevelopment
presents the perfect opportunity to
reveal the history of textiles from across
the world to a wider public.
Please contact Edith Prak, Development
Director, on 01865 288196 or email
edith.prak@ashmus.ox.ac.uk for further
information.
Ashmolean
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