Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
🖼 🏺 World famous collections, from Egyptian mummies to contemporary art
🕙 Open every day 10am–5pm 🏛 linktr.ee/ashmoleanmuseum
- Happy #NationalHedgehogDay 🥺 This little Egyptian faience model of a hedgehog is from a tomb at Abydos, and was made around 1,500–1,300 BCE. Hedgehogs had a favourable reputation in ancient Egypt, and were often seen as a symbol of rebirth and renewal of life.
- This was likely due to their reappearances after long periods of hibernating. Because of this association with rebirth, hedgehog amulets were a popular accessory in ancient Egypt. It was also thought that, by wearing a hedgehog amulet, one would be protected against poisonous snakebites.
- See this tiny hedgehog in Gallery 1 on the Lower Ground Floor. 💙 Faience figurine of a hedgehog. Egypt, 1,500–1,300 BCE. Height 3.8 cm. AN1896-1908.E.3274
- These striking objects are Chinese brush rests, which were often made in the shape of a five-peak mountain range. When scholars wrote with a brush and ink, this practical and ornamental desk accessory would serve as a place to rest the brush during a pause in their writing. 🖌️EAX.1360 🖌️EAX.1813
- 🖌️EA2000.85
- 🌷🌿 Tickets are now available for In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World. Opening 19 March, this exhibition will take you from Oxford to the farthest corners of the world and back, uncovering the global stories behind some of Britain’s most beloved blooms. Details: www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/i...
- 💐 A Vase of Flowers, Simon Verelst, c. 1669–1675. 🎨 Orchids, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, 1879, oil on panel © Private Collection, USA. Photo courtesy of the Richard Green Gallery, London 🩷 Duncan Grant, Hollyhock, Charleston, Kate Friend, 2019, C-type print. Courtesy of the artist & Lyndsey Ingram
- This painting by the artist Adriaen Coorte, made in 1699, shows a simple bunch of dramatically lit asparagus, on a stone shelf. Still life paintings of food, often called Vanitas, were a common theme in Dutch art in the 17th century and alluded to moral themes such as the brevity of life.
- Asparagus were a favourite of Coorte’s and appear in 12 known paintings. See this painting on display in our Still-life Paintings gallery on the second floor. 🖌️ Still Life of Asparagus, Adriaen Coorte (c. 1660 - after 1707), 1699. Oil on paper. WA1940.2.22
