Tag Archives: Museum Stories

Ashmolean Museum Views: The ‘Tang Dynasty Camel’

Ashmolean Museum (June 26, 2023): This short film by Carina Hanslik shares an insight into the incredible story behind an ancient ceramic camel.

The object that inspired this animation, a ceramic camel dating back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907), helps us to tell the story of Paul Jacobsthal, a Jewish professor of Archaeology at the University of Marburg in the 1930s, who was forced to leave Germany.

CAMEL TOMB FIGURE

A spiritual object intended to protect the dead from evil 

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford | EA2012.189

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Listen to the story of Jewish professor Paul Jacobsthal, and how he escaped the Nazis with his Tang Dynasty camel.

Museum Stories: ‘Japanese Plate With Kintsugi Repair’

Ashmolean Museum (June 7, 2023): Here, animator Charlie Black brings the poetic story behind this beautifully broken 17th-century Japanese plate to life.

JAPAN COLLECTION

Ashmolean Museum – Oxford University

The Japanese collection is now best known for its ceramics, in particular the collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century export porcelain which is one of the most comprehensive collections in the world. Ceramics for the Japanese market are also well represented, including fine examples of Arita, Nabeshima and Hirado porcelain, tea ceremony wares and Kyoto earthenwares.