Tips for others: use the Park and Ride, the parking costs are really high...in the end we paid for two hours, which was not even enough to do justice to this museum, then we drove out and found a village pub for refreshments on the way home. Had we chosen Park and Ride at the outset, we would have stayed the day in Oxford.
There is so much to see at the Pitt Rivers Museum...with all manner of things packed very closely in cabinets on several floors. The building is magnificent Gothic Victorian. There were building works in the Main Natural History Museum, with large dinosaurs protected by bubble wrap, but walking round the cloister like corridor to the Pitt Rivers Museum, I looked up to the beautifully decorated Victorian Gothic Capitals. Each had carvings of different plants: this one of the Monkey Puzzle Tree was striking...
On our next visit, I'll take a torch, as the light levels are low and it would help to illuminate some items. We saw some magnificent Parka Coats made from the intestines of seals, beautifully decorated with thousands of stitches along a border at the cuffs and hem. We saw some like these at the British Museum. There is so much to see, that really this visit was just an overview for us, and we did not have time even to peer into each cabinet.
Here are just two of many thousand of pretty things: some brooches
a Pendant made from shell
Easter Eggs
There was some original art work for the cover of The General Pitt Rivers' Catalogue for 1898 to 1899, which took my fancy, and which I may use as inspiration for a calligraphy project.
There is so much at this Museum, not only to celebrate the skill and ingenuity of peoples from around the world, but as a source of inspiration for people now. The medical instruments were ingenious, and the weapons gruesome....Just think of what interests you and there will most probably be something here of interest.
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