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Article ID: CBB006517357

The Old Ashmolean Museum and Oxford’s Seventeenth-Century Chymical Community: A Material Culture Approach To Laboratory Experiments (2022)

Umberto Veronesi (Author)
Martinón-Torres, Marcos (Author)

Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 69
Issue: 1
Pages: 19-33

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2021.2012314

DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2021.2012314

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Scientific communities; interprofessional relations Ceramics; pottery Scientific apparatus and instruments Material culture Laboratory techniques and procedures Metallurgy Glass and glassmaking Alchemy 17th century Oxford (England) Plot, Robert Oxford University Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Oxford's chymical community came together in the Ashmolean Museum. Founded in 1683, the institution was part of Oxford University and home to the first official chair of chymistry in the country, with practical teaching directed by Robert Plot in the basement laboratory. The information at our disposal is scarce and Plot did not leave us detailed accounts of his laboratory work. However, a large assemblage of ceramic crucibles and distillation apparatus was recovered from the site where the laboratory once operated, an invaluable material perspective on the experimental agenda of one of the most important chymical laboratories in early modern Europe. The scientific analysis of the materials indicates that the work focused on technological innovation in the fields of glassmaking, specialised pottery, and zinc metallurgy, and shows how the laboratory kept close contact with some renowned artisan-entrepreneurs of the time. We argue that material culture offers an informative perspective on chymical practice in and beyond Oxford. The results provide fresh insight into the Old Ashmolean Museum, an institution that grew out of the Baconian spirit, where doing chymistry meant working at the intersection of artisanal and scholarly worlds.

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Article Megan Piorko; Marieke Hendriksen; Simon Werrett (2022) Alchemical Practice: Looking Towards the Chemical Humanities. Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 1-18). unapi

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