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

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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.