Out and About in Oxford-Town: Part I

This weekend Amy and Libby ventured to Paris via a nine hour, overnight coach ride to, as we say jokingly, "repair their friendship." As a result, Caitlin and I decided we had to do something fun while they were gone.

Sunday

We chose to visit the Pitt Rivers Museum for the second time. The first time we went (read more about it here) we only managed to see the ground floor because there were so many displays. Our goal this time was to finish the top two floors before trying to get some Christmas shopping done.

The sky was a soft blue with wispy clouds that were a welcome sight after so many days of clouds and rain. The temperature has finally dipped low enough (under 40 degrees Fahrenheit) for me to really feel the cold when outside. The frosty air numbs the fingers and ears if they are not covered properly.

Beyop

The first floor (second floor in America) of the museum was dedicated to more daily-life type artifacts like bags, body ornaments, baby carriers, games, and art. I never realized just how many ways human beings adorn their bodies. Necklaces, bracelets, finger rings, toe rings, headdresses, anklets, and waist adornments were all there.

The female members of the Adi of northeast India wore metal disks attached to a string around their waists. This ornamentation, called a beyop, was worn daily from the time the girl could walk until the birth of her first child.

Bags from around the world

The most interesting exhibits were about important stages in a person's life: childhood, puberty, and marriage.

The display on body modification was also very informative, though I already knew most of the basics about scarification and tattooing. One body modification I had not heard of before was head shaping, a practice normally found in African cultures. Mothers would use cloth or a specially made apparatus to gradually make their newborn baby's head more elongated. The reshaping process took several weeks of application for about fifteen minutes a day during the child's nap. Surprisingly, the information plaque said that the process is not harmful.

There were also several brightly colored silk shoes worn by Chinese women who had their feet bound on display in this section. I knew that their feet were small, but not that they were that small. The shoes looked like they would only fit the feet of little babies. I cannot imagine how painful it must have been for the women.

Further along the room were decorated eggs, and not just chicken eggs. There was a painted ostrich egg and some were very small and probably came from some kind of songbird. Each one was hand painted with incredible detail.

In this same section were paintings from different cultures. My eye was drawn to two African paintings done in purples, greens, and browns on a background of black paper. They depicted antelopes, warriors, and birds in a slightly abstract tribal style. I really like the thin, angular quality of the images where you can tell what they are without it being strictly accurate to porportions. The bright colors and spindly trees with poofs of leaves remind me of the book The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.
   

The top floor did not have nearly as many artifacts as the two floors below. Its displays focused mainly on weaponry, armor, and fishing. There were bunches of guns, but I did not spend very long looking at them. All of the swords and daggers were much prettier and interesting, though I did make myself a little queasy imagining what being stabbed by one would feel like. I had two favorites among the swords and daggers. The first was a plain sword from Asia with a slightly curved blade, about three feet long, with a hilt made of beige twine. It's simplicity was very appealing to the eye. My other favorite was a dagger with a hilt made of a pale, milky blue stone.

As we were heading out of the museum past the national history section, I saw this guy gazing out of a glass display case.

Yeah, I know, super creepy, right? He looks like he should be the mischievous minion of some evil villain...or he could be just contemplating when to lunge forward and bite you on the nose.

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We (meaning mostly me) tried to do some Christmas shopping after the museum, but I just wasn't feeling it. There were just too many people everywhere and I did not know exactly what I was looking for. We mostly just ended up wandering around Primark, Apricot, and Miss Selfridge (all clothing stores) without buying anything.

When we got hungry, it was off to the Covered Market for sandwiches at a French deli. We ate there our first week in Oxford and thought it was good then. I had a panini with sundried tomato chicken, mozzarella and basil. It was a very good combination of flavors, filling but inexpensive.  

All of this was accomplished before 4pm. We spent the rest of the day sitting at our kitchen table writing blog posts and doing homework while having tea and cookies.