Tag: durham university

research

Durham University: Oriental Museum Visit

Chalon Joy

Back with another post on our day out at the Durham University Botanic Garden and Oriental Museum! Find my post on the Botanic Gardens here c:

Admittedly, I’m really not much of a museum-goer… I find them quite dry and stuffy at the best of times. However, I do have a deep appreciation of Asian culture and art, so I thought I’d give this museum a go since it sounds right up my street. The uni were also running a special admission deal for the Botanic Garden and the Oriental Museum on the same day~

Upon arriving the museum was nicely set out, organised in a tiered open space type layout- I know this has nothing to do with my research but it made it feel nice and airy in there (which made me much less anxious about spending hours getting lost in a blur of similar exhibits)!

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Durham University Oriental Museum: Main Floor (Collingwood, 2019)

There were a plethora of cultures on show at the museum including Korean, Egyptian, Middle-Eastern and Indian exhibits which I thoroughly enjoyed; however, for the purpose of this post I’ll be looking specifically at Chinese and Japanese items, since that’s what I’m basing my project on.

We visited the Japanese exhibit first- although it was small, there were some gorgeous examples of early ceramics and pottery, as well as some ceremonial prayer set-ups and symbolic items. My favourite exhibit was the collection of traditional Hina Matsuri dolls. The attendant told me these are only displayed for a short time around Doll’s Day or Girl’s Day (celebrated on the 3rd March each year)- more on this holiday here if you’re curious!

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Durham University Oriental Museum: Hina Matsuri Doll Display (Collingwood, 2019)

This is exactly what I was looking for to supplement the images of flora and fauna I’d taken in the gardens… I’m excited to work some of these visual styles into my concepts c:

I then wandered across to the Chinese exhibit floors- there was a much larger space for Chinese items and artwork, so I was able to gather tons of really useful reference imagery. The ceramics and pottery were standouts for me; peek a few photos from the exhibit below. My favourite item was the huge Qing Dynasty cloisonné floral vase!

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Durham University Oriental Museum: Qing Dynasty Red Dragon Plate/ Qing Dynasty Cloisonné Vase (Collingwood, 2019)
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Durham University Oriental Museum: Qing Dynasty Porcelain Bowl with Fish and Crane/Floral Horse Bowl (Collingwood, 2019)

At the far end of the Chinese floor was a huge paper replica of a traditional Chinese Dragon- with Chinese New Year being recently, it was nice to see an example of some more modern festive items. In particular I was happy to see this, since my current concepts for the Chinese risograph feature a traditional Chinese Dragon very prominently.

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Durham University Oriental Museum: Upper Floor Chinese Dragon and Lanterns (Collingwood, 2019)

You may have noticed the quality of these photos is lacking in this post… truthfully I find museums to have horrendous lighting for photographing exhibits, so while most of my pics are useful and do the job, they’re not very nicely composed and a bit naff. There was also no flash photography, so I just had to make do with the conditions in there… and it was very dark >:c

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my research visit to Durham. I’m so pleased I was able to source places to go for references for this project- I doubted I’d be able to find sufficient primary sources, so I was winning before I’d even begun~

I’m looking forward to working this new imagery into my concepts- I feel much more equipped to produce some lovely symbolic pieces of art that work well together and show my appreciation for the beauty of Asian culture ♥

References

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Oriental Museum: Floral Horse Bowl [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Oriental Museum: Hina Matsuri Doll Display [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Oriental Museum: Main Floor [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Oriental Museum: Qing Dynasty Cloisonné Vase [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Oriental Museum: Qing Dynasty Porcelain Bowl with Fish and Crane [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Oriental Museum: Qing Dynasty Red Dragon Plate [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Oriental Museum: Upper Floor Chinese Dragon and Lanterns [photograph].

Wikipedia (n.d.). Wiki – Hina Matsuri [online]/ Available at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinamatsuri [Accessed 24 Feb 2019]

research

Durham University: Botanic Garden Visit

Chalon Joy

As part of my ongoing effort to source primary reference sources (this was a weakness in my workflow during Semester 1), I’ve been for a visit to the local Botanical Garden and the Oriental Museum, both of which are kept my Durham University. To prevent this from being overly wordy I’ll just talk about the Garden today, but I’ll be sure to make a post on the Oriental Museum in the future as both were fantastic!

In an attempt to catch some nice weather for the first part of the trip, we visited the Gardens first- of course, this was a failure because when do we ever have nice weather in the UK? It was really misty and since it’s still February, there wasn’t much to see in terms of flowers and blooms. I did spot a few British flowers planted at the front, but since my project is based on Asian flora, this wasn’t applicable to my area of research.

My favourite area of the garden is the collection of greenhouses, which contain ‘exotic’ plants that aren’t native to the UK. This is where I collected most of my references of succulents for my terrarium project, and at a slower pace I was able to discover some really nice plants that I could reference for this project.

I also discovered another gem in the back conservatory of the greenhouse- koi fish! I hadn’t noticed these at all the first time I went in (I was in a pretty urgent hurry), so I took some time taking reference images of these fish. Here’s a pic of me employing my family to bait the fish with feed while I took photos haha:

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Durham University Botanic Garden: Feeding the Koi/Koi Fish (Collingwood, 2019)

After having a good mooch through the tropical section, we ventured outside to the main garden. Looking at the map, there was a cluster of areas that interested me; the Bamboo Grove (30), the Japanese Collection (31), the Oriental Collection (37), and the Sakura Friendship Garden (38)- see these on the map below:

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Botanic Garden Visitor Map (Durham University, n.d.)

It was quite a trek, and when we arrived at the Oriental Collection there wasn’t too much to see- mostly trees and the odd leafy plant, but compared to the variety in the greenhouses it was a wee bit disappointing. Since it’s out of season, the Sakura Friendship Garden was also a bit underwhelming. Now obviously this garden doesn’t focus on flowering plants nor are they in season, so I sort of expected it to be limited- however, this is the best selection that’s accessible to me, so it’ll have to do for now~

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Durham University Botanic Garden: SAKURA Friendship Garden (Collingwood, 2019)

On the plus side, I really enjoyed the Bamboo Grove! Plenty of mossy textures and interesting leaves and branches to photograph- these will definitely come in handy.

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Durham University Botanic Garden: Moss Specimen/Lostachys Aurea (Collingwood, 2019)

Despite the drawbacks, I really loved this garden- I’ve re-visited it quite often for inspiration and reference, the most recent being for my first experimental risograph project during Semester 1. That was a bit of a whirlwind visit since time was very short, but I was able to enjoy it much more this time around (despite there still being fairly little flora outside of the nice warm greenhouses!)

More in the next few days on the second leg of our trip- the Oriental Museum c:

[Edit 27th Feb: Oriental Museum trip report here!]

 

References

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Botanic Garden: Feeding the Koi [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Botanic Garden: Koi Fish [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Botanic Garden: Lostachys Aurea [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Botanic Garden: SAKURA Friendship Garden [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Durham University Botanic Garden: Unidentified Moss Specimen [photograph].

Durham University (n.d.). Botanic Garden Visitor Map [map]. Available at: https://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/visitor-attractions/Botanic_Garden/Durham_University_Botanic_Garden_Map.pdf  [Accessed 20 Feb 2019].