Thanks to the scholarly collecting of C.D.E. Fortnum the Ashmolean possesses Italian, Spanish and Mexican maiolica collections of international importance. These are complemented by a comprehensive collection of Delftware from the Marshall, Reitlinger, Jahn and Oppenheimer collections and by the English tiles from the collection of Dr Anthony Ray. In addition there are noteworthy collections of English slipware, Toby jugs and English and German salt-glazed stoneware.
The porcelain collections include the Marshall Collection, the most extensive and encyclopaedic collection of early coloured Worcester porcelain in existence. There is also an exceptionally rare example of 16th-century ‘Medici’ porcelain and important groups of 18th-century porcelain from other English and Continental factories.
In the refurbished 19th-Century Art Galleries there are new acquisitions and loans of 19th-century Art Pottery, including important pieces by the Martin brothers and by Christopher Dresser for Minton, Wedgwood, Linthorpe and Ault.
Over the past 30 years the Museum has assembled a comprehensive collection of British Studio Ceramics.
Glass from C.D.E. Fortnum’s collection includes Continental examples of the 16th -18th centuries. The Department’s holdings of late 17th- and 18th-century English glass comprise over 750 pieces, principally from the collections of Sir Bernard Eckstein and Mrs Monica Marshall.
Anthony Ray, English Delftware Pottery in the Robert Hall Warren Collection, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, London, 1968
Aileen Dawson, Eighteenth-century French Porcelain in the Ashmolean Museum (Ashmolean Handbooks), Oxford, 1996
Martine Newby, Glass of Four Millennia (Ashmolean Handbooks), Oxford, 2000
Rosalind Sword, The Marshall Collection of Worcester Porcelain in the Ashmolean Museum, 2 vols., Oxford, 2017
Timothy Wilson, Italian Maiolica and Europe, Oxford, 2017
