Object of the Week
Each week we'll introduce you to one of the many intriguing objects found in the museums we visit...
Week 1: Lars Tharp
Treasure Hunt Clue: ‘At the born again feast, many members get ahead’
More than fifty years ago, on his annual English pilgrimages my Danish archaeologist grandfather dragged me round Oxford’s world-famous Ashmolean Museum. Fifty years on, where would the cryptic treasure-hunt clue take Kate and me on today’s Quizeum? Three galleries on, having scoured every nook and cranny, every shelf and cabinet, looking for some match to Griff's riddle, we were still flummoxed. And then - in the Maiolica Room - Eureka! the pennies dropped: it all hinged on the ambiguous word ‘members’. As we came eye-to-eye with the very funniest (and naughtiest) of ceramic objects, anywhere in the world. - I do believe Kate coloured. - So, sparing your blushes, my Quizeum Object of the Week is an Italian maiolica dish dated ‘1536', the centre filled with seemingly muscular portrait of a gentleman. Look closer: the ’sitter’s’ head is actually a clustered jumble of penises. This risqué image is placed against a painted scroll banner inscribed (backwards) with a text in Italian translating roughly : Everyone looks at me as if I were a head of dicks. -And that’s a danger some of us will run as we enter Griff’s den of fiendish Quizeum riddles….
Wouldn’t you love to have been at that dinner party? A servant bows before the honoured guest and places before the birthday boy a dish of delicacies. As he gleefully dives in, getting to the bottom of the dish, imagine his horror and the hilarity of those at the table as he uncovers and faces his own caricature.
