MATTHEW WINTERBOTTOM

This post is proudly supported by Barrie and Deedee Wigmore

Contact
Email: matthew.winterbottom@ashmus.ox.ac.uk

University of Oxford webpages
St John's College

Biography

Matthew has more than 25 years’ experience working with and researching European decorative arts of the 16th–21th centuries. He started his career at the Victoria & Albert Museum as an Assistant Curator in the Metalwork and the Furniture and Woodwork Departments. This was followed by seven years as Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts at the Royal Collection. Whilst there, he co-curated several major exhibitions at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace and wrote the Official Guide to Windsor Castle.

Matthew was subsequently appointed Curator of Decorative Arts at the Holburne Museum in Bath. During his eight years there he was responsible for the radical redisplay of the decorative art collections as part of the redevelopment and extension of the Museum.

He joined the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean in March 2014 as Curator of Nineteenth-Century Decorative Arts. In this role he is tasked with building a new collection of 19th-century decorative arts. He recently worked on the redisplay for the Nineteenth-Century Art Galleries that incorporate decorative arts for the first time and on the new Michael Wellby Gallery of Continental Goldsmiths’ work.

Since January 2017 Matthew has been responsible for the entire Western Art Sculpture and Decorative Arts collections.

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Research

Matthew's research interests cover a wide range of European decorative arts from the late medieval to the early 20th centuries. He has extensive knowledge of metalwork, furniture, ceramics, glass, textiles and sculpture. He is also committed to exploring ways of making this material more engaging and accessible to museum visitors.

In his current role, he has become interested in 19th-century design and design reform, in particular the work of William Burges and Christopher Dresser. The Ashmolean holds important examples of their work. He researched a previous Ashmolean exhibition on colour and the Victorians which included both fine and decorative arts.

Matthew also has a particular interest in 17th- and 18th-century British and Continental silver and goldsmiths’ work. He is actively researching the Michael Wellby bequest – a collection of 500 pieces of Continental goldsmiths’ work and Kunstkammer objects – that was bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum in 2012. He has extensive knowledge of the history of Kunstkammern, Schatzkammern and cabinets of curiosities of the early modern period and of the revival of interest in such collections in the 19th and 20th centuries that led to the extensive faking and reproductions of precious objects.

In addition to the stylistic history and development of the decorative arts he is keen to explore the social history surrounding such objects – how they were made, used, displayed and their changing uses and status over time. His work on silver and ceramics has led to a particular interest in the history of food and dining.

Matthew is Co-Investigator of Chromotope, a 5-year ERC-funded research project exploring the changes that took place in attitudes towards colour in the 19th century. Outcomes include an international post-doctoral Summer School in Florence, September 2022, and a major 2023–24 exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Design and Fashion for which he was lead Curator.