Urban History, February 2018
The eighteenth century in the latest issue of Urban History:
Urban History 45 (February 2018)
A R T I C L E S
Matthew Jenkins, “The View from the Street: The Landscape of Polite Shopping in Georgian York,” pp. 26–48.
Shopping during the eighteenth century is increasingly viewed by scholars as an important leisure activity and an integral part of wider schemes of urban improvement. However, the physical evidence in the form of standing buildings is rarely considered. This article will demonstrate how a detailed examination and reconstruction of the urban landscape of York can illuminate how these practices were performed. The use of building biographies also allows owners to be identified and linked with specific shop types and surviving fabric. This enables exploration of how the physical environment influenced perceptions of the streetscape and the experience of interior retail space.
David Gilks, “The Fountain of the Innocents and Its Place in the Paris Cityscape, 1549–1788,” pp. 49–73.
This article analyses how the Fountain of the Innocents appeared and also how it was used and perceived as part of the Paris cityscape. In the 1780s, the plan to transform the Holy Innocents’ Cemetery into a market cast doubt on the Fountain’s future; earlier perceptions now shaped discussions over reusing it as part of the transformed quarter. The article documents how the Fountain was dismantled in 1787 and re-created the following year according to a new design, explaining why it was created in this form. Finally, the article considers what contemporary reactions to the remade Fountain reveal about attitudes toward the authenticity of urban monuments before the establishment of heritage institutions and societies.
Boris Stepanov and Natalia Samutina, “An Eighteenth-Century Theme Park: Museum-Reserve Tsaritsyno (Moscow) and the Public Culture of the Post-Soviet Metropolis,” pp. 74–99.
The article discusses the dramatic history of the Tsaritsyno Park and museum-reserve. By the mid-2000s, it had become one of Moscow’s iconic places and a zone where urban public culture was shaped. The authors trace the history of this architectural ensemble and park in terms of their role in сity culture and analyse changes in the historical culture of contemporary post-Soviet Moscow. The Tsaritsyno Park and museum exemplify these changes. An unfinished country residence of Catherine II, with a Grand Palace that had stood as a ruin for over 200 years, it has been radically renewed by the Moscow city authorities in what came to be labelled ‘fantasy restoration’. The palace was finished and now serves as the core of the museum, organized according to a controversial historical policy. Tsaritsyno as a whole became a cultural oddity featuring historical attractions for the public, effectively an ‘eighteenth-century theme park’.
Study Day | Pots, Prints & Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda
From the programme:
Pots, Prints, and Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda
The British Museum, London, 16 February 2018
Creamware Mug, Staffordhire, ca. 1803 (London: The British Museum).
Join British Museum curators from the Departments of Asia, Prints and Drawings, and Britain, Europe, and Prehistory in this one-day study day—held in conjunction with the exhibition Pots with Attitude: British Satire on Ceramics, 1760–1830—addressing historical and modern ceramics that have political and other messages, which have been inspired by prints and printmaking.
Since the introduction of paper and woodblock printing in China around AD 600, through to the invention of woodcuts printed on paper and the printing press in Germany in the 15th century, the print medium has been used around the world to disseminate ideas and knowledge. Ceramic artists across time and cultures have adapted these graphic sources as painted or transfer-printed images applied onto glazed or unglazed surfaces to express issues including piety, propaganda, self-promotion, gender, national, and regional identities.
This study day is open to all and will draw on the over 500,000 records catalogued by the Prints and Drawing department, which can be searched on the British Museum’s collection online. Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum, Friday, 16 February 2018; £15 / £12.50 concessions. Book online here.
P R O G R A M M E
9:30 Registration
10:00 Session A
• Patricia Ferguson (Project Curator, Monument Trust, 18th-Century Prints and Ceramics, Britain, Europe and Prehistory, and Prints and Drawings), Introduction
• Yu-ping Luk (Curator: Chinese Paintings Prints and Central Asia, Asia), Woodblock Prints and Images on Ceramics in China: Some 14th- to 17th-Century Examples
• Dora Thornton (Curator: Renaissance Collection, Waddesdon Bequest, Britain, Europe and Prehistory), ‘Take Note’: Looking at Italian Renaissance Potters, Printmaking, and Politics through the Lens of the British Museum Collection
11:00 Coffee Break
11:30 Session B
• Eloise Donnelly (Collaborative Doctoral Award Student, Britain, Europe and Prehistory), Prints, Pots, and Protestantism: The Thomas Collection of German Stoneware
• Jessica Harrison-Hall (Curator: Chinese Ceramics, Percival David, Asia), Shameless Self-Promotion? European Eighteenth-Century Prints and Chinese Pots
12:30 Lunch — available for purchase in the Museum cafes
14:00 Session C
• Sheila O’Connell (Former Curator, British Prints, Prints and Drawings), Jefferyes Hamett O’Neale (fl.1750–1801): Pots and Prints
• Patricia Ferguson (Project Curator, Monument Trust), Spode and the French Invasion Scare: Profiteering or Propaganda?
• Antony Griffiths (Former Keeper, Department of Prints and Drawings), Thoughts on Prints and Pots: Beyond Politics
15:15 Coffee Break
15:45 Session D
• Mary Ginsberg (Research Fellow, Asia), Appropriated Heroes: Prints, Pots, and Politics in Revolutionary China
• Eleanor Hyun (Curator, Korean Collections, Asia), Circulating Images: North Korean Pots and Prints
16:30 Tour of Pots with Attitude: British Satire on Ceramics, 1760–1830, in Room 90a.
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