Enfilade

From Eventbrite:

Historical Fragments: Making, Breaking, and Remaking, 1500–1800
Online and In-person, University of Edinburgh, 19 May 2023

Taking ‘fragmentation’ as the conceptual starting point for the day, The Material and Visual Culture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Research Cluster will host a one-day hybrid conference that considers the materiality and shifting conditions of global objects and collections (focusing on the time period 1500–1800) as they are broken, fragmented, remade, or assembled. Seeking to investigate the ‘brokenness’ of such material culture objects and collections, the conference will de-centre conservation and restoration which often dominate discourse on the subject. The Research Cluster aims to provide a space to foster interdisciplinary discussion on the material approaches to fragmented objects through material culture.

Online registration is available here»

P R O G R A M M E

9.00  Arrival

9.15  Welcome

9.30  Keynote
Chair: Carol Richardson (University of Edinburgh)
• Catriona Murray (University of Edinburgh) — Smashing Statues: Breaking and Remaking the Monumental Bodies of King Charles I

10.30  Break

10.45  Morning Session: Early Career Researcher and PhD Papers
Chair: Seren Nolan (University of Edinburgh)
• Simon Spier (Victoria & Albert Museum) — Tinker, Burner, Riveter, Turner: The ‘China Mender’ in 18th-Century Britain
• Agata Piotrowska (University of St Andrews) — Assembled, Catalogued, Displayed in Their Brokenness: Shakespeare’s Chair, Stones from the Tomb of Romeo and Juliet, and Other Objects Telling the Story of Duchess Izabela Czartoryska’s Collection
• Hanne Schonkeren (Vrije Universiteit Brussel/ Research Foundation of Flanders) — Sustained Splendor: (Re)assembling Early Modern Luxury Objects
• Esther Rollinson (University of Manchester) — ‘Trim’d with gold but very old’: Exploring the Importance of Preservation and Remaking for the English Catholic Community, ca. 1660–1800
• Yi Shan (University of Texas, Austin) — Meaningful Losses: Exploring the Knowable Past by Collecting Premodern China

12.15  Lunch

1.00  Afternoon Session: Historical Fragments Roundtable
Chair: Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (University of Edinburgh)
• Alejandro Nodarse (Harvard University) — Goya’s Remedy (‘Remidio’): On Print as Fragment
• Serena Dyer (De Montfort University) — A Fashionable 1760s Gown
• Lauren Working (University of York) — Sea Change: Regenerative Shipwrecks
• Sarah Laurenson (National Museums Scotland) — Quartz Crystals and the Cairngorms, 1750–1820

2.30  Break

3.00  Walk to St Cecilia’s Hall
The walk is 15–20 minutes; please email materialcultureresearcheca@ed.ac.uk if you require transport.

3:30  St Cecilia’s Hall, in-person attendees only
Presentation by Jenny Nex (Musical Instruments Collections Curator, St Cecilia’s Hall) — The Fragmentation, Remaking, and Consumption of Musical Instruments, as Seen through Examples in the Collection at the University of Edinburgh
Tour of collections and object handling session

5.00  Close