Conference | Memory and Meaning in Southern Silver
From MESDA:
Memory and Meaning in Southern Silver
Online and in-person, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, NC, 20–21 September 2024
Silver and memory are deeply linked as individuals often commission pieces to mark significant moments in their lives and then pass those objects along to future generations. Please plan to join us on September 20th and 21st as we delve into the lives of southern silver makers and patrons who used silver to create memory and meaning in the early American South.
Featured speakers include Ben Miller of Shrubsole and the Magazine Antique’s Curious Objects podcast, author and scholar Catherine Hollan, and Colonial Williamsburg’s Erik Goldstein. In addition to an opening keynote and a day of dynamic lectures, attendees will also have an opportunity to examine MESDA’s silver collection up close during an open house in the MESDA study rooms.
Virtual registration is available for a suggested donation. In-person registration ($325, or $315 for Frank L. Horton Society Members) includes the keynote lecture and reception, one pastry breakfast, one coffee break, one lunch, all lectures proposed on the agenda, and an admission ticket to Old Salem Museums & Gardens. Attendees will also receive exclusive access to the recordings of the lectures for a limited period of time after the program concludes.
f r i d a y , 2 0 s e p t e m b e r
5.00 Opening Reception and Keynote by Ben Miller
s a t u r d a y , 2 1 s e p t e m b e r
9.15 Welcome
9.30 Catherine Hollan — Why Reassess Southern Silver Scholarship
10.15 Alexandra MacDonald — ‘To Brighten Every Painful Hour’: The Follet Family Sampler
10.35 Coffee Break
11.00 Erik Goldstein — Williamsburg’s ‘Madison’ Horse Racing Trophy
11.30 Cynthia Jenkins — Historic Beaufort’s ‘Hamar Cup’
12.00 Lunch
1.00 Charlotte Crabtree — Put the Lime in the Coconut: Silver and Coconut Drinking Vessels in the South
1.45 Emily Whitted — Wealth from the Water: Murky Metal in the Shadow of the Santee River, 1785–2003
2.10 Emily Campbell — Thomas Campbell, Winchester, Virginia Silversmith
3.00 Collection Open House in the MESDA Galleries
4.00 Closing Reception
Call for Papers | Visualizing Antiquity: Fake News? Fantasy Antiquities
From ArtHist.net (which includes the CFP in German). . .
Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Early Modern Drawings and Prints —
Part IV: Fake News? Fantasy Antiquities
Bildwerdung der Antike: Zur Episteme von Zeichnungen und Druckgrafiken der Frühen Neuzeit — IV: Fake-News? Fantasie-Antiken
München, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, 14 February 2025
Organized by Ulrich Pfisterer, Cristina Ruggero, and Timo Strauch
Proposals due by 15 September 2024
The academy project Antiquitatum Thesaurus: Antiquities in European Visual Sources from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, hosted at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (thesaurus.bbaw.de/en), and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte Munich (zikg.eu) are organizing a series of colloquia in 2023–2025 on the topic Visualizing Antiquity: On the Episteme of Drawings and Prints in the Early Modern Period. The significance of drawings and prints for ideas, research, and the circulation of knowledge about ancient artifacts, architecture, and images in Europe and neighboring areas from the late Middle Ages to the advent of photography in the mid-19th century will be examined.
The three previous colloquia were dedicated to the topics of the ‘unrepresentable’ properties of the depicted objects and the documentation of various states and contexts of ancient objects from their discovery to their presentation in collection catalogues. The fourth and final event will examine the problem of invented or imitated antiquities.
In fact, all types of objects from the arts and crafts of antiquity—aegyptiaca, coins and gems, statuettes and statues, objects of everyday culture from jewellery to weapons and much more —were reproduced as real artefacts and/or in graphic illustrations on all kinds of different occasions over the centuries following antiquity. The father of modern ‘forgeries’ is undoubtedly Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), who knew how to create new objects (‘capricci’) from numerous ancient spolia, which were highly sought after, in particular by northern European collectors. But this is not about him.
In addition to the physical ‘fakes’ on the marketplace of the antiquities trade, their pictorial representations or even antiquities ‘invented’ solely on paper often played a decisive role in the dissemination of a partially distorted, tendentious or ‘false’ idea of past cultures and their materiality.
Starting from the counterfeit imitations of the early modern period, our colloquium is interested in a very broad spectrum of ‘fantastic’ antiquities or ‘forgeries’ of antiquities and their motivations. The following aspects are of particular interest, but other suggestions are also welcome:
• ‘Forgeries’ of ancient art in drawings and prints
• Historical backgrounds, intentions, and contexts of the illustrations
• Techniques and methods of ‘forgeries’ in drawing and printmaking
• The influence of ‘fakes’ on the reception of ancient art
• The role of printmaking in the dissemination of ‘fake’ antiquities
• The use of images of ‘forgeries’ in certain lines of argumentation
• The influence of images on the collective imagination of antiquity
• Debates about ‘forgeries’, their quality, and value
Solicited for the fourth colloquium are papers in English, French, German, or Italian, 20 minutes in length, ideally combining case study and larger perspective. Publication in extended form is planned. Proposals (max. 400 words) can be submitted until 15 September 2024, together with a short CV (max. 150 words) to thesaurus(at)bbaw.de keyword ‘Episteme IV’.
Hotel and travel expenses (economy-class flight or train; 2 nights’ accommodation) will be reimbursed according to the Federal Law on Travel Expenses (BRKG).
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