The Decorative Arts Trust Announces Recipients of Publishing Grants
From the press release (13 June 2024) . . .
The Decorative Arts Trust congratulates the inaugural recipients of their new Publishing Grants. The Hispanic Society Museum and Library; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens received Publishing Grants for Collections, Exhibitions, and Conferences, and Dr. Joseph Larnerd from Drexel University received a Publishing Grant for Dissertations and First-Time Authors.
In November 2024, the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York City’s Washington Heights will publish A Room of Her Own: The Estrados of Viceregal Spain to accompany their landmark exhibition of the same name. Guest Curator Alexandra Frantischek Rodriguez-Jack and Deputy Director and Head of Collections Margaret Connors McQuade will lead this examination of the estrado, defined in the early 18th-century treatise Diccionario de Autoridades as the “set of furniture used to cover and decorate the place or room where the ladies sit to receive visitors.” The estrado was a remarkable space where a diverse group of women engaged in elaborate social practices and displayed their collections of valuable objects from the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Decorative arts, paintings, rare books, and engravings from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library’s collection will be presented in an entirely new light, with many to be exhibited for the first time.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California plans to release a comprehensive publication about an influential Los Angeles-based ceramics artist in fall 2026. Although additional details cannot be announced at this time, the book will complement an exhibition led by Lauren Cross, PhD, the Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is publishing Art, Industry, and Reform in Philadelphia, 1876–1926, accompanying the museum’s spring 2026 exhibition of the same name. David Barquist, The H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of American Decorative Arts, and Colin Fanning, Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts, lead the exhibition and publication, which will focus on Philadelphia artisans and architects who drew on a range of inspirations—from the British Arts and Crafts movement to masterworks at the World’s Fairs—to address challenges of urban industrialization. Their investigation will be among PMA’s offerings during the nation’s 250th commemoration, which is also the museum’s 150th anniversary year.
Dr. Joseph Larnerd received the inaugural Publishing Grant for Dissertations and First-Time Authors. Larnerd, an Assistant Professor of Design History at Drexel University in Philadelphia, will publish Undercut: Cut Glass in Working-Class Life during the Long Gilded Age with the University of Delaware Press in fall 2025. This publication offers an original history of cut glass refracted through the labors required to make and maintain the glistening wares. Larnerd will show how popular representations of the medium and these widely discussed labors undercut how working-class peoples imagined and enacted social class, privilege, and mobility.
The deadline to apply for Decorative Arts Trust Publishing Grants is March 31 annually. For more information, visit decorativeartstrust.org.
Conference | The Study of the Book Trade since Peter Isaac
From the Centre for Printing History and Culture:
Unfinished Business: Progress, Stasis, and New Directions in the Study of the Book Trade since Peter Isaac
Annual Print Networks Conference
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 9–10 July 2024
Organised by the University of Newcastle and sponsored by Print Networks and the Centre for Printing History and Culture, this conference considers the British and Irish book trades locally, nationally, and in their global perspective, including comparative perspectives. It addresses questions such as how has research on these trades’ histories developed and advanced, or not, in the past two decades? How has an emphasis on valuing the local, the specific or the seemingly minor been taken up in studies of the book trade? How do such interests sit with the expansion of book trade research into ever larger data-sets and/or within national and global print histories? What are the key social, political, and technological questions scholars of the book trade are now grappling with? In what fresh directions must the study of the trades now strike out? The fee for this two-day conference is £80.
Peter Isaac (1921–2002) investigated numerous strands of the British book trade. A distinguished professor of civil and public health engineering at Newcastle University, he also enjoyed a highly regarded career as a print historian and bibliographer. The working group that he founded, The History of the Book Trade in the North, was immensely influential in moving the study of the British book trade beyond the confines of London. More broadly, his work insisted on the value of the local for our national and global understandings of the book trade. He considered the internationally famous engravings of Thomas Bewick, the ornament stocks of the Alnwick pharmacist and printer William Davison, and the inventory of books sold by a Penrith grocer in the seventeenth century to be equally worthy of scholarly attention and careful study.
t u e s d a y , 9 j u l y
9.30 Panel 1 | Politics and the Print Trade
• Kate de Rycker (Newcastle), ‘Danter’s Gentleman’: Thomas Nashe and the Precarity of Cheap Print
• Maria Zukovs, (St Andrews), Beyond the United Irishmen: A View of the French Revolution from the Dublin Press, 1789–94
10.45 Panel 2 | Radical Work
• Fionnghuala Sweeney (Newcastle), The Unfinished Business of Freedom: Slave Narratives, Surfeit, and the British Northeast in Antebellum Black Atlantic Print Culture
• Andrea Lloyd (BCU), ‘An Indissoluble Unity’: Considering the Relationship between outward Influences and the Design of Birmingham’s Radical Newspapers, 1815–36
12.15 Panel 3 | The Marketplace of Print: Advertising, Promotion, Demand
• Bethan Elliott (York), ‘None… Took any Notice of It’: Publication and the Promotion of Romantic Drama in Print
• Karen McAulay (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), ‘Music for All’: The Rise and Fall of Scottish Music Publishing, 1880–1964
13.15 Lunch break
14.15 Panel 4 | Advancing the Study of Women in the Book Trade
• Emma Sibbald (Queens’ College, Cambridge), ‘A Servant’s Receipt for the World’: Women Wagoners and the Antiquarian Book Trade at the Bodleian Library, 1690–1720 [online]
• Joanne Butler (Keele), Locating Women Booksellers in 18th-Century Regional England
• Charley Matthews (Edinburgh), Geraldine Jewsbury’s Labour as a 19th-Century ‘Publisher’s Reader’
16.15 Keynote 1
• Ruth Frendo (Stationers’ Company)
w e d n e s d a y , 1 0 j u l y
9.30 Panel 5 | The Networks and Power Structures of the Early Modern Book Trade
• Sam Bailey, Sorority, Spycraft, and Sodomy: Collaboration and the Erotic Book Trade in 18th-Century London
• Beth DeBold, A House Divided: The Internal Conflict of the Stationers’ Company
• Matt Ryan, ‘Unquiet Spyrittes’: Martin Marprelate and Communal Strategies of Resistance
11.00 Lunch break
13.30 Keynote 2
• Joseph Hone (Newcastle), How to Smuggle Books into 18th-Century Britain
14.45 Panel 6 | Unconsidered Forms
• Roseanna Smith (BCU), A Book by Any Other Name? 19th-Century Trade Catalogues as a Unique Format of Print
• Holly Day (York), Selling the Memorandum Book in 18th-Century Britain: Bibliographic Trends and the Mechanics of the Trade
16.15 Panel 7 | Technology and the Print Trades
• Ian Dooley (Institute of English Studies, UCL), Cheap Colour Ink and the Creation of Mass Print Culture
• Helen Williams (Edinburgh Napier), Newspapers, Timetables, and the ‘World’s First Comic’: The 19th-Century Print Trade in Glasgow
Roundtable | Advancing the Study of North East Print
Helen Williams (Northumbria), Barbara Crosbie (Durham), and Kirsten Gibson (Newcastle)
New Book | Parenting Advice to Ignore in Art and Life
From Chronicle Books:
Nicole Tersigni, Parenting Advice to Ignore in Art and Life (New York: Chronicle Books, 2023), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-1797222172, $15.
From the author of the hit Men to Avoid in Art and Life and Friends to Keep in Art and Life comes a collection of all-too-familiar unsolicited advice parents receive on the daily.
From in-laws and other parents to complete strangers and even your own kids—when it comes to parenting, everyone’s a critic. Against the classic backdrop of fine art, bestselling author Nicole Tersigni’s Parenting Advice to Ignore in Art and Life pokes fun at the many ‘experts’ who think they know more than you about your own children. Utterly (and unfortunately) relatable and hilarious as ever, Tersigni’s spot-on captions provide a much-needed laugh for anyone who has had the pleasure of parenting and the pain of having a stranger tell you to put a hat on your baby.
Nicole Tersigni is a comedic writer experienced in improv comedy and women’s advocacy. She lives in Metro Detroit with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.
Call for Papers | Edinburgh, Material and Visual Culture Series
From ArtHist.net:
Material and Visual Culture Seminar Series, 17th and 18th Centuries
Online, University of Edinburgh, Wednesdays, September — December 2024
Proposals due by 31 July 2024
We are pleased to announce that the Material and Visual Culture Seminar Series (MVCS), hosted by the Material and Visual Culture of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Research Cluster at the University of Edinburgh, will be continuing for a sixth year. We therefore invite proposals for twenty-minute papers from PhD candidates, early-career researchers, and cultural heritage professionals addressing any aspect of material and visual culture studies.
These online seminars aim to explore a wide variety of themes and localities within the long seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (broadly defined) to foster methodological and interdisciplinary dialogue. Topics might include but are not limited to: object or subject case studies, material/visual culture and identity especially with respect to marginalized peoples or communities, material/visual culture and literature, craft, consumer cultures, global ‘things’, etc. Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 250 words, with a short biography (about 100 words) to materialcultureresearcheca@ed.ac.uk by 31 July.
The seminars are scheduled for Wednesday evenings online, at 5pm BST/ GMT fortnightly throughout semester one 2024/25.
Print Quarterly, June 2024
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 41.2 (June 2024)
a r t i c l e s
Simon Gribelin, A Medal of William III Commemorating the Fall of Namur, 1695 and other engravings, in the Works of Gribelin album, sheet 311 × 372 mm (Windsor Castle, Royal Collection. Image Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023).
• Rhian Wong, “Simon Gribelin’s Presentation Albums,” pp. 157–71.
The article examines two previously unpublished presentation albums in the Royal Collection, compiled by the engraver Simon Gribelin (1661–1733). The Works of Gribelin album was compiled in 1715 for George II (when Prince of Wales), while an album of prints of the ceiling of the Banqueting House, London was presented around 1720 to George I. A consideration of the contents of the Works of Gribelin album reveals that Gribelin followed a deliberate programme for the arrangement of its contents. The article looks at the purpose of the albums and places their creation in the context of four other albums known to have been assembled by Gribelin.
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
• Galina Mardilovich, Review of Julia Khodko, Peterburg Mikhaila Makhaeva. Grafika I zhivopis’ vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka (The State Russian Museum, 2022), pp. 183–85. This is the catalogue for an exhibition addressing the drawings (and resulting prints) of St Petersburg made by Mikhail Makhaev (1717–1770).
• Shijia Yu, Review of The Art of the Deal (Daniel Crouch Rare Books, 2023), pp. 185–87. This is catalogue of the playing card collection assembled by the Dutch collector Frank van den Bergh.
• Thea Goldring, Review of Esther Bell, Sarah Grandin, Corinne Le Bitouzé, and Anne Leonard, Promenades on Paper: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings from the Bibliothèque National de France (Yale University Press, 2022), pp. 188–90.
• Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, Review of Amy Golahny, Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print (Lund Humphries, 2021), pp. 221–26. Includes the reception history of the print, and the section on William Baillie’s restrikes in the 1770s is relevant.
New Book | The Book-Makers
Several chapters address 18th-century topics, including extra-illustration, as seen through the work of Alexander and Charlotte Sutherland. From Hachette Book Group:
Adam Smyth, The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives (New York: Basic Books, 2024), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1541605640, £25 / $32.
A scholar and bookmaker “breathes both books-as-objects and their creators back into life” (Financial Times) in this five-hundred-year history of printed books, told through the people who created them
Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it. Books have transformed humankind by enabling authors to create, document, and entertain. Yet we know little about the individuals who brought these fascinating objects into existence and of those who first experimented in the art of printing, design, and binding. Who were the renegade book-makers who changed the course of history? From Wynkyn de Worde’s printing of fifteenth-century bestsellers to Nancy Cunard’s avant-garde pamphlets produced on her small press in Normandy, this is a celebration of the book with the people put back in.
Adam Smyth is professor of English literature and the history of the book at Balliol College, University of Oxford. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the TLS. He also runs the 39 Steps Press, a small printing press, which he keeps in a barn in Oxfordshire, England.
New Book | The Library: A Fragile History
First published in hardcover in 2021, it was released in paperback last fall. From Hachette Book Group:
Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The Library: A Fragile History (New York: Basic Books, 2021), 528 pages, ISBN: 978-1541600775 (hardcover), $35 / ISBN: 978-1541603721 (paperback), $22.
The ‘engaging’ and ‘ambitious’ (Washington Post) history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age
The history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library, historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world’s great collections, trace the rise and fall of literary tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanors committed in pursuit of rare manuscripts. In doing so, they reveal that while collections themselves are fragile, often falling into ruin within a few decades, the idea of the library has been remarkably resilient as each generation makes—and remakes—the institution anew.
Andrew Pettegree is professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews and a leading expert on the history of book and media transformations.
Arthur der Weduwen is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of St. Andrews.
Walpole Library Fellowships and Travel Grants for 2025–26
From The Lewis Walpole Library:
Applications due by 1 November 2024
The Lewis Walpole Library, a department of Yale Library, is now accepting Fellowship and Travel Grants application for the 2025–26 Fellowship year, which runs from 1 June 2025 through 31 May 2026. With strong collections of primary and secondary source materials focused on Britain in the long eighteenth century, located on a fourteen-acre campus located in the peaceful and scenic town of Farmington, Connecticut, the Lewis Walpole Library offers a unique scholarly experience.
Fellowships, which last four weeks, and Travel Grants, which last two weeks, afford scholars the time and space to focus on research without distraction. Delve into manuscripts, prints, ephemera, and printed texts, and more in the spacious modern reading room during the day, connect with other researchers informally in the eighteenth-century readers’ residence in the evening, and spend weekends thinking, processing, and writing or exploring the area. In this collegial environment, discussions with peers generate new perspectives and suggestions from staff lead to new discoveries. The application deadline is 1 November 2024. Details and an application link can be found here.
Zoë Colbeck Named Director of Strawberry Hill
From the press release, via Art Daily (8 June 2024) . . .
Strawberry Hill House announced that Zoë Colbeck will succeed Derek Purnell as Executive Director of the historic South West London attraction. Zoë joins the team from her previous role as Project Manager at the Solent Cluster, a major decarbonisation initiative based in Hampshire, bringing over 20 years of experience in the heritage sector to Strawberry Hill House and Garden.
Having read chemistry at university, Zoë worked for one of the UK’s largest retailers, specialising in logistics and people management, before joining the National Trust (NT) to combine her passion for heritage with her commercial background. She left the NT in 2021 after 18 years, ultimately as General Manager of the Chartwell Portfolio, one of the NT’s top properties. More recently, she was Commercial and Operations Director with the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth.
Zoë took up her new position at Strawberry Hill on 3 June—after her predecessor, Derek Purnell, left to take up an opportunity with the Frederick Ashton Foundation, based at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
Announcing the appointment, Paul Kafka, Chairman of Strawberry Hill Trust, said: “During her time at the National Trust, Zoë led three transformational projects, which, in turn gave her extensive knowledge and vital experience in the fields of climate change mitigation, sustainable management, and heritage conservation. She has a passion for working collaboratively and making a difference for museums, communities, and the planet.” He added: “I am delighted that Zoe is joining Strawberry Hill at this moment in our history. 2024 is going to be a year of change and new directions. Our quest for a sustainable business model continues, even as our reputation as a museum and cultural destination continues to grow.”
Zoë commented: “I am passionate about making a difference for our history and heritage and making it relevant for different audiences. Horace Walpole is such an interesting character, and I am looking forward to leading the team at Strawberry Hill House and Garden through the next stage of development, preserving his legacy and contributing to its future.”
Call for Papers | Windows in British Architecture and Visual Culture
From the Call for Papers:
‘What Light through Yonder Window Breaks?’: The Window as Protagonist in British Architecture and Visual Culture
Paul Mellon Centre, London, 21–22 November 2024
Proposals due by 8 July 2024
From the quintessentially romantic ‘balcony scene’ in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the visceral tension of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1954 film Rear Window; in paintings, prints and photography; in architectural drawings and their realisation in three-dimensional form, the window has played a significant role in almost every medium of artistic expression. The window serves, both literally and figuratively, as a boundary between interior spaces and the external world, between humans and nature, between the familiar and the unknown.
As we mark five years this winter since the outbreak of Covid-19, we recognise how recurring lockdowns underscored our own personal consciousness of the boundary between interior and exterior. More than a boundary, however, the window also acts as a frame, helping to define and mediate how we see and interact with the spaces around us, not least providing a view of the world outside from a place of relative protection from the elements—an important consideration following the world’s hottest year on record. Across visual media and architectural design, the window is central to a broad range of issues, including self-representation, privacy and security, surveillance and voyeurism, spiritual and religious symbolism, climate and the environment, and technological and industrial innovation.
This conference will explore the multifaceted, multi-purpose nature of the window as protagonist, with an emphasis on its place in British architecture and visual culture, broadly conceived. A range of interdisciplinary papers presented by international scholars will provide a platform for dynamic and engaging discourse that forefronts the cultural and social significance of the window in its many guises as object, as boundary, as frame, and as mediator. As part of this two-day conference, we invite proposals for papers that consider the various roles of the window across periods, media and disciplines; we are committed to championing new voices, and especially encourage proposals from graduate students and early career researchers.
Possible topics could include but are not limited to:
• How the view is framed: what is shown/captured from/through a window, window placement within a room/building, the relation between the window and the picture plane
• The figure at the window (or its absence): issues surrounding gender and voyeurism, the use of the window in literature as narrative or plot device
• Inequality: surveillance, power imbalances between inside and outside, window breaking in times of social unrest, historical window/glass taxes
• Privacy and security: elevated windows (in prisons, banks, libraries, museums), bars on windows and locking mechanisms, window dressings (curtains, blinds, shutters), window use/placement in urban versus rural environments, jali and mashrabiya
• Windows and the environment: keeping out the elements, smart windows, protecting objects from UV light (especially in museums or historic buildings)
• Setting the tone or conveying a message: contrasting light levels between inside and outside or between one space/room and the next, coloured or stained-glass windows in ecclesiastical (or secular) architecture, types/shapes of windows as linked to specific architectural styles
• Windows in motion: in vehicles, trains, ships, aeroplanes, and on film
• The window extended: full-length windows and architectural permeability, shopfront windows, glass roofs/structures
Please submit the following by noon (BST), 8 July 2024, using ‘CFP: WINDOW’ as the subject line, to events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk:
• 200-word abstract outlining the topic of your paper
• short biography of approximately 100 words (please do not send CVs)
The abstract and biography should be combined in a single Word document and submitted as an email attachment. Incomplete or late submissions will not be considered. Successful contributors selected through this open call will be paid a fee of £150 for their contribution and reasonable travel and accommodation costs will be covered. Please feel free to share with us any other pertinent information, such as required adjustments or access needs, and we will do our best to accommodate them.
The symposium is convened by Rebecca Tropp (Paul Mellon Centre).
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