Enfilade

Recently on a number of list-servers, the following conference was categorized under ‘call for papers’. In fact, the organizers are not soliciting proposals. It does, however, look really interesting. For more information, see the conference website.

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Entangled Landscapes: Re-thinking the Landscape Exchange between China and Europe
Institute of Art History, University of Zurich, Switzerland, 10-12 May 2013

The exchange of landscape culture between China and Europe in the 16th-18th centuries has received considerable attention in terms of its cultural qualities and significance. The expression of this cultural exchange includes art (e.g. drawings, prints, architecture, landscape architecture, and sculptures), literature (e.g. letters, travelogues, and novels) and material culture (e.g. porcelain and furniture). Traditional scholarship examines these objects as static and fixed in their narrow disciplinary specialty rather than considering them within a multidisciplinary contextual matrix. Some emerging conceptions and understandings of culture and landscape shed new light on the exchange of landscape culture. ‘Entangled histories’, for example, does not consider cultures as separated entities with fixed boundaries, but rather cultures as being constituted by intertwined processes of interaction, translation and hybridization within interconnected societies. Meanwhile, landscape is increasingly being understood as not a mere pictorial representation, but ‘an instrument of cultural power,’ a cultural practice ‘by which social and subjective identities are formed.’ In both Chinese and European traditions, landscape has complex relations with notions such as nature and land – territory, nation, and state. Both landscape traditions have been investigated within multidisciplinary (social, cultural, economic and political) perspectives.

Against this background, the symposium proposes to re-think the landscape exchange between China and Europe during the 16th-18th centuries within an ‘entangled landscapes’ approach. By using this term, we do not understand the cross-cultural Chinese-European landscape representations as a mere artistic exchange between two isolated ‘islands’. Rather, we consider these landscape representations being used to manifest and perform interactions among different cultures, religions, and powers within their cultural, social and political contexts. The ‘entanglement’ of these cross-cultural landscapes is traceable in aspects such as the appropriation of representational methods, the hybridization of landscape styles, and the negotiation of aesthetic concepts. The main goal of the symposium is to achieve a deeper understanding of Chinese-European landscape exchange through examination of these three often complex aspects.

Landscape exchange has taken place between China and Europe on occasions provided by trade, Christian missions and diplomacy (ceremonials), which are inseparable from their backgrounds such as economic expansion, the circulation of knowledge, the transfer of technologies (e.g. scientific technologies and technologies of governance), and the negotiation of ideologies and power structures. We are interested in analyzing these landscape entanglements (appropriation of representational methods, transplantation of styles, and negotiation of concepts) in relation to the above backgrounds, as well as face-toface interaction and dynamics between the discourse of arts and social, economic and political practices. As examples, ‘linear perspective’ as a landscape representational method was adopted by early Qing court artists to promote the Manchu emperor’s statecraft (in terms of morality, science and epistemology); ‘the Chinese style of gardening’ was advocated by the English/British elite in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century to promote the physiocrats’ economy and enlightened polity; and concepts like ‘the grotesque’ were indicative of the nature, as well as the results, of crises, conflicts and cultural clashes.

By addressing such topics, our objectives are to understand: 1. how different perceptions of landscape, nature, and land by the people of China and Europe constructed the representations of cross-cultural landscapes; and conversely, how the representation of cross-cultural landscapes influenced Chinese and European perceptions of landscape, nature and land. 2. how different national, social and individual identities were formed through the appropriation, transplantation and negotiation of landscape representations; and conversely, how transcultural landscapes were influenced by these different identities.

Through this symposium, we hope to explore and discuss different theoretical, empirical and methodological perspectives of landscape representation between Europe and China across disciplines and national boundaries. In summary, we seek not only a more thorough understanding of the exchange of landscape culture, but also a deeper understanding of the formation of cultural identities in China and Europe, and the relation between China and Europe during the 16th-18th centuries.

Conference program (PDF) from the Centre Chastel:

Ornements et décor : du modèle à l’objet
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 15 January — 30  April 2013

Demi-journées d’études organisées par Jérémie Cerman (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Centre Chastel) et Julie Ramos (INHA), avec la collaboration de Dominique Morelon et Lucie Fléjou (Bibliothèque de l’INHA), Michael Decrossas, Elli Doulkaridou et Céline Ventura-Teixeira (INHA).

Contacts : julie.ramos@inha.fr ou jeremie.cerman@paris-sorbonne.fr

Le catalogage et la numérisation du fonds de recueils d’ornements de la bibliothèque de l’INHA-collections Jacques Doucet, riche d’environ 650 volumes pour une période allant du XVIe siècle au début du XIXe siècle, constitue l’axe central du programme Histoire de l’ornement. Dans ce cadre, l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art a choisi de faire porter sa réflexion sur les relations entre les modèles et les objets. De janvier à avril 2013, quatre demi-journées d’études thématiques, organisées en partenariat avec le Centre Chastel, proposeront ainsi des échanges que l’intérêt actuellement suscité par l’ornement et les arts décoratifs rend propice. Dans une perspective chronologique et disciplinaire étendue, elles s’attacheront à considérer les modèles d’ornements sur le plan de leur circulation et de leurs usages pratiques ; elles envisageront les recueils en tant qu’objets de collection mais aussi comme sources d’inspiration pour les artistes, les artisans et les industriels. Sans se limiter au domaine des arts décoratifs, l’ornement sera également envisagé dans ses relations aux autres champs de la création, de l’architecture à la sculpture en passant par la photographie. Enfin, sa propension à stimuler l’imaginaire, tant chez le créateur que chez le spectateur ou l’usager, sera interrogée.

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15 janvier 2013, 14h-18h | Modèles d’ornements et collectionnisme
Modérateur : Rossella Froissart (Université de Provence)

• Lucie Fléjou (Bibliothèque de l’INHA) : Edmond Foulc (1828 -1916), collectionneur d’estampes d’ornements

• Jean-François Bédard (Syracuse University, New York) : Entre collection et décoration : ornement et construction de soi à l’âge des Lumières

• Sylvain Cordier (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : Percier, Jacob, Bellangé: autour de quelques recueils de dessins d’ornements et d’ameublement de l’époque Empire conservés aux États-Unis

• Wilfried Zeisler (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : Des collections de recueils et de modèles dans les ateliers de création et de leur usage

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12 février 2013, 14h-18h | De l’ornement à l’objet : imitation, inspiration, réinterprétation
Modérateur : Agnès Callu (Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris)

• Céline Ventura-Teixeira (Université Paris-Sorbonne / INHA) : De la parure au motif : la pointe de diamant. Entre diffusion et adaptation d’un modèle ornemental au XVIIe siècle

• Anne Perrin-Khelissa (Université catholique de l’Ouest, Angers) : «D’excellens modèles » pour des objets d’arts « dans tous les genres ». Les Collections de culs de lampes et fleurons de Jean-Jacques Bachelier, extraites des Fables de La Fontaine illustrées par Jean-Baptise Oudry

• Odile Nouvel (Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris) : De l’élaboration à la réutilisation des modèles : quelques réflexions autour des fonds Odiot et Biennais du Musée des Arts décoratifs

• Audrey Millet (Universités Paris 8 et Neuchâtel) : La fabrique de l’ornement. De l’imitation à l’invention, l’art de dessiner des indiennes dans les grands centres européens (XVIIIe-XIXe siècles)

• Valérie Nègre (École nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-La Villette) : Du dessin à l’objet. Quelques remarques sur les usages des recueils d’ornements commerciaux au XIXe siècle

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26 mars 2013, 14h-18h | L’ornement et les arts
Modérateur : Jean-Paul Midant (École nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-Belleville)

• Michaël Decrossas (INHA) : Jean Lemoine de Paris (1638 – 1709), peintre et ornemaniste

• Sébastien Quéquet (INHA) : L’artiste peintre et la manufacture : la régénération de la céramique par les beaux-arts

• Sébastien Bontemps (Université de Provence) : Polarité du programme architectural et de son serviteur, l’ornement : les travaux des sanctuaires parisiens de Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois et de Saint-Merry au milieu du XVIIIe siècle

• Hélène Bocard (INHA) : « Des modèles pour les artisans » : la collection d’arts décoratifs du baron Alexander von Minutoli (1806-1887) et sa diffusion par la photographie

• Frédéric Dassas (Musée du Louvre) : L’histoire du meuble à l’épreuve des arts graphiques : le cas d’André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732)

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30 avril 2013, 14h-18h | L’objet imaginaire
Modérateur : Rémi Labrusse (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense)

• Elli Doulkaridou (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / INHA) : Les jeux de l’ornement : réflexions autour de quelques manuscrits enluminés romains du XVIe siècle

• Nicolas Cordon (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) : L’ornement de stuc comme lieu du simulacre

• Jean-Louis Gaillemin (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : Ornement et surréalisme

From Le Blog de l’ApAhAu:

Iconoclasme et révolutions, XVIIIe-XXIe siècle
Petit Palais (Auditorium), Paris, 13-14 December 2012

Statues déboulonnées, portraits déchirés ou brûlés, emblèmes grattés ou barbouillés : ces gestes iconoclastes semblent indissociables des processus révolutionnaires, des révolutions atlantiques du XVIIIe siècle aux révolutions arabes contemporaines. Que se joue-t-il derrière ces gestes apparemment dérisoires, souvent ravalés à du « vandalisme » ? Comment penser, à partir de l’iconoclasme, une histoire des relations entre des sujets et des signes de pouvoir (politique, religieux, social) ? Tel sera l’objet de ce colloque international et pluridisciplinaire, qui réunira au Petit Palais historiens, historiens de l’art, anthropologues, spécialistes d’aires culturelles et de périodes différentes, de la France à l’Afghanistan, de la Chine à l’Amérique latine, de la Russie à l’Espagne… La réflexion portera notamment sur les « pouvoirs de l’image » et du signe, sur le rapport au visible et au sensible en situation révolutionnaire et sur la puissance de transformation du social attribuée aux gestes iconoclastes. Les formes prises par cette violence symbolique, ses cibles privilégiées, ses acteurs individuels et collectifs, sa liesse ou ses silences, ses liens avec la violence physique, ses seuils de tolérance et ses compromis (entre conservation et destruction) seront interrogés. Le colloque permettra d’éclairer les intentions des iconoclastes en révolution, explicitées ou non par eux : effacer une mémoire devenue intolérable, expurger une croyance, exprimer une opinion à la face de tous, s’approprier une souveraineté devenue disponible – sans que ces interprétations soient exclusives l’une de l’autre. Ces intentions seront rapportées à la réception et aux effets – tels qu’on peut les mesurer – des gestes de destruction. Toutes ces questions seront envisagées en situation, dans des contextes et des espaces singuliers, où les cultures visuelles, les formes d’expression politique, le rapport au sacré varient profondément.

The program is available here»

Face to Face: The Transcendence of the Arts in China and Beyond
University of Lisbon, Portugal 3-5 April 2013

The Artistic Studies Research Centre of the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon is proud to announce the organization of the international conference Face to Face: The Transcendence of the Arts in China and Beyond. The conference takes place 3-5 April 2013 at the auditorium of the Faculty of Fine Arts.

This academic event is an opportunity to promote the discussion between scholars affiliated to Research Units, Universities or Museums from Portugal, Spain, France, England, Scotland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovenia, EUA, China, Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In this conference scholars will present recent research that have been developed in the field of Chinese art and its cultural and artistic exchange with other civilizations across historical perspectives and contemporary approaches in artistic creativity.

The conference programme, paper abstracts and speakers academic background, as well as other useful informations are available at the conference website.

Invited Speaker: Shih-hua Chiu (National Palace Museum, Taipei)
Keynote Speaker: Cheng-hua Cheng (Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica)

Working language: English (no translation will be provided)

Expanding on a previous conference and workshop on the theme of interiority at the Radcliffe Institute for Advaced Study in 2009 and 2011, Beate Söntgen and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth have organized a three-day conference in Berlin on the subject.

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As posted at the H-ArtHist List:

Interiors and Interiority
Denkerei, Oranienplatz 2, Berlin, 6-8 December 2012

Organized by Beate Söntgen and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth

T H U R S D A Y , D E C E M B E R  6

Introduction
14.00  Beate Söntgen (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg) / Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Harvard University)

Conceptualizing Interiority
14.30  Brigid Doherty (Princeton University), “‘Armlos wie Inneres’: Interior, Surface, and Metaphor in Rilke’s Rodin Lecture”
15.15  Bettine Menke (Universität Erfurt), “Interiors: The Exteriority of Inwardness”

Visualizing Interiority
16.30  Catherine Girard (Harvard University), “Violence and Interiority: Stags at Louis XV’s Versailles”
17.15  Anne Hemkendreis (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), “The Alienation of Inwardness: Female Figures at a Threshold in the Paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi”
18.15  Susan Sidlauskas (Rutgers), “House Inside Out—Cézanne’s Perforated Wall”

F R I D A Y ,  D E C E M B E R  7

Interiority and Consumer Culture
10.00  Holger Kuhn (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), “From the Household of the Soul to the Economy of Money (around 1500)”
10.45   Charlotte Klonk (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), “Africa Interiorised: Displaying Non-European Artefacts in the Late 1920s and Early 1930s”
12.00  Katrin Grögel (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg), “Andrea Zittel’s ‘Small Liberties’: Situating Interiors in Contemporary Media Culture”

Building Interiors / Interiority Furnished
14.30  Katie Scott (The Courtauld Institute of Art), “Rococo Interiors: An Inside Story”
15.15  Mimi Hellman (Skidmore College), “Staging Retreat: Designs for Bathing in the Eighteenth Century”
16.30  Etienne Jollet (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), “Interiors in the Exterior: Eighteenth-Century Grottoes and the Intimacy of Nature”
17.15  Johannes Grave (Universität Bielefeld), “Living with Pictures: Goethe’s Interiors”

Panel Discussion  
18.15  Wilfried Kuehn (Architekturbüro Kuehn Malvezzi, Berlin/Mailand) / Andreas Beyer (Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte, Paris), “Contemplation or Communication? The Museum’s Interior”

S A T U R D A Y ,  D E C E M B E R  8

Interiority on the Move
9.30  Annette Urban (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), “Wild Walls, Revolving Sets, Built Cuts: Staged Interiors in Contemporary Photography and Film Installation”
10.15  Peter Schneemann (Universität Bern), “Anagrammatic Spaces: Moving Interiors in Contemporary Art”
11.30  Stefanie Diekmann (Universität Hildesheim), “Scenes from the Backstage: Theatrical Interiors and Interiority”
12.15  Gertrud Koch (Freie Universität Berlin), “Inside/Outside: The Two Sides of the Wall and the Filmic View”

Contact: Eva Frey, Fon 04131.677-1990, frey@leuphana.de

My hunch is that art historians whose work often overlaps with archaeology are more inclined to envision the future of the field as making important use of three-dimensional scanning technologies (with Representing Re-Formation, a three-year project producing digital reconstructions of some of the best Tudor monuments, serving as a fine example). Perhaps, however, we all should. Jack Hinton of the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be speaking at the upcoming Cambridge conference on Houdon’s Portraits of Benjamin Franklin. An abstract is available at the conference website. -CH

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3D Scanning and Documentation: Three Dimensional Artefacts from the Past, for the Future
St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, 10-11 December 2012

Registration due by 4 December 2012

This timely symposium at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, draws together scientists, art historians, conservators, historians and archaeologists, to discuss current and future developments in 3D scanning across many different fields, advances in scanning techniques and equipment, approaches to interdisciplinary research and the provision of 3D images and models on the web. A round table on day 2 will discuss key priorities for the future.

The conference has been convened by the art-historian Phillip Lindley, who directs one of the innovative Science and Heritage Programme projects, co-funded by the AHRC and EPSRC (heritagescience.ac.uk). Speakers will include David Arnold, Mike Howe, Anna Thirion, Laura Bartolome Riviras, Annemarie La Pensee, Marcos Rodrigues, Andrew Wilson, Stephen Gray, George Fraser, and others.

Five fully subsidised places are available for students, covering all accommodation and meals etc. Applications must be made to the Conference Organiser, Dr Phillip Lindley pgl1@le.ac.uk by Friday, 30 November. Funded students will be asked to write blogs on the conference.

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M O N D A Y ,  1 0  D E C E M B E R
3D scanning and its uses in Art History and Archaeology

10.00  Registration and Coffee

11.00  Welcome

11.30  Phillip Lindley (University of Leicester), ‘Representing Re-Formation: The Search for Objectivity’

12.30  Lunch

1.30  Anna Thirion (Université Montpellier 3), ‘Proposal for a Digital Reconstruction of the Romanesque “Tribune” of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa (France): Methodological Considerations’

2.15  Laura Bartolomé Roviras (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), ‘The Romanesque Portals of Santa Maria de Ripoll, Santiago de Compostela and Sant Pere de Rodes: From Modelling to Reconstruction’

3.00  Annemarie La Pensée (National Museums Liverpool), ‘The Non-Contact 3D Laser Scanning of Cultural Artefacts and Its Applications at Conservation Technologies, National Museums Liverpool’

3.45  Tea

4.00  Marcos A. Rodrigues (Sheffield Hallam University), ‘3D Scanning of Highly Reflective Surfaces: Issues on Scanning the Museums Sheffield Metalwork Collection’

4.45  George Fraser (University of Leicester), ‘Scanning in Space and Time’

5.30  Jack Hinton (Philadelphia Museum of Art), ‘Measuring Genius: 3D Scanning and Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Portraits of Benjamin Franklin’

7.00  Dinner

T U E S D A Y ,  1 1  D E C E M B E R
Wider 3D scanning and digitisation projects

9.00  Mike Howe (British Geological Survey), ‘Laser Scanning 563 Million Years of Evolution: The JISC GB/3D Type Fossils Online Project’

9.45  Andrew S. Wilson (University of Bradford), ‘3D Bones: Digital Documentation of Skeletal Remains’

10.30  Paul Bryan (English Heritage), ‘Scanning the Stones’

11.00  Coffee

11.45  David Arnold (University of Brighton), ‘3D Documentation: Current Practice and Future Potential’

12.30  Lunch

1.45  Doug Pritchard (CyArk Europe Director), ‘The Scottish Ten Project: Laser Survey, 3D Visualisation and International Diplomacy’

2.30  Stephen Gray (University of Bristol), ‘The Challenges of Using Digital 3D Tools and Methodologies across Different Research Disciplines’

3.15  Tea and Round Table Discussion

Abstracts for the papers are available at the conference website.

From York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies:

Yorkshire Tourism in the Eighteenth Century
University of York, King’s Manor, 8 December 2012

J.M.W. Turner, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, on the Wharfe
ca. 1798, watercolour on paper

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Travel for pleasure or health in Britain and Ireland first became widely available to the affluent middling classes in the eighteenth century. For much of the period 1700-1830, Britain was at war with at least one of its continental neighbours; possibilities for European travel were severely restricted, and tourism within Britain and Ireland flourished. What did this newly accessible and eagerly grasped freedom to roam mean to the domestic tourist; how did the pictorial and/ or textual representation of journeys or sites shape their sense of themselves or of the country in the crucial period of its transition to becoming a modern and united kingdom?

The workshop is a follow-up to last year’s successful event, The Grand Tour in Britain and Ireland. Each speaker will consider an image or series of images, a short text or extracts from a longer piece, and offer a brief exploration of the possibilities of this material before opening the floor to discussion.

P R O G R A M M E

• Ann-Marie Akehurst (York), ‘Broken Stones, Decayed Buildings, and Old Rubbish’: Genealogy of Place, Imagination, and Identity in Early Modern York(shire)’
• John Bonehill (Glasgow), ‘Fairfaxiana: J.M.W Turner at Farnley’
• Oliver Cox (Oxford), ‘Back in the Summer of (17)69: Domestic Tourism and the Yorkshire Petition’
• Mary Fairclough (York), ‘Infidel Missionaries: Robert Taylor and Richard Carlile in Leeds’
• Harriet Guest (York), ‘A Trip to Scarborough’
• David Higgins (Leeds), ‘The Wordworths Visit Yorkshire’
• Emma Major (York), ‘Sibyl, Yorkshire, and the Two Nations’

The registration fee for the day is £12 (£5 for students and unwaged). To register, please email cmb14@york.ac.uk.

The best rates — via Early Registration — for CAA in New York are available until December 14. Posted at CAA News (23 October 2012) . . .

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This week CAA will begin mailing Conference Information and Registration, which provides important details, instructions, and deadlines for attending and participating in the 101st Annual Conference, to all individual and institutional CAA members. Nonmembers and those wanting a digital file now can download a PDF of the booklet. The conference will take place February 13–16, 2013, in New York.

Following sections on registration and CAA membership, Conference Information and Registration describes travel, lodging, and transportation options and explains the basic processes for candidates seeking jobs and employers placing classifieds and renting booths and tables in the Interview Hall. In addition, the publication lists topics for eleven Professional-Development Workshops. If you want to connect with former and current professors and students, consult the Reunions and Receptions page. The booklet includes paper forms for CAA membership, conference registration, workshops, special events, and mentoring enrollment.

The contents of Conference Information and Registration also appear on the conference website, which is being updated regularly between now and the February meeting. You may also choose to join CAA and register online.

Furniture History Society Research Seminar
The Wallace Collection, London, 23 November 2012

The concept of this event is to present current studies of research on furniture history, design, construction, conservation and the history of interiors by MA and PhD students, and museum/heritage curators and professionals at an early stage of career development. The seminar will provide useful insights into current trends of research in the educational and museum world. Each talk will last 15 minutes with questions immediately after.

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10.00  Coffee

10.30  Adriana Turpin (Chairman of the Tom Ingram Memorial Fund Committee), Introduction

10.40  Mia Jackson (PhD student Queen Mary, University of London), André-Charles Boulle as a Collector of Prints and Drawings

11.00  Antonia Brodie (PhD student Queen Mary, University of London), A Room of One’s Own? Unlocking the Closet 1650-1730

11.20  Wolf Burchard (PhD student Courtauld Institute of Art/ Curatorial Assistant The Royal Collection), Charles Le Brun: Unity and Hierarchy in the ‘Visite du Roy aux Gobelins’

11.40  Naomi Luxford (post-doctoral research fellow University College London), Has it Changed? Is it Damaged? A Study of Veneer and Marquetry Surfaces

12.00  Elizabeth Bisley (MA, Assistant Curator Furniture Textiles & Fashion, V&A), Painted Decoration and the Cultures of Imitation: Study of an Eighteenth-Century Tyrolean Cupboard

12.20  Shari Kashani (MA, Christies Furniture Department London), Imitation/Presentation: Some Observations on Médalliers and Coquillers in Eighteenth-Century France

12.45  Lunch

2.00  Barbara Lasic (Assistant Curator, Europe: 1600-1800 gallery project, V&A), Salon Tales: A Set of Mid-Eighteenth-Century Panelling Depicting the Fables of Aesop in the Collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum

2.20  Peter Nelson Lindfield-Ott (PhD student University of St Andrews), Georgian Gothic Furniture: A New Pathway to Interpreting British Gothic Furniture, 1740-1840

2.40  David Oakey (MA, Assistant to the Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art), Henry Holland and Furniture

3.00  Diana Davis (PhD student the Wallace Collection& University of Buckingham), Wily Brocanteurs: Retailing Curiosity in the Regency

3.20  Christopher Maxwell (PhD student Glasgow University with the Virtual Hamilton Palace Trust), The Dispersal of the Furniture from the Hamilton Palace Collection

3.40  Myriam Tondeur (PhD student, University of Sorbonne), The Architects and Creators of Furniture in the Belgian Modernism Movement of the 1920s 

4.00  Closing Remarks from the Chair, followed by tea and coffee

Any ticket booking queries should be addressed to Clarissa Ward, FHS Grants Secretary, 25 Wardo Avenue, London SW6 6RA, tel. 0207 384 4458, email grantsfhs@gmail.com.

Organised by the Tom Ingram Memorial Fund Committee with generous support of the Oliver Ford Trust.

National Trust Libraries: Mobility and Exchange in Great House Collections
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1 February 2013

Hosted by the University of Cambridge Centre for Material Texts

This one-day event will take as its starting point the recent opening to wider research of a number of significant great house private libraries in the United Kingdom, thanks to the on-going cataloguing work being undertaken by the National Trust. Papers and discussion will treat themes including the migration of books and ideas in and out of libraries; communities of the library (how ‘private’ was a private library?); libraries as repositories of cultural history. Attendance is free, but registration is required. Please contact Dunstan Roberts (dcdr2@cam.ac.uk) or Abigail Brundin (asb17@cam.ac.uk) for more information.

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Some background from the Centre for Material Texts at Cambridge:

National Trust Libraries: Pilot Project at Belton House, Lincolnshire

The National Trust owns and manages over 150 properties in the UK that contain collections of books, the majority still housed in the buildings where they were assembled and read by their original owners. Between forty and fifty of the libraries in National Trust properties have been described as being of ‘major national significance’ (Purcell and Shenton, 2005), constituting an unparalleled resource for the study of the history of private book ownership in the United Kingdom. The process of cataloguing the major libraries is ongoing, and the results are being made available to researchers on the COPAC Catalogue as they become available. This pilot study showcases the research potential of these exciting collections, which form an important part of our national cultural heritage.

The study investigates the place of Italian books in an English great house, Belton House in Lincolnshire. Belton houses the Trust’s second largest library (over 11,000 titles), assembled by successive generations of the Brownlow family, and the collection has now been fully catalogued. 229 works are in Italian, published between 1500 and 1800, across a variety of genres and subjects. Analysis of the Italian holdings will form the basis for two themed workshops. The first, to be hosted by the CMT in Cambridge in the summer of 2012, will explore the curatorship of great house libraries, in discussion with the curators themselves. The second, to be held at Belton early in 2013, will explore the theme of cultural mobility in the early modern library, considering the social, cultural and intellectual histories of continental books in English collections. An exhibition of Italian books will be held at Belton, displaying the connections between book and place for a general audience.

The PI for this project is Abigail Brundin (Department of Italian). The RA is Dunstan Roberts.

Update (15 June 2012): The AHRC has just awarded us a Research Networking Grant in relation to this project… more information to follow.