Enfilade

Thomas Archer, St John Smith Square, London, completed in 1728
(Photo: © Matthew Lloyd Roberts)

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Next month at the Mellon Centre:

Matthew Lloyd Roberts | London’s Periodical Architecture: Digital Humanities and the Built Environment, 1700–1750
Paul Mellon Centre, London, 15 November 2024, 1pm

In recent years, large-scale digitisation of early modern periodicals has revolutionised the searchability of collections of ephemeral print culture. Enabled by optical character recognition technology, this shift has transformed the way scholars use databases of primary material, introducing new quantitative approaches to these vast collections. However, this shift also poses epistemological questions within new digital humanities frameworks. The paper will explore this shift by presenting material newly discovered by these methods relating to church building in London in the first half of the eighteenth century. Firstly, looking at the way that the work of the New Churches Commission was represented and debated by the politically factional newspaper culture in the first years of Hanoverian rule, and then recognising the effect this discourse may have had in shaping the way that people experienced the city. By incorporating periodical culture as an important context of the work of the Commission, for the first time this study proposes a substantive media and reception history of these iconic buildings of the English Baroque.

Furthermore, this paper will consider the explosion of architectural publishing in the periodical press of the mid-1730s, in the context of James Ralph’s Critical Review, examining the way that architectural practitioners such as John James were increasingly forced to foray into periodical culture to defend their expertise and reputations. These events will be read towards the political and social meanings of church building and church restoration, and the growing anxiety about the need to disambiguate the meanings of the built environment to the urban public in an age of print culture.

Matthew Lloyd Roberts is a history of art PhD candidate at Downing College, Cambridge and member of the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture. His PhD research is concerned with the cultural reception of the changing built environment of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He studied ancient and modern history at Keble College, Oxford and has an MA in architectural history from the Bartlett, UCL. Complementing his academic work, he is also interested in disseminating academic research to broader audiences and produces and hosts two podcasts concerned with architectural history and culture, the independent About Buildings and Cities and the official podcast of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. His architectural criticism has also appeared in Tribune (magazine), The New Statesman, and The Critic, and he leads architectural walking tours for a variety of organisations including Open City.

From Eventbrite:

Jeremy Bentham’s Books in UCL’s Special Collections
UCL Object Based Learning Laboratory, London, 9 October 2024

An event exploring Jeremy Bentham’s book collection and ways in which it continues to shape UCL’s library holdings today.

It has long been known that the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham bequeathed a number of his books to University College London (known at the time as the London University). But the contents of the bequest and the faith of the books had remained obscure. A recent discovery of an item-by-item list of the books in the UCL library archives by Colin Penman (UCL Head of Records) and a Bentham expert, Professor Tim Causer, sparked a project to uncover some of Bentham’s books in UCL’s rare book collections, overseen by Erika Delbecque (UCL’s Head of Rare Books). Join UCL Special Collections to hear Colin, Tim, and Erika talk about the project, the discoveries made so far, the process of identifying Bentham’s books, and their significance today. The original list of the Bentham’s bequest, along with some of the books from his library (many heavily annotated by Bentham himself), will be on display. The event is free and open to all, but booking is essential.

The UCL guide to the Bentham Book Collection offers a helpful introduction to our holdings as well as information about researching and accessing this collection. You can also read more about our ongoing research into Bentham’s bequest here.

Wednesday, 9 October 2024
3.00–4.00pm | Panel discussion and collections display
4.00–4.30pm | Collections display and refreshments

Presented by the Lewis Walpole Library and the Wadsworth Atheneum:

Adrienne Childs | Pearl Drops and Blackamoors: The Black Body and Pearlescent Adornment in European Art
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 10 October 2024, 6pm

Nicolaes Berchem, A Moor Offering a Parrot to a Lady (detail), ca. 1660–70, oil on canvas (Hartford: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1961.29).

European artists of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries often depicted Black figures wearing pearl ornaments. The contrast evoked notions of luxury, distant lands, and exoticism. Art historian and curator Adrienne L. Childs, PhD explores the complexities of subjugating and enslaving Black bodies in one context and using their images to showcase luxuries in another. Before the lecture, meet at 5pm in the galleries to view works from the museum’s European art collection. Free and open to the public with registration encouraged.

The lecture is offered in connection with the exhibition The Paradox of Pearls: Accessorizing Identities in the Eighteenth Century, curated by Laura Engel, Professor, Duquesne University, on view at the Lewis Walpole Library until 31 January 2025.

Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian, and curator. She is Senior Consulting Curator at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Her current book project is an exploration of Black figures in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts, forthcoming from Yale University Press (2025). She is co-curator of Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest for The Phillips Collection (on view until September 2025). She recently co-curated The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England. She was the guest curator of Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition at The Phillips Collection in 2020. Childs was awarded the 2022 Driskell Prize from The High Museum of Art in recognition of her contribution to African American art and art history. She holds a BA from Georgetown University, an MBA from Howard University, and a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Maryland. Currently, Childs serves as the Distinguished Scholar at the Leonard A. Lauder Center at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

From Eventbrite:

Philippa Tudor | Huguenot Records in Lambeth Palace Library: Cataloguing Complexity
Lambeth Palace Library, London, 2 October 2024, 5.30pm

Registration due by 30 September 2024

Philippa Tudor will be talking about her work as a volunteer at LPL cataloguing the Huguenot records.

The term ‘refugees’ was first used to describe the 50,000 Protestants who fled to England from France in the 16th–18th centuries. The miscellany of related records in Lambeth Palace Library sheds light on the experiences of Huguenots in England, as well as attempts to secure the release of those condemned to the French galleys. All are welcome, but anyone wishing to attend must book an individual ticket or email archives@churchofengland.org no later than Monday, 30 September.

Philippa Tudor, who completed her doctorate in the literature of the early Reformation in England, is a volunteer cataloguer and friend of Lambeth Palace Library, working on a finding aid to its Huguenot-related resources.

Jean-Francois Oeben and Roger Vandercruse, Tabletop of a mechanical table, ca. 1761–63, oak veneered with mahogany, kingwood, and tulipwood, with marquetry of mahogany, rosewood, holly, and various other woods; gilt-bronze mounts; imitation Japanese lacquer; replaced silk (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982.60.61).

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This fall at BGC:

Miriam Schefzyk | Parisian Dreams: German Migrants and Cabinetmaking in 18th-Century Paris
A Françoise and Georges Selz Lecture on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 2 October 2024, 6pm

Paris has long been a privileged destination for many, but there was a particularly significant migration that began in the seventeenth century and gathered strength during the eighteenth century: that of German cabinetmakers. Hardworking and aspiring to wealth, recognition, and a better life, these numerous artisans made Paris into the most important center in the furniture and luxury trade of the time. Many of them rose to important positions as masters or leaders in the guild, and some even obtained royal privileges and titles. Their furniture was regarded as the incarnation of French taste and is still viewed as evidence of the supremacy of French decorative arts today. In this lecture, Miriam Schefzyk will examine the living and working conditions of these artisans and how their background as migrants significantly shaped the framework in which these extraordinary pieces of furniture were created.

$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people associated with a college or university, people with museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members.

Miriam E. Schefzyk is the associate curator of decorative arts at the J. Paul Getty Museum and previously worked at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin. She studied art history at the universities of Marburg, Berlin, Münster, and Paris, earning a PhD in a joint French-German doctoral program. A specialist of French decorative arts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, her research focuses on Parisian furniture, artistic transfer, social history, and materiality. Her book Migration und Integration im Paris des 18. Jahrhunderts: Martin Carlin und die deutschen Ebenisten (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2022) was awarded the Marianne Roland Michel Foundation Prize for its important contribution to French art and will soon be published in French.

Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company, detail of the reproduced silk used in Cynthia Chin’s replica of a gown owned by Martha Washington
(Image courtesy of Cynthia Chin)

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Upcoming at the Wadsworth Atheneum:

Cynthia Chin | Off the Dressmaker’s Needle: Recreating Martha Washington’s Purple Silk Gown and Recovering the Lives Within
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, 15 September 2024, 2pm

Cynthia Chin, Gown and petticoat, 2024, Silk, linen, and wool. The gown is a reproduction of a garment owned by Martha Custis Washington. The original was made in the the early 1760s when Washington was in her thirties, remade around the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), and possibly worn during her tenure as First Lady (1789–1797). The original gown is now in the collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

The recent work of art and material culture historian Cynthia Chin involves an in-depth study of a purple silk gown owned by Martha Custis Washington (1731–1802). Chin reveals how her research and recreation of the textile and garment illuminate the stories of the people who made, wore, and cared for it. Join us before the lecture to view Chin’s colorful replica of Washington’s gown, on view in New Nation, Many Hands. Free with reservations encouraged.

As Dr. Chin notes in her Maker-Scholar Statement: “Recreating this garment as it may have appeared when new, unworn, and unaltered honors the forced labor of the enslaved seamstresses who tended the original object, including Caroline Branham (1764–1843), Charlotte, and Ona ‘Oney’ Judge (1773–1838). I commissioned the textile specifically for this project. It was reproduced by the Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company in Suffolk, UK. This gown and its replication methodology reveal new evidence of how the original dress changed over its lifespan, and how Martha Washington may have appeared when she was young. It remembers all unseen and forced labor—the ‘many hands’ that created our new American democracy.”

Cynthia E. Chin is an art and material culture historian of Vast Early America and Britain in the eighteenth century, specializing in dress, textiles, identity, and collecting. As a researcher at the University of Glasgow, Cynthia examines collections of dress, textiles, and art from around 1600 to 1830 in order to understand how private collections, individual collectors, and museum acquisitions strategies shaped notions of ‘early America’.

Presented with support from the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation Fund at the Wadsworth Atheneum.