Applications now open for an intensive one-week course on Blocks and Stones at the London Rare Book School (School of Advanced Studies, University of London)

The history of printed imagery is based on the final product, the printed impressions. But the objects from which they were printed can tell a different and much more complex story. By adapting methods used for the history of type-casting and typography to non-textual material, this course offers a new methodology to make research use of the hundreds of thousands of surviving cut woodblocks, etched and engraved plates, and other print matrices/printing surfaces from the hand-press period. The course offers students new ways of approaching historical printed visual material by exploring what information these objects can offer that printed impressions cannot, and vice versa. By examining cast-metal images, techniques of replicating relief surfaces (both type and imagery), xylographic woodcuts, wood type, etc, as well as ‘texts’ and ‘images’, it bridges modern disciplines to ask where text ends and image begins from the maker’s perspective. The object-based teaching is structured around lectures, historically informed practical sessions (in a print workshop and a collection of historical presses), and object sessions with the woodblocks, copperplates, and other items used to print historically significant artworks, books and book illustrations (in the British Museum).

This is to announce a workshop at Waddesdon Manor in conjunction with the exhibition Glorious Years: French Calendars from Louis XIV to the Revolution. The workshop will explore themes around the production and consumption of French 17th-and 18th-century almanacs (book and print formats), while also looking at the broader context of the history of Time and its depiction during this period. Our distinguished speakers are drawn from across disciplines.

To register an interest in attending please email diane.bellis@nationaltrust.org.uk. A charge of £25 covers all catering costs. To secure a place, please call the Waddesdon booking office 01296 820414 (open 10:00–16:00) to pay using either a debit or credit card. If you have any dietary requirements, please let us know when you book your place.

P R O G R A M M E

10:00 Registration and coffee (Manor Restaurant)

10:30 Welcome and introduction by Pippa Shirley (Head of Collections, Waddesdon) and Rachel Jacobs (Curator, Waddesdon)

10:50 Morning Presentations
• Maxime Préaud (formerly conservateur général, département des Estampes et de la Photographie, Bibliothèque nationale de France), Les relations entre la France et l’Angleterre pendant le règne de Louis XIV, selon les almanachs muraux français
• Stephen Boyd Davis (Professor of Design Research, Royal College of Art), La Science des Temps: New Ideas of Time in the Eighteenth Century

12:10 Visit the exhibition Glorious Years with curator Rachel Jacobs and Adam Dant (Artist), The Mother of Parliaments: Annual Division of Revenue: A Print for the British Electorate, 2017. Information on Dant’s commissioned almanac is available here.

13:00 Lunch in Manor Restaurant

14:30 Afternoon Presentations
• Véronique Sarrazin (Maître de conférence d’histoire modern, Université d’Angers, Laboratoire CERHIO), Livres et estampes, deux économies de l’almanach dans la 1ère moitié du XVIIIe siècle à Paris
• Matthew Shaw (Librarian of the Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study), Almanacs for a New Era: The French Republican Calendar

16:00 Drinks with a chance to visit the manor and exhibition

CRASSH, University of Cambridge, June 19 - November 21, 2017

Drawing Letter Forms and Lines

This is a series of meetings organized by Sachiko Kusukawa and Alexander Marr in conversation with Paul Antonio. We are interested in gathering scholars of early modern culture, science and art interested in letter forms, line and flourishes as part of their research.

We are fortunate that Paul Antonio, a professional scribe with a deep familiarity with historical letter forms (for his work, please see (http://paulantonioscribe.com/; https://www.instagram.com/pascribe/?hl=en), has kindly agreed to work with Cambridge scholars in a series of meetings among his busy schedule.

What kind of manual dexterity and expertise are involved in letter forms? to what extent were the seemingly effortless ‘flourishes’ carefully planned and produced by a ‘disciplined’ hand? is it possible to speak of ‘individual styles’, when students were urged to trace and learn the lines from ‘copybooks’, especially in relation to ‘character’? what were the cultural cues and significance of particular letter forms, lines, curves and flourishes? did line-making and letter forms affect modes of thought? These are some of the questions we’d like to think through with Paul. To this end, we’ve organized two meetings: in the first meeting, we gather together to find a common ground of discussion and generate some specific questions, to which we will return with concrete examples, in a second meeting. We hope that these two meetings will lead to a colloquium on early modern script.

Meeting 1: 19 June (Monday) 2 to 5 pm (CRASSH, University of Cambridge)
Methodological and historiographic discussion.
Readings: M. Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), chapter 6, ‘The period eye’, Tim Ingold, Lines : A Brief History (London: Routledge, 2007), chapter 5, ‘Drawing, writing and calligraphy’.

Using these well-known studies as a spring-board, we will discuss various positions among historians about script and ‘linearity’ as a historical source, and how Paul’s perspective as a practitioner can be integrated to current interest in ‘reconstruction’ methods, visual culture and the history of material texts. We hope to generate specific questions that we can return to in the next meeting.

Meeting 2: 21 November (Tuesday) 2-5 pm:
Study Day with Paul Antonio.
Preparation: identification of specific historical cases that are of interest to scholars.
These will be commentary sessions, where scholars will present their working assumptions about particular scripts and why they consider them historically significant. We will then ask Paul Antonio to demonstrate how those scripts are formed, and reflect with him how our assumptions have been changed or challenged. This in turn will help us formulate new research questions.

Colloquium on Early Modern Script (TBC Spring/Early Summer 2018)
This would be a colloquium for scholars working on script, integrating demonstration and commentary by Paul Antonio, and hopefully also a professional engraver who knows what is involved in transforming letter-forms into print.

If you would like to participate in the June meeting, please RSVP to Judith Weik: jw571@cam.ac.uk

While many museums throughout the United Kingdom hold remarkable graphic collections, for a variety of reasons these are often less studied and shown than similar collections of painting and sculpture. This Study Day aims to consider how drawings collections can be opened up and made more visible and accessible to artists and art students, to complement curricula at art schools and to generate audience and community engagement around the UK.

Over the past three years the Bridget Riley Art Foundation project has seen over a thousand students from art schools around London visit the Prints and Drawings collection at the British Museum. This was part of a wider project to encourage art students to draw, including a touring exhibition shaped by discussions with students during these workshops. Examining the nature of drawing as a thinking medium, "Lines of thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now" toured to three UK partner venues in 2016-17: Poole Museum, Hull University Art Collection and Ulster Museum. More than 1,500 students visited the exhibition at workshops held in these partner venues.

Using the rich graphic holdings of the British Museum, and calling on outside collaborators who worked on "Lines of thought," this Study Day will provide both an opportunity for discussion and a practical introduction for curators who wish to develop the use of their collections according to their specific institution’s aims, needs and resources.

Key aspects of the Study Day will include:
o Frameworks for trans-historical research and interpretation of works on paper
o How to connect drawings collections with local artists and educators
o The relevance of drawing to contemporary arts education
o Insights on documenting and digitisation
o Displaying drawings within the framework of your institution
o Networking with other curators of drawings collections
o Discussion of contemporary drawing: themes, material and practice

To request a place on this Study Day, please email UK Partnerships Co-ordinator, Georgia Mallin, at gmallin@britishmuseum.org by 24 May 2017. Please include a brief paragraph describing your role, the nature of your organisation’s drawings collection, and how you might wish to develop its study and use. Places will be confirmed by 31 May.

There are limited travel bursaries available for delegates for whom travel costs would prevent them from attending. Please state if you would like to apply for a bursary when requesting your place. If you are interested in the Study Day but are unable to make this particular date, please consider sending an application to register your interest, as there is the possibility of additional Study Days in the future.

Senate House, London, December 1, 2017
Deadline: Sep 1, 2017

CFP: ECR Training Day: Using Historical Matrices & Printing Surfaces in Research
Senate House, London, 1 December 2017
Deadline: 1 Sept 2017

Convenor: Elizabeth Savage, Institute of English Studies
Facilitators: Giles Bergel (Oxford) and Roger Gaskell (Roger Gaskell Rare Books)

This free, hands-on, object-based training day will introduce 10 ECRs to the research of historical matrices/printing surfaces (e.g. cut woodblocks, etched metal plates, litho stones). The emphasis is pre-1830. By analysing the objects and resulting impressions, participants will learn how to describe them; identify how they were made, used and copied; relate them to printed content; and use them as primary material in their own research. The interdisciplinary remit includes text and image, as well as decorations, initials, medicine, music, mathematical symbols, scientific imagery, and more. This event is the first application of a new research framework, which will later be published open access. Participants will learn new research skills and, through their feedback, help shape the future of research in fields related to print heritage.

Registration is free, lunch and a wine reception are provided, and transport is reimbursable up to £50. Participants must be current PhD students or have taken their PhD less than 10 years ago (i.e., in or after 2007). Apply online (deadline 1 September 2017) at http://tinyurl.com/ECRmatrices.

This event is funded by a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (BARSEA) for 'The Matrix Reloaded: Establishing Cataloguing & Research Guidelines for Artefacts of Printing Images’.

Paul John, artist
Be inspired by the great experimental printmaker Hercules Segers, who merged techniques of painting and printmaking to create his expressive landscapes. Dig into Segers's process with Yana van Dyke, and work with contemporary printmaker Paul John to create your own vibrantly colored prints using techniques such as etching, drypoint, and monoprinting during this three-session (March 18, 25, April 1) workshop.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers.

This workshop meets in The Met's galleries and studios. Participants must be 18 or older. Space is limited. This three-session workshop is sold as one unit and individual dates cannot be purchased. The fee is $215 for the three-day workshop (includes Museum admission and materials). Registration ends at noon on the Tuesday before the first day of the course. Limited student discounts are available; a student ID must be presented at the first class. For more information, email studioprograms@metmuseum.org or call 212-570-3961 to receive information about student pricing.

As part of the year’s cultural initiatives, the Centro Studi Art in Tuscany Residence and the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno di Firenze have created a summer course which will focus on print collecting in Italy. Internationally renowned specialists will guide you through the world of Renaissance and Baroque prints and the most important collections in Florence, Rome, Arezzo and Venice. Among them Cristina Acidini, President of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno di Firenze (formerly Soprintendente of the Polo Museale Fiorentino), a specialist in the works of Michelangelo and the Zuccari; Lisa Pon (Raphael, Dürer and Marcantonio Raimondi); Anna Bianco (RKD); Gert Jan van der Sman, a distinguished expert in Venetian prints of the 15th and 16th centuries (Print and Printmaking in Venice); Giorgio Marini (Curator at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe delle Gallerie degli Uffizi and member of the editorial board of Print Quarterly); Rick Scorza, Accademia delle Arti del Disegno di Firenze (formerly Warburg Institute and Morgan Library & Museum), outstanding expert on Vincenzo Borghini and Giorgio Vasari; and the Director of the Summer Course Program Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, specialist in the works of Stradanus and the print culture of the Medici.

The Bodleian Libraries announce a Summer School in the History of Printed Book
Illustration.

The week-long course is led by Dr Elizabeth Savage (School of Advanced Study,
University of London) and will include daily lectures and seminar sessions in
the Weston Library, with close examination of illustrations in Bodleian
Library books from the incunable period to the 19th century. Afternoon
workshop sessions in the Bodleian's Bibliographical Press will introduce the
methods and equipment used by artists and printers. The methods seminars are
led by Richard Lawrence. Students will also have the opportunity to consult
Bodleian rare books on their own in the library reading rooms.

Themes of the course:
Early illustrated books; methods of printing; the description of illustrations
in modern catalogues; early illustrated books in the West; methods of
printing; the role of colour; scientific and medical imagery; maps; children's
books; broadsides; ornament; devotional images; workshop and trade structures;
the influence of book illustrations on art and architecture; illustrations as
propaganda; and art historical, book historical and literary approaches to
book illustration.

Guest speakers/demonstrators: Roger Gaskell on scientific books; Peter
Lawrence, wood engraver; and others to be confirmed.

The Summer School will meet 26 June - 30 June 2017

Applications should include the form (downloadable from the course
webpage), a cv, and a short one-page
statement of your reasons for joining the course.

Please visit the course webpage
before making an application.

For further information contact:
bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Information and application documents:
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/courses

Lithography is a complex, chemical printmaking process that requires first-hand experience to fully grasp the technique and potential artistic applications. Conservators and museum professionals are often responsible for the technical identification of prints without having hands-on printmaking experience themselves. This workshop introduces participants to various lithographic processes and techniques commonly utilized by artists and studios, both historically and up to this day.

The workshop consists primarily of hands-on printing activities at Burning Bones Press but will also include lectures, group discussions and examination of prints in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) collection. A comprehensive resource binder will be assembled by the participants throughout the workshop from a combination of lecture slides, notes, printing materials (plates and prints), and other useful references. This will allow participants to walk away with a strong understanding of the technique and have invaluable resources at their fingertips.

This three-day intensive workshop is geared towards both emerging and established conservation and curatorial professionals, especially those who work regularly with lithographic prints.


With financial support from the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the aesthetic and conceptual features of multiples. Artist books, printed matter, photographs, maps, photocopies, small objects, magazine articles, posters, banners or intermedial combinations of such elements are characteristic for the expansion of art forms between the 1960s and 1970s. The workshop wants to explore the historical and conceptual significance of such “minor art practices” and highlight the artistic diversity by which the notion of the artwork was reformulated as multiple. Emphasis will be given to blendings of text and image, the intermingling of new and old reproduction technologies and relationships between diverse material and conceptual rhizomatic structures. Central interest applies also to the counter-economies of multiples, achieved by an expanded proliferation and strategic dislocations in different contexts of experience, when for example used as viral infiltration of contemporary visual culture and representational regimes of mass media. Other aspects of concern are forms of collective authorship and performative reception settings as well as questions of display and the role of galleries or other issuers for the production and distribution of artists’ publications and multiples.

The guiding questions of the workshop concern the following aspects:

HISTORY and FUNCTIONS
Are there relations to historical predecessors as for example Marcel Duchamp’s boîte-en-valise, édition MAT or Fluxkit? What was the impetus for experimentation with new artistic forms of photography, writing and publishing conceptual works in art magazines, selling boxes including objects and photographs as multiples? Does the artwork transform to communication tool or does it work as marketing object? In how far can seriality and the concept of affordable artworks for everyone be attributed to the idea of achieving a “democratization of art”?

PRODUCTION and DISTRIBUTION
How do production and distribution converge in artists’ publications and the experiment with new forms of accessibility, possession and ubiquity of artworks? What was the influence and interest of galleries and publishers like Leo Castelli, Arts Magazine, ARTFORUM, Multiples Inc. etc. to support or even foster the development of these production modes and material? How were collaborations among artists conceived of and what were their guiding intentions? Was the emphasis of “minor art practice” in the 1960s and 1970s a way of revealing the relations of power and a tentative strategy of resistance? Did these alternative production and distribution modes have an utopian function and could their signification of dominant representational art forms be understood as political?

PRESENTATION, RECEPTION and DISCOURSES
In which way and what contexts were multiples presented in the 1960s and 1970s and how are they displayed today? What is the conservation policy of such non-static artworks and how do the contexts of artists’ publications and multiples endure over time in the face of a changing art system and contemporary aspects of ubiquitous accessibility via electronic media? And in which way have the 1960s and 1970s experiments with the idea of the changeable and context-defined artwork contributed to the discourses on the work of art as non-static, collaborative and continuously information?

The workshop invites contributions by PhD-candidates whose study interest and PhD projects are associated with this wide topic.

To participate, please send a proposal of no more than 500 words for a 20-minute workshop presentation and a brief CV to Kathrin Barutzki at barutzki.kathrin@smail.uni-koeln.de.

The deadline for submission is January 22nd, 2016. Participants will be notified by the begin of February 2016.

The workshop will be held in English. Participants may receive a certificate of attendance. Cost of travel and accommodation cannot be covered.