Book and Print Initiative events: Spring 2019 – Summer 2021

Spring 2019 

10 January 

  • Margaret Joachim (IES), The Cyclopedia Saga: Pitfalls of a Serial Publication Purchase in the Early Nineteenth Century  
  • Dennis Duncan (Bodleian Libraries), On the Same Page: The Index in the First Few Decades of Print 

24 January 

  • Brooke Palmieri (Camp Books), Queering Print History 
  • E-J Scott (Duckie), Princess, 1719: Prints of the Georgian Queers and their Pleasure Gardens 

7 February 

  • Alexandra Marraccini (Warburg), Shell Games: Print Sources, Representation, and Oceanic Objects in the English Early Modern Cabinet 
  • Peyvand Firouzeh (Max-Planck-Institut), Heritage, Self-Image, and the Reception of the Shahnama (Book of Kings) between Iran and India: British Library MS Or.1403 

21 February 

  • Jose Guevara (ILAS), Literacies in Spanish American Colonies: Knowledges of the Written Word in Lima and Santa Fe de Bogotá between 1650-1750  
  • Olenka Horbatsch (British Museum), Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen and the Monumental Woodcut in the Low Countries 

7 March 

  • Kris Tetens (SAS), ‘A Penny Plain, Tuppence Coloured’: Theatrical Tinsel Prints and London Print Culture in the 1830s 
  • Catherine James (UCL), Material Networks in Medical Student Dissertations from Leiden before 1900 


Summer 2019 

25 April 

  • Natasha Constantinidou, Exploring the printing of Greek books in Sixteenth-Century Paris: issues and approaches 
  • Yukishima Koichi, The origin of pagination in Europe: a contribution of Aldus Manutius 

9 May 

  • Philip Murphy, Andrew Roth, 'The End of Empire' and the Cold War: an unpublished history of Decolonization 
  • The Book and Print initiative, Future projects and ideas for next year 

6 June  

  • Rea Alexandratos, Kate Owen, The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: cataloguing a seventeenth-century collection of documentary drawings and prints 
  • Dominique Varry, Official production, counterfeits and piracies in 18th century Lyons 

20 June 

  • Daryl Green, Thinking 3D: growing an international series of exhibitions and events 

26 June – Special event 

Writing Women: Reviving Kana Shodo (‘Woman-Hand’), a Forgotten Female Script Lecture & Demonstration by Kaoru Akagawa, Master of Japanese Calligraphy 

To celebrate National Writing Day, the Book and Print Initiative invited Kaoru Akagawa, designated Master of Japanese calligraphy, to tell the story of Kana Shodo, an ancient female script created mainly by and for woman. Noblewomen developed it to express themselves freely within the constraints of 10th-century Japanese court life. Women communicated using this beautiful syllabary for nearly a millennium, until the tradition was lost in the twentieth century.  

An Official Event of the Japan-UK Season of Culture 2019-2020. 

  • Introduced by: Clare Lees (IES) 
  • Convenor: Elizabeth Savage (IES) 


Autumn 2019 

10 October 

  • Anna Gialdini (Roehampton University Library), Archival bindings in early modern Italy and their makers  

24 October 

  • Matt Shaw (IHR-SAS), Thinking about the French Republican Calendar: print, ephemerality and time 

7 November 

  • Maria Castrillo (Senate House Library), Books beyond borders: the Cartonera Publishing Movement in Latin America 

21 November 

  • Cynthia Johnston (IES-SAS), Self Improvement and Edwardian Bibliomania in the Industrial North West: New discoveries from the Harris Museum in Preston and the Blackburn Public Library 

5 December – Special event 

Afternoon Masterclass and evening in conversation with Professor Roger Chartier (Honorary Professeur in the Collège de France, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris), and Annenberg Visiting Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania) 

Professor Roger Chartier received a University of London honorary doctorate during the School of Advanced Study graduation ceremony Friday 6th December. Beforehand he offered a Masterclass on ‘The Book as Body, The Life as Editions. From Quevedo to Machado de Assis’. 

Later he was in conversation with Professor Bill Sherman and Dr Raphaële Mouren: ‘Between cultural history and history of the book: a conversation with Roger Chartier’. Listen to the recording here. 

12 December – Special event 

Of Buildings and Books: The Oechslin Library and Foundation 

On the occasion of the publication of a comprehensive guide to Architectural Theory in Early Modern Germany, Werner Oechslin joins us to discuss his library and foundation. Created in partnership with ETH in Zurich, and designed by Mario Botta around Oechslin’s home in Einsiedeln, the Oechslin Library and Foundation is both an exemplary piece of library architecture and a comprehensive library of books on architecture and other subjects. Werner Oechslin will talk to Professor Bill Sherman and Dr Raphaële Mouren about the creation of this extraordinary institution, followed by a short roundtable discussion to celebrate the publication of Architekturtheorie im deutschsprachigen Kulturraum 1486-1648. 



Spring 2020 

30 January 

  • Stephanie Frampton (MIT/Warburg): Vade, liber: textual mobility and the history of the book 

13 February 

  • Adrian Edwards (British Library): Curating the King’s Library of George III 

27 February 

  • JoAnn Della Neva (University of Notre Dame in London): ‘The story of the death of Anne Boleyn’ by Lancelot de Carle: from manuscript to book and back again? 

12 March 

  • Eleanor Greer (Warburg): Acquiring a library: the collection of Sir Richard Ellys, 1686-1742 

25-26 March – Special Event 

Printing Tristram Shandy: A Masterclass 

  • Day 1: 25 March 2020, 1pm-5pm, Senate House Library 
  • Day 2: 26 March 2020, 10am-5pm, St Bride Foundation 

This masterclass was led by Sophie Hawkey-Edwards (St Bride Foundation) and Elizabeth Savage (School of Advanced Study, University of London). 

Laurence Sterne’s multi-volume Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) is one of the most creatively printed novels of the handpress period. Novel Impressions gave a 1.5-day masterclass on 'Printing Tristram Shandy' at Senate House Library and St Bride Foundation, London. Collaboratively, the participants, expert printers and printmakers, and researchers, created a concertina whose creative structure, genre-defying technical approaches, and integration of text and image echoed that of the first edition of Tristram Shandy. 

www.novelimpressions.home.blog



Summer 2020 

21 May 

  • Richard Gartner (The Warburg Institute), 'The analogue and the virtual: where is the librarian in the digital library?' 

4 June 

  • Bill Sherman (The Warburg Institute), 'The History of the Book and the History of Cryptography' 

18 June 

  • Stefan Bauer (Royal Holloway, University of London), 'Onofrio Panvinio: Papal History between Manuscript and Print' 

2 July 

  • Paolo Sachet (Università degli studi di Milano), 'Publishing for the Popes: The Roman Curia and the Use of Printing in the Mid-Sixteenth Century' 

16 July 

  • Uganda Sze Pui Kwan (Nanyang Technological University), 'The invisibilities of the engravers: the prints and portraits of Robert Morrison (1782-1834)'  


Autumn 2020 

22 October 

  • Eyob Derillo (British Library), Introduction to the Ethiopian manuscripts at the British Library’s collections 

5 November 

  • Fabiano Cataldo de Avezedo (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro), A "Cabinet de lecture" in Rio Janeiro: a Portuguese library in the empire of Brazil 

19 November 

  • Raphaële Mouren (Warburg Institute, SAS), Illustrations in books in 16th century Lyon: an ongoing project 

3 December 

  • Julia Walworth (Merton College, Oxford), Writing the Life of the oldest Academic Library 

17 December 

  • Argula Rublack (Senate House Library, University of London), The Trouble with Triples – Semantic Web ontologies and the future of the special collections catalogue 

Special Events – Being Human Festival 2020 

15 November: An Introduction to Medieval Ink (1:00 pm - 2:00 pm) 

The history of iron gall ink from antiquity to the present day. This introductory talk will give information on the history of the ink that was used in medieval manuscripts. It will also discuss the nature of the oak gall wasp, and give information on the many types of ink they produce. 

Organiser: Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study  

In partnership with Book and Print Initiative  

Making Medieval Ink (2:00 pm - 5:00 pm) 

Making ink from crushed oak galls, this online workshop will give participants the opportunity to make their own natural ink based on traditional medieval recipes. After signing up for this event, you will receive the necessary ingredients through the post. The exercise will also require standard kitchen equipment. The instructional video will be posted on YouTube at the scheduled time, allowing participants to follow at their own pace. The event will have an online twitter presence, to allow participants to ask questions and share their progress. 

Organiser: Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study  

In partnership with Book and Print Initiative 



Spring 2021 

14 January 

  • Kanu Priya Dhingra (SOAS, University of London), Books in the bazar: mapping parallel circuits of circulation 

28 January 

  • Jean-François Vallée (Collège de Maisonneuve, Montréal), From the Cymbalum mundi to the Cymbale du monde: Two digital remediations of a highly enigmatic and (in)famous book of the French Renaissance 

11 February 

  • Malcolm Walsby (Université de Lyon/Centre Gabriel Naudé), How did you get hold of a book in the sixteenth century? Distributing and selling books in Renaissance France 

25 February 

  • Brian Richardson (University of Leeds), Presentation of the book Women and the circulation of texts in the Renaissance (2020) 

11 March 

  • Dominique Akhoun-Schwarb (SOAS, University of London), Going down the rabbit hole:  tracking the provenance of non-Western manuscripts in SOAS Collections 

25 March 

  • Richard Espley (Senate House Library, University of London), Pornography and the librarian: struggles for legitimacy 


Summer 2021 

22 April 

  • Laura Aldovini (Musei Civici, Pavia), From churches, furniture, and museums: cataloguing prints for the census of Italian Renaissance woodcuts 

6 May 

  • Camille Poiret (St Andrews), Building a collective software for cataloguing manuscripts and archives in libraries, the French example 

20 May 

  • Laura Cleaver (Institute of English Studies, SAS), Buying medieval manuscripts in Britain during the First World War: practicalities and ideals 

3 June 

  • Leila Kassir (Senate House Library), The work of many hands: six stories of queer publishing 

17 June 

  • Earle Havens (Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins), Reimagining an Early Modern Paper Supercomputer: Vincenzo Cornelli's Idea dell'Universo (c. 1690) 

1 July 

  • Edward Wilson-Lee (Cambridge) and José María Pérez Fernández (University of Granada), Presentation of Hernando Colón's New World of Books: Towards a Cartography of Knowledge (Yale UP: Jan 2021)