In the second of two blog posts, Reader Services Assistants Ian Graham and Angela Petyt-Whittaker continue to discuss their joint project to catalogue two unique and historically important autograph books…

We are currently compiling the metadata for the digitised Sitters Books of the artist Frank Salisbury, a noted painter of portraits and ceremonial events in the first half of the 20^th century, whose papers are held in the Methodist collections at The John Rylands Library.

After deciphering as many signatures as possible, we are now recording each sitter’s key biographical details, honours received, professional accomplishments and significant connections.

For prominent historical figures, this is a simple task. Princess Margaret, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (whose Salisbury portrait still hangs in the White House) or the actor Richard Burton, information can be found by turning a page or typing a Google search. More obscure figures can prove troublesome. Some yield no online search results, but others generate too many, particularly if the sitter’s name is commonplace. Then it becomes necessary to determine which results correspond to the signature in the Sitters Books. To this end, we consult a variety of online sources including family trees, legal documents, footnotes in books concerning other people’s lives and, inevitably, those melancholy websites recording the burial places of ordinary folk.

Through the course of our research, we have become familiar with British royalty and aristocracy, Indian Maharajas, American self-made millionaires, shipping and steel magnates, war heroes, Methodist ministers, socialites and entertainers. Each person has a story to tell…

There is plenty of scope for error, and although checking and re-checking is a chore it is essential for maintaining accuracy.

For example, a small confusion concerning two identical names nearly led to the conclusion that one sitter had signed up to the U.S. Air Force and fathered a child – all before his second birthday. Admirable achievements in themselves, but a bit much to expect of a toddler.

Nonetheless, the investigative process is often fascinating, granting a glimpse into a different-yet-similar time.

Whilst searching for information to corroborate one particular sitter’s identity, an Oakland Tribune newspaper headline from 1936 came to light. It mentioned the sitter, but focussed upon the misadventures of the sitter’s son (for the sake of good taste, the identifying names are blanked out):

“(Son) Again Drinks Deadly Drug – (Sitter)’s Son, Just Out of Hospital From Sleep Powder Bout, Saved Once More – Apartment Manager Finds Him in Daze; Ambulance Crew Knocks Cup Away”.

Dramatic, certainly, and useful. Establishing that the sitter had a son, the story not only confirmed that sitter’s identity but connected the sitter conclusively to a family tree which in turn provided information about other sitters. One thing led to another, in an entirely helpful way.

Several people were painted by Frank Salisbury numerous times during their lifetime. The heiress and businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post’s large and distinctive signature appears no less than six times in the Sitters Books, variously with the surnames of husbands Edward F. Hutton and Joseph E. Davies, who were also painted by Salisbury. In addition, Marjorie’s fourth husband Herbert A. May was painted by him, as were two of Marjorie’s daughters Nedenia Hutton and Eleanor Post Rand. Family, friends and business associates are a common thread weaving through the Sitters Books – with Salisbury’s reputation, both as an artist and society figure, guaranteeing recommendations.

Not every signature in the books corresponds to a sitter. On occasions, Salisbury painted posthumous portraits, often commissioned by the subject’s widow or family members. For instance, Louise Carnegie signed for a painting of her late husband, the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew:

Working through both World Wars, Salisbury also painted those who fell in action. His portrait The Boy Cornwell in the Battle of Jutland (1917), depicting Jack Cornwell, the youngest winner of the Victoria Cross, is perhaps the most famous. Another was Captain John Stanhope Collings-Wells, who won his Victoria Cross in France during World War I:

As yet, it is unclear who wrote both their own name and Captain Collings-Wells’s name in the book; the first initial may be a “C”, suggesting it was Collings-Wells’s mother, Caroline, but is not clear enough to draw firm conclusions.

Our final task is to search for images of Salisbury’s paintings available online and to add these links to the metadata. Some are easy to find, others more obscure as they are in private hands. It is fascinating to transcribe a signature, research their life and then see the subject immortalised on canvas. A selection can be seen on the Art UK website. Major collections of his Salisbury’s work can be found at the National Portrait Gallery, Royal Air Force Museum, Wesley’s Chapel, Chicago History Museum, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and the World Methodist Museum.

Once the lockdown ends and the Library re-opens, it will be possible to inspect Salisbury’s own papers for first-hand information; indeed, a good deal of fact-checking of this sort lies ahead. For a determined researcher the internet has myriad uses but remains a poor rival to an archive of primary sources.

The transcriptions will be linked with the digitised versions of the Sitters Books and launched on the Manchester Digital Collections website in early 2021.

Images reproduced with the permission of The John Rylands University Librarian and Director of the University of Manchester Library and The Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes (The Methodist Church in Britain).

18 July 2020 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Gilbert White, the pioneering naturalist and author of the perennially popular Natural History of Selborne, published in 1788. In this blog post, I explore some aspects of Gilbert White’s life, his significance as a proto-environmentalist and scientist, and the charm of his natural-history writing.

In 1993 I curated an exhibition at the John Rylands Library to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Gilbert White of Selborne. The exhibition, entitled ‘Matter of Curious Inquiry’: Gilbert White and The Natural History of Selborne, drew on the wealth of White’s papers and editions of The Natural History that had been donated by the 10th earl of Stamford, a descendant of Gilbert’s brother Henry, and subsequent deposits by the National Trust. Back then I never imagined that in 2020 I would still be at the Library and so able to celebrate White’s 300th birthday by reprising that exhibition, albeit online.

Gilbert White was born in the small village of Selborne, Hampshire, on 18 July 1720, and spent almost all of his seventy-three years there. He was educated at Oxford in preparation for entering the Church of England. But he seems to have lacked clerical ambition and declined the chance of wealthy livings, preferring to remain a humble curate at Selborne. He never married; his affections were directed towards his native village, developing an intimate knowledge of every meadow, wood, pond and ‘hollow lane’.

By confining his attention to one parish, White was able to study its flora and fauna in minute detail, to appreciate the interconnection of species, and to develop a deep empathy with the natural world. He was a proto-environmentalist and gentleman-scientist, in an era when amateurs could make significant contributions to natural science. As he wrote: ‘the investigation of the life and conversation of animals … is not to be attained but by the active and inquisitive, and by those that reside much in the country.’ (NHS, letter 10)

Gilbert White’s individual contributions to science were few in comparison to those of Charles Darwin, for instance, but they were nonetheless significant. He is credited with the discovery in Britain of the noctule bat, and he was the first to distinguish the three British species of leaf warbler. It is appropriate that we owe to White, a ‘very exact observer’, the first description of the tiny harvest mouse.

The conjunction of person and place gave rise to The Natural History of Selborne. The book is ostensibly no more than a collection of letters by a country parson describing the natural world of his native parish. Gilbert White was an prolific letter writer. He corresponded with members of his extended family, with friends from his Oxford days, but above all with fellow naturalists, including Carl Linnaeus and John Ray. In this way, from the relative isolation of a Hampshire village, he was able to keep abreast of the latest scientific thinking, and to expose his ideas to the scrutiny of his peers.

White conceived the idea of turning his letters to fellow naturalists Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington into a natural history of his native village. However, The Natural History of Selborne is as much a work of literature as it is of natural history, in which literary devices are used to shape the book and provide dramatic effect. White extensively edited his genuine letters and framed them with invented introductory and concluding ‘letters’. The letter form perfectly suited the intimacy of White’s observations of nature.

It is something of a paradox that a work which is literally parochial has enjoyed such widespread popularity. Various qualities can be identified in White’s writing which may account for this appeal: his unaffected style, his quiet humour, the accuracy of his observations; but above all, the respect and affection with which he viewed the natural world. As Richard Mabey wrote: ‘White had rescued natural history from the dusty cabinets of the taxonomists, given it a human scale and a human setting, and humanized it.’ [Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne, ed. Richard Mabey (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), xx.]

In the next blog post, I will look at the publication history of The Natural History of Selborne, one of the most frequently published books in the English language.

18 July 2020 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Gilbert White, the pioneering naturalist and author of the perennially popular Natural History of Selborne, published in 1788. In the first blog post to celebrate the centenary, I explored Gilbert White’s life, his significance as a proto-environmentalist and scientist, and the charm of his natural-history writing. In this second post, I discuss the publication history of The Natural History of Selborne and its evergreen appeal to successive generations of readers. 

‘My work will be well got up, with a good type, & on good paper; & will be embellished with several engravings. It has been in the press some time; & is to come out in the spring.’ So Gilbert White wrote to his nephew Samuel Barker in January 1788 (Rylands English MS 1306/30). In fact The Natural History of Selborne did not appear until December 1788 (though bearing the date 1789). It was indeed well got up, with engravings by the Swiss artist Samuel Hieronymus Grimm. A panoramic view of Selborne was selected for the frontispiece.

Since its first publication in 1788, The Natural History of Selborne has been issued in over two hundred editions. No other book on natural history has attracted such an extensive and persistent readership. Each generation has sought to reinterpret the author and his book in the light of its own interests and concerns.

In 1792, less than four years after its first publication in England, a German translation was published in Berlin under the title of White’s Beyträge zur Naturgeschichte von England. The German edition was severely abridged. The translator, Friedrich Albrecht Anton Meyer (1768–95), claimed that ‘the original has much chaff (Spreu) in it, but also some corn that is worth transplanting into German soil.’ The work is very rare: the John Rylands Library holds one of only three known copies in the UK, a gift from the 10th earl of Stamford.*

In Britain the book first achieved the status of a classic in the 1830s, and for the rest of the nineteenth century scarcely a year went by without a new edition appearing. As the country was being transformed by the Industrial Revolution, The Natural History of Selborne was seen as an evocation of a rural idyll that had disappeared for ever. Gilbert White was transformed into a mythical figure, the clean-living, celibate clergyman, uncomplicated, at one with nature, a representative of a lost Golden Age.

In 1938 the Nonesuch Press published a magnificent two-volume limited edition of The Writings of Gilbert White of Selborne, with wood engravings by Eric Ravilious, painter, engraver and designer. Ravilious spent several days in Selborne while working on the illustrations, absorbing the atmosphere of the village, and his engravings successfully convey the period charm of The Natural History of Selborne. Most of the images used to illustrate this and the previous blog post are derived from Ravilious’s engravings. The Library holds two copies of this edition; one, from the Allen Freer Collection, originally belonged to its editor, H. J. Massingham.

The Natural History of Selborne has enjoyed considerable popularity in wartime, perhaps as an escape from grim reality. James Fisher expressed such sentiments in his preface to the first Penguin edition, published in 1941 and illustrated by Clare Leighton: ‘ His world is round and simple and complete: the British country; the perfect escape. No breath of the outside world enters in; no politics; no ambition; no care or cost.’

In the last hundred years much of the British countryside has been transformed by intensive farming or lost entirely beneath motorways, industrial estates and housing developments. Despite, or perhaps because of, these changes, The Natural History of Selborne remains as popular as ever. With his affection for the natural world and his understanding of the interrelationship of living things, Gilbert White has been heralded as a forerunner of the modern environmental movement. During the Covid-19 lockdown, many have found solace in the natural world in their own localities. Gilbert White remains as relevant today as ever.

Postscript. The autograph manuscript of The Natural History of Selborne now appropriately resides at The Wakes in Selborne. It has been digitised and can be viewed online at http://www.gilbertwhiteshouse.org.uk/manuscript/.

* Other copies are held at Gilbert White’s House and Cambridge University Library.

This blog highlights my initial PhD research constructing a brief biography of Jeff Nuttall. Poet, artist, musician and the author of Bomb Culture (MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), the first attempt to contextualise the British counterculture, his archive resides at The John Rylands Library. Loughborough University academic Gillian Whiteley developed an enormous amount of background research for the last major retrospective of Nuttall’s art, an exhibition organised by the Mid Pennine Arts Association in 2005. I’ll list resources and references at the end of the blog but without Dr Whiteley’s previous study my research would have been much more difficult and time-consuming so it’s important to acknowledge her investigation. Although my doctorate now focuses on one particular element of Dave Cunliffe and Nuttall’s activities, my intention is to use a short series of blogs to detail my findings which might prove helpful to readers of the Rylands collection or those researching the same area.

Jeffrey Addison Nuttall was born in the Lancashire town of Clitheroe in the Ribble Valley on the 8th of July 1933. Census records confirm that his mother Hilda Mary Addison originated from over the Yorkshire border, in 1931 marrying his father Kenneth Nuttall who had previously lived in Rochdale. The family moved south to the Herefordshire village of Orcop where Kenneth became head of Holmer School and during the Second World War the local Air Raid Warden. In 1937 Jeffrey’s brother Anthony David Nuttall arrived, later becoming the respected critic, academic and author A D Nuttall. Although probably not wealthy, Nuttall grew up in comfortable circumstances, able to study at Hereford Art School from 1949 to 1951 in a period when many young people left education at 15, often going straight into employment in order to support their family.

After two more years’ tuition at Bath Academy in Corsham, Nuttall took teacher training at the London Institute; his thesis on the medieval Church of St. Mary and St. David in Kilpeck included pen and ink drawings and watercolours of the building. Nuttall returned to Hereford Art School as a lecturer and in July 1954 he married fellow tutor and painter Jane (born Janet in 1922) Louch with whom he later had daughter Sara and three sons Daniel, Toby and Timothy. Nuttall’s paintings were shown as part of two group exhibitions in 1953 and 1954 at the Parson’s Lane Gallery in London as he developed his art alongside teaching.

According to his chapter in All Bull: The National Servicemen (Allison & Busby, 1973) he joined the army just a few weeks after marrying (so probably in September 1954), first hitchhiking to the South of France with Jane for their honeymoon. Nuttall went to Catterick in North Yorkshire for his initial training, spent a period at the Cavalry Barracks in Colchester, then Weedon Royal Ordnance Depot in Northamptonshire and the rest of his service as Unit Education Sergeant in what had been a palatial country house at Wilton Park in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. In All Bull Nuttall describes a violent, rumbustious service in which weaker men were often bullied by those in authority. As sergeant he was able to bend the rules a little but he was often in trouble for ‘over-identification’ (i.e. mixing socially with lower ranks). He did eventually enjoy his army period as it allowed time to continue his painting, teach himself to play jazz cornet and, for the first time, consider the broader meaning of life and in particular the imminent threat of cold war nuclear annihilation. Leaving service just before the Suez crisis in October 1956, he waited expectantly to be recalled (as many then were) but he was grateful that his papers never arrived.

Nuttall returned to Hereford, teaching at Leominster School, but he is best remembered in the area as part of the then increasingly popular traditional jazz scene. He played cornet with both the Easy Rider Jazz Band with vocalist Jean Warnes (now Rees), Lennie Thwaites on double bass and clarinettist Eddie Falconer and with Warnes in the Butchers Row Jazz Band. Both acts performed regularly in and around Hereford at the Racehorse pub, the Booth Hall and the Mecca in Malvern occasionally travelling further afield to play support slots at more prestigious venues. Nuttall’s love of jazz and his adept musicianship (he also played piano and sang) often took him to London where he attended gigs, sat-in at various jam nights, and became a regular in Soho’s Cottage Club.

The brutal crushing of the 1956 Hungarian uprising which began with student protests and finished when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest was the last straw for British radicals, many of whom had considered themselves socialists but were now left searching for a new political direction. The development of the hydrogen bomb which Britain tested in the Pacific Ocean, the location of US nuclear weapons in East Anglia and the growing cold war tensions between East and West meant that the youngsters who attended the trad-jazz haunts of Soho, like Nuttall, lived under the threat of global obliteration in a conflict between the US and the USSR. Consequently the campaign against nuclear weapons picked up momentum in the late 1950s, and CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, formed in 1957. In the same year the pacifist (but more militant) Direct Action Committee began its struggle, instigating the first march to Aldermaston in 1958 which CND were eventually forced to support. We know from interviews and photographs showing Nuttall and Humphrey Lyttelton playing their instruments on the marches with Barnet CND that he was part of the increasing numbers who walked to the base of the British nuclear research facility and, in following years, from there to Trafalgar Square.

In 1957 Nuttall’s paintings were part of another group exhibition, this time at Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One which specialised in more avant-garde contemporary work which probably indicates the direction in which his art was developing. The artist Islwyn Watkins met Nuttall at a jazz session in the Railway Tavern in Barnet in 1959 and, on later seeing his paintings, he described them as ‘vigorous expressionism’. In an extract from Nuttall’s previously unpublished memoir in Better Books/Better Bookz (Koening, 2019) he describes his work as: ‘becoming loaded, brutalistic plaster reliefs… that attempted the vigorous crudity of iron age fertility figures, the Venus of Willendorf and the Cerne Abbas Giant… I had made a vocabulary of sexual protrusion, a quality which besides being present in the glistening, erect and intrusive penis, I found in sap-dribbling trees, in strange overnight mushroom shapes and in the nauseous profligacy of nature.’ In the same passage he explains how his feelings of sexual frustration and his burning desire to escape the constriction of British cultural taboos combined to develop a new artistic language and aesthetic. Nuttall’s art divined paganism, ritual and the occult which, mixed with a growing knowledge of the avant-garde, took him down strange new creative avenues.

Nuttall was a habitué of Soho, often in the French pub and the unlicensed coffee houses of Sam Widges, the Nucleus and the Gyre and Gimble where folk, early British rock and roll and jazz was played, and art and politics discussed late into the night. When the young Dave Cunliffe moved to London in 1957 he initially stopped with the poet Lee Harwood in Brick Lane, Cunliffe describing Harwood as a central hub in an underground poetry scene and introducing him to Nuttall, Adrian Mitchell and Michael Horovitz who together encouraged the young Cunliffe to write his own verse. All influenced by the literary scene surrounding Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights press and bookshop in San Francisco (some would call the Beats), this group were also devotees of British and European experimentalism – William Blake, Kurt Schwitters, Tristan Tzara and the Letterists of Paris. Verse was becoming another art form through which Nuttall expressed his increasingly avant-garde approach – Dada and experimentalism a strange mirror image of the jazz he played. Returning to his memoir, he reflected that: ‘I had begun to sense at that time that art and the anti-bomb movement, two activities I had previously placed in separate compartments of my life, were beginning to fuse in their concerns’.

Although neither signed the original 1960 declaration, both Nuttall and Cunliffe supported the more militant anti-nuclear Committee of 100, a direct action group designed to cause maximum mayhem by forcing the authorities to arrest all its members as the organisers of each demonstration. Legal briefing papers (handed out to arrested activists) in the Dave Cunliffe Archive and Nuttall’s tales of arrest at C100 actions in Bomb Culture confirm their attendance. These demonstrations forced the police to arrest hundreds of protesters but according to Cunliffe in those pre-computer days it was easy to give false details so the police were often unable to add each arrest to an individual’s records.

As yet, it is still unclear exactly when Nuttall and his family moved from Hereford to Barnet in North London where he then taught at Alder Secondary Modern School in East Finchley. Although there are numerous tales of Nuttall in London in the late-1950s, it’s possible that he was travelling there from Hereford as he was often seen in the border town playing jazz gigs during the same period. Little (if any) Nuttall archival correspondence seems to exist from before he moved to Barnet where we know he lived in Salisbury Road from address details on later publications and letters. Although circumstantial we can presume that Nuttall was resident in Barnet by 1959 as Watkins first met him in a local pub in that district.

Digitised copies of Jazz News within the National Jazz Archive confirm that by March 1961 Jeff Nuttall’s Jazzers had their own residency in Chelsea’s Wheatsheaf Pub and an advert in the October edition of the same periodical for a club in Great Windmill Street near Soho confirms that the Jeff Nuttall Jazz Band performed there too. So we know that Nuttall had progressed from sitting-in at pub jam sessions in London hostelries to leading his own outfit with gigs at recognised venues around the capital. It may seem an anachronism that as Nuttall explored the avant-garde he was attracted to a form of music which preserved the sound of 1920s and ’30s New Orleans. But for Nuttall traditional jazz wasn’t the strictly structured music ironically reviewed in The Daily Telegraph by arch conservative (and later bête noire of the poetry Movement) Phillip Larkin but something much darker, dangerous, filthy and experimental. Originally the soundtrack of the brothel and speakeasy, jazz was a music with its own style, subculture and language (jazz, like rock and roll, being a slang term for sex) and with a sound which allowed space for improvisation.

The artist and poet Bob Cobbing was brought up in a religious family (Christian Brethren or Methodist according to different sources) in Enfield, Middlesex. Registered as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, this limited his employment options so he trained as a school teacher. In an interview conducted by Austrian academic Wolfgang Görtschacher, Cobbing relates how he moved around the country in the 1940s arriving in Hendon in 1949 where he found surprisingly little culture. Cobbing became a human arts generator instigating numerous groups using his own flat and rooms in the public library and local college to host meetings. Under the Arts Together banner he ran a camera club, film, jazz and poetry societies, the Hendon Arts Theatre, the Hendon Experimental Art Club which became the Hendon Group of Painters and Sculptors and then simply Group H, the visual arm of Arts Together with the Hendon Writer’s Circle which transformed into the Writers Forum workshops alongside And magazine.

At school lunch Nuttall often browsed the bookshelves of East Finchley Library. During one break he wandered upstairs where he found an Arts Together exhibition and soon afterwards he contacted Cobbing and joined Writers Forum in 1962. It was Nuttall who suggested that they should publish material from the workshops and the Writers Forum press began to put out roughly produced pamphlets, the first Limbless Virtuoso being verse from Nuttall and Keith Musgrove. In the early 1960s it was the British Museum which collected legal deposits of all publications (as the British Library does now) and it rejected the first few Writers Forum publications on the grounds that they were illegible as the covers and type within were often extremely avant-garde and sometimes difficult to read.

So Arts Together offered Nuttall the opportunity to experiment with poetry and publishing alongside a new group of collaborators while he injected fresh artistic approaches into Group H, in particular the concept that art need not be static but could be a living performance. When Nuttall responded to a letter from Peter Currell-Brown in Peace News asking for artists to ‘join together to form an explosive power for peace, love and individualism’ he connected with another collective of even more experimental artists which included Criton Tomazos and Dave Trace. In the same month (August 1962) he travelled to the Edinburgh Writers’ Conference where he saw William S Burroughs explain the fold-in, cut-up method, offering Nuttall a way of combining new literary and artistic approaches.

Between August 19th and September 15th Nuttall attended Salzburg Global Seminar: Session 82: ‘The Arts in America’ and, on the long train journey home, he decided that the anti-nuclear campaigns had failed and threw away his CND badge. Not long after Nuttall burnt all his paintings and writings (in his garden or behind the library, in 1962 or January 1963 depending on which source you believe) with a vow that he would: ‘stop producing art that dulls the sensibilities’. It is obvious from these dramatic actions that both his life and approach to art were going through an enormous transformation and in the next blog we’ll see where this takes him.

References

Nuttall family history researched through the Ancestry website

Nuttall, J., 1968. Bomb Culture. London: MacGibbon & Kee.

Dr Gillian Whiteley’s research and collected writings about Nuttall can be seen here:

http://jeff-nuttall.co.uk

Details about Nuttall’s thesis from its sale on the ABE Books website:

Johnson, B.S., 1973. All Bull: The National Servicemen. London: Allison & Busby.

Details about Nuttall’s part in the jazz scene and related photographs come from Bill Law’s interview with Jean Rees in local history magazine Herefordshire Lore:

http://www.herefordshirelore.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ioa36.pdf

The relationship between Dave Cunliffe, Jeff Nuttall and the London poetry scene is from correspondence and interviews I conducted with Cunliffe between 2014-2016. The scene is also mentioned by Nuttall in Bomb Culture.

Professor George McKay’s essay ‘Trad Jazz in 1950s Britain – Protest, Pleasure, Politics,’ is from a research project entitled: American Pleasures, Anti-American Protest: 1950s traditional jazz in Britain. The images of Nuttall marching with CND were first used alongside this text.

Keshvani, R., Heil, A. & Weibel, P. (eds.), 2019. Better Books/Better Bookz. London: Koenig.

Carrol, S., J., 2010. ‘Fill The Jails’: Identity, Structure and Method in the Committee of 100, 1960-1968. DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex.

National Jazz Archive: https://nationaljazzarchive.org.uk/

‘From the Bombast of Vachel Lindsay to the Compass of Noise: The Papers of Bob Cobbing at the British Library’ – Online essay by Chris Beckett

Görtschacher, W., 2000. Contemporary Views on the Little Magazine Scene. Salzburg: University of Salzburg.

Salzburg Global Seminars confirmed Nuttall’s attendance and that photographs exist of the sessions.

Punjabi 5: scripture written on burnished, handmade paper

To celebrate South Asian Heritage Month this series will be exploring items from the collections related to South Asian Heritage. The first post in this series, is written by conservator Solange Masher, from our Collection Care Team.

In the Library Collection is a manuscript known as Punjabi 5. It is one of the oldest known copies of The Sri Guru Granth Sahib. This is not simply a book, but an object regarded by those of the Sikh faith as the embodiment of their eleventh Guru. The book is a body: we could describe each page as a limb and the spine is really the backbone. In temples where copies of The Guru Granth Sahib Ji normally reside, it is treated as a living person and has its own room. Many acts of respect take place in the handling of The Guru Granth Sahib, like being covered with beautiful cloths called rumalas. An attendant would also wave a decorative fan, called a chauri, over it to purify the area before reading the scripture.

This Guru Granth Sahib has ended up in a different environment to those of its creators and those who would still venerate it. Therefore, it is an extremely sensitive matter to know how to treat it with respect in the library setting. The Guru Granth Sahib is stored in our most secure area along with the most valuable manuscripts in the collection and access to readers is restricted. The Library is keen to discover how to provide future access, in a safe and respectful manner. Contacts have been made over the years with Sikh communities and specialists to gain understanding and occasionally facilitate encounters with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. These individuals have also advised and demonstrated on how to let the book rest and be more comfortable on the shelf.

The manuscript will require some conservation treatment before being handled or displayed. However, investigations over the best approach, research and respect for the manuscript has meant that work has not yet been carried out. This restraint in the face of many options is a guiding principle of the field of Conservation.

The style of binding is original and representative of the region, with chevron-woven endbands and wooden blocks adhered to the spine to support the sewing and keep it immovable. The boards and flap are covered with red morocco leather.  There are clues about the journey and life of this Guru Granth Sahib residing in the pages: pressed insects; blossoms, plant fragments; hair and threads. Hand – daubed yellow swastikas, a sign of good fortune, adorn some pages.

As a Book Conservator, when I first heard about this Collection item it chimed with something I felt about manuscripts; that there is a connection with them we can experience which is greater than the meaning of just the words. It was exciting to hear that this idea about books played a part in a religious belief originating in the same country as my ancestors, from India.

To celebrate South Asian Heritage Month this series will be exploring items from the collections related to South Asian Heritage. The second post in this series, is written by conservator Janay Laudat from our Collection Care Team.

Inscribing onto dried palm leaves was practiced for thousands of years in South and South East Asia and is one of the oldest forms of writing. Palm leaf manuscripts were widely produced in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar/Burma, India, Malaysia and Indonesia until paper slowly began to replace it, with further decline after the 19^th -20^th century boom of the printing press. The manuscripts contain a wide range of subjects such as medicine, astrology, laws, music and literature, but are also sacred and devotional objects used to record and pass on Buddhist sutras, illustrations and illuminations.

The Collection Care Department protects palm leaf manuscripts by storing them in a climate controlled environment and acid-free enclosures. We also respect the signs of wear, dirt and staining from oil and candles as evidence of their historical use in religious ritual in South Asian temples, monasteries and homes. As Conservators, we intervene as minimally as possible to make manuscripts safe for handling, exhibition, digitisation and research access; while preserving their intangible value as sacred Buddhist objects.

Acquired by the John Rylands Library in 1915 from Professor T W Rhys Davis, the Pali collection consists of 83 items mainly on palm leaf, but also paper and lacquer, dating from the 17^th-19^th centuries. 55 items derive from Sri Lanka and are in Sinhalese script, with 28 from Myanmar/Burma and 3 items of Cambodian origin.

The collection features the common structure of palm leaf manuscripts: flat palm leaf folios are grouped in bundles and held between boards or panels made of wood, which are the covers. The leaves are strung together by a cord through two bored holes near the top centre of the leaf. The cord may be wrapped around the boards to hold the manuscript together.

Palm leaf has a unique materiality that lends itself as a writing support for Buddhist texts. Palm leaf is a generic term used to describe a variety of palm species from the Arecaceae family. The two most commonly used for manuscripts are the borassus flabellifer (palmyra leaf) and the corypha umbraculifera (talipot palm). Most commonly used in Sri Lankan manuscripts, the local term for talipot palm is the ‘ola leaf’. Growing up to heights of seventy feet, this giant palm is common to Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Western Myanmar/Burma. The broad, long, flexible and smooth surface of the talipot palm makes it an ideal writing support that appears a light cream in colour. Palmyra leaf is narrower, shorter, thicker and darker brown with a waxier surface less able to absorb ink written on the surface.

Palm leaf manuscripts enable us to preserve evidence of the traditional craft used by South Asian peoples in their production. The palm leaflets are separated and the midribs cut off, then they are boiled, heated and coated in essential oils, with variations depending on the region. In Sri Lanka, the leaves are boiled, washed and aired, before smoking and burnishing them. In India, the leaves undergo the same boiling process but are covered in pond mud and then rubbed with oils and spices such as turmeric. Kilns are used in Thailand to heat the leaves encouraging a black fluid to seep out, before being wiped, reheated and rubbed with an oiled cloth.  

In the Pali Collection we can find two forms of writing styles: incising and surface writing.  Traditionally, a skilful scribe would incise by holding the palm leaf in one hand and using a sharp metal stylus in the other, mark characters and illustrations into the leaf. The incised lines are then inked using natural plant juices or carbon black mixed with a variety of binders such as dummala oil used commonly in Sri Lanka, gum arabic and wood oil. In Thai manuscripts it is common to find red ink, indigo and vermillion (Anupam, 2002).

This careful incision can also be seen in the Cambodian script of Pali MS 82. Between its elaborate covers of inlaid mother-of-pearl and decorative panels, are seven palm leaf bundles containing the Tripitaka or ‘Three Baskets’, the earliest most complete canon of Buddhist text said to preserve the word of the Buddha. It consists of the three pitakas or collection of scriptures: Vinaya Piṭaka (Basket of Discipline), Sūtra Piṭaka (Basket of Discourse), and Abhidharma Piṭaka (Basket of Special [or Further] Doctrine). There are many versions of the Tripitaka between schools of Buddhism, with the oldest being of the Theravada Buddhist tradition first recorded in Pali language, known as the Pali Canon.

The second form of palm leaf writing: surface writing, is visible on some of the Burmese manuscripts in the Pali Collection such as Pali MS 1. Surface writing is traditionally done with a reed pen, also using carbon black and a binder. Although the oiled, smooth surface of palm leaf allows the flow of ink on the surface, it also prevents ink from penetrating or staining the leaf. This, coupled with abrasion from other folios in the stack and mechanical stress of turning the leaves, leads to surface text becoming very faint over time as seen in some of the collection’s Burmese manuscripts.

Palm leaf manuscripts, especially those on palmyra leaf, tend to loose flexibility; becoming brittle and browning as they age. This is due to deterioration of the leaf structure and loss of oils over time, dehydration of the leaf, and storage in a dry environment or climate. It is also common to find wear around the edges of the leaf, to the covers and cord, sometimes loss of the original cord and covers, which may lead to historical dislocation or disordering. Fortunately most of the Pali Collection is in stable condition. The sacred leaves continuing to preserve Buddhist traditions and the care and skill of those who made them.

References

Anupam, S. (2002) Palm Leaf manuscripts of the world: material, technology and conservation, Studies in Conservation, 47:sup1, pp. 15-24

Freedman, R. (2005) Turning over old leaves: palm leaves used in South Asian manuscripts. The Book and Paper Group Annual, 24, pp. 99-102.

Jayawickrama, N. A. (1972-3) Pali Manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 55, pp. 146-76.

Shi, Z., Setlur, S. and Govindaraju, V. (2004) Digital enhancement of palm leaf manuscript images using normalization techniques. International Journal on Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 2.

Van Dyke, Y. (2009) Sacred Leaves: The Conservation and Exhibition of Early Buddhist Manuscripts on Palm Leaves. The Book and Paper Group Annual, 28, pp. 83-97.

The third and final piece of our series celebrating South Asian Heritage Month explores Javanese history and culture with Riza Hussaini and Prince Panji, through Javanese MS 16 from the Southeast Asian Manuscripts Collection.

As seen from the map below, Java is not located within the area traditionally considered as South Asia, but this blog has been included in the SAHM series to demonstrate the significant religious and artistic influence from India.

Panji is a legendary Javanese Prince whose cycle of tales developed and has been performed since the Majapahit era (13th century).

There are many variations to the Tales of Panji and there is no single authoritative version. Growing up, I watched and listened to many tales of Prince Panji.

Depending on who is telling and which version, all tales travel through a stirring wave of sub-plots, complexities on themes of adventure, war and love. Whilst the core story remains the same, Panji in search of his betrothed, interpretations expanded to include side stories, disguises, name changes and so on. The tales drew from indigenous inspirations and often attributed to be a pioneering example of original Javanese literature.

My favourite telling would be the tragic but love-conquers-all tale of Dewi Angreni and Panji interwoven with mythical nuances, re-incarnation and unification. There is somewhat a happy conclusion but with the sacrifice and murder of one of the protagonists.

Devouring these tales through wayang (puppet performance) particularly wayang topeng (masked plays) and wayang kulit (shadow puppetry) were my preferred interpretations.

These elaborate theatrical plays, which can go on for hours (often between four and seven), transported my young self into the world of my ancestors. As Hinduism and Buddhism influenced old Javanese culture, plays portraying the Mahabharata and Ramayana also appeared in my repertoire. Cultures from the Indian sub-continent considerably influenced Javanese culture through religion, script and language.

What I had not known to exist were manuscripts of these tales. As it had largely been orally transmitted to me, with a romantic and naïve disposition I thought the dalang (master narrators/puppeteers) were keepers of these stories. Sung and retold passing down these tales.

Looking back, I suppose I felt the tales to be sacred growing up with immigrant Javanese grandparents.

Therefore, when I happened across the Southeast Asian Manuscripts Collections in storage, I welled up with emotion. It was to crudely put it ‘my blood line on a shelf’. I feel it my duty to share and celebrate this part of my heritage more; to enlighten people about its abundant culture and not simply resign it to the ‘exotic’, ‘mystical’ objects from the under-researched, lesser-regarded Far East.

The Javanese Manuscript

Javanese manuscript structures have evolved throughout their history. The earliest recorded form is the palm-leaf manuscripts known as lontar (palm leaf), which was widespread in Southeast Asia, the materiality of which is discussed in detail in a previous blog. 

Javanese MS 16 was written on laid paper; according to Ricklefs and Voorhoeve, Dutch paper and appears to be bound in codex form.

Prior to this, Javanese Paper, referred to as dluwang, a writing material used in addition to palm leaves, were the primary writing surfaces. Javanese Paper is made from the bast (inner bark) of the mulberry tree. The process is labour intensive; beating the bast, treating with rice water, drying the flattened fibres and later burnishing with cowrie or coconut shells to enable a smoother surface to write.

The bark of the tree was also used, while most often recognised as Austronesian craft largely to make bark cloth known as tapa, Javanese people also made clothing, housewares or as a substitute for leather with this material. 

As luck would have it, there are examples of dluwang in our collections; fortunately, Javanese MS 6 is digitised in full.

Javanese MS 6 – Tapel Adam, pp 17-18 written on dluwang (Javanese Paper)

By the 18th century, use of European paper gained momentum and prestige due to increased imports of Dutch made paper but was very expensive and could be difficult to procure. At the time when this manuscript was scripted, it was only the bigger Javanese courts, Dutch and British trading companies/colonists who could access and afford this.

The Tale in Three Images

These are the only digitised images from Javanese MS 16 and according to the catalogue record, illustrate the tale of ‘Raden Panji Smara Bangun’, though he is also known as Panji Asmarabangun. I have yet to consult this manuscript physically therefore can only infer that the princess in this tale would be Dewi Chandrakirana, as she features in the more well-known tales.

My observations are based on these digitised images bolstered by independent research and years’ old memories. While I can perhaps string a sentence or two together, enough to hold a conversation in Javanese, I am unable to read the script.  

The first image is of a Karawitan Jawa (Javanese Sound Art). Karawitan typically accompanies performances and traditional ceremonies and is composed of a gamelan orchestra and singers.

In wayang, along with the Karawitan, the dalang narrates the story affording the characters’ voices and manipulates all the puppets.

Notice Batara Kala, God of time and destruction, discreetly peeping. An omen of misfortune or protection depending on how one wishes to view him.

The next image illustrates beautifully in wayang style, a scene in a Royal Court. Identified by the pattern on the cloth worn by the seated figure, which is the portrayal of persons of nobility, though whom this might be remains unclear. The character on the left seen here head-bowed could be our Prince, who is frequently depicted in his signature-curved headdress. Persons of higher status are usually illustrated highly stylised whilst commoners with realistic faces, compare this image with the gamelan performers previously.

The final image possibly portrays (on the left) Prabu Klana Sewandana a wanton King (Prabu) resolute to make Dewi Chandrakirana his wife. In wayang topeng, he is often portrayed by a red mask, and wiry moustache. The figure on the right resembles so much of Goddess Durga, Hindu Goddess and Mother of the Universe, yet another homage to the influences of Hinduism. Although in Java, she very much has her own distinct local identity and mythologies.

Much of Javanese literature is written in verse and meant to be sung, recited; think Dante’s Divine Comedy with its cantos and is more commonly written without page numbers. Pepadan (markers)are used instead, to indicate the end of a verse/canto. These markers would assist the singers when reciting, enabling them to invoke suitable feelings and emotions for the following verse(s).

In the Southeast Asian Manuscript Collections, we have several examples of pepadan as shown below:

The Tales of Panji have endured centuries of change throughout the establishment of what we know today as Indonesia. It is still present today in many aspects of Javanese and Indonesian culture, not just limited to the arts. His fame has spread throughout Indonesia, across the Malay Peninsula to other Southeast Asian nations; it has even been suggested that the cycle is taught in schools in Thailand. All this and only in 2017 that the Tales of Panji were recognised and listed under UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. 

The Tales of Panji are not mere love stories; they are allegories where Panji’s journey in search of Chandrakirana could be seen to represent the struggle, perseverance and success of the Javanese people to establish a unique identity.

This is only a snippet of the Southeast Asian Manuscript Collections, a rich resource revealing the cultures of the Indonesian archipelago and more. Considering the rarity of these objects, it would be a shame for them to remain under-studied and not more widely known.

For now, Panji remains safeguarded our stores, hopefully not too long before he can enchant us once again.

Further reading:

M. C. Ricklefs and P. Voorhoeve, Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain: A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Indonesian Languages in British Public Collections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)

A new digital collection launched this week on Manchester Digital Collections brings together an dynamic mix of items from our medical collections for the first time. The Library holds an outstanding collection of manuscript, print and archival material relating to the history of medicine, which offers a rich resource for medical humanities research and teaching, and for anyone interested in the history of human bodies and how our ideas of health and disease have changed over time.

From an extremely rare 16th-century English herbal to a 19th-century anatomical ‘flap-book’ intended for the use of midwives, these eleven items form the basis of a digital collection that will be expanded over time to reflect the diversity and extent of the Library medical holdings, which include over 70,000 printed items and archival and manuscript material from over 30 individual collections.

Find out more about our medical collections here. Some highlights are showcased below:

Explore these items in depth on Manchester Digital Collections and stay tuned for new additions from our medical collections.

Special Collections Reader Services Co-ordinator, Kate Miller writes – 

After tireless work by many people and teams across the whole of the University Library, the Reader Services team were able to resume work in the John Rylands Library in a very limited capacity, in late July. 

The initial pilot was successful, and we are now continuing to offer a limited in-person service to all University of Manchester staff and students. See here for the latest updates on the service.  

A very exciting opportunity has come from the current restrictive situation, and that is the development of a brand-new digital appointments service. We can now offer anyone the opportunity to book an hour-long appointment to view our Special Collections material from the comfort of your own home, using a visualiser and Zoom!  Read on to find out how… 

How have the Reader Services team found being back in the Library? 

After working from home for a long period of time we have now gradually started to return to the John Rylands Library as a team. This is an exciting new phase, as we have new ways of working and new and brilliant ways of engaging with our readers. We are grateful for the hard work of many colleagues across the Library, who have put in place processes to prioritise the health and safety of all staff members and readers. 

Currently we are based in the stunning John Rylands Library Historic Reading Room. We are working in two bubbles; this means that we are working with the same set of colleagues each week as well as being connected to our other team members on Microsoft Teams.  

Throughout the pandemic we have used Teams to communicate, and this has made us all feel better connected and closer to each other. This connection has been of great benefit and has shown an improvement in the wellbeing of team members – it has also fostered greater team spirit and collaborative working. 

However, nothing beats seeing someone in person and it has been wonderful to be able to see each other once again (whilst maintaining social distance of course). 

Angela Petyt-Whittaker, Reader Services Assistant: 

After several months of working from home, being able to enter the Library once more was a rather strange experience at first. However, I soon became familiar again with the vast storage areas and the wonderful array of collections. Being able to interact with readers in person (and on Zoom) has been really enjoyable. It is a privilege to work in the Historic Reading Room, sat at my desk sat facing the Apse – with the statue of John Rylands silently keeping watch. 

Catherine Smith, Reader Services Assistant: 

When I heard that we were due to go back into the library I was both relieved and daunted! After working from home for over four months and having hardly gone out at all due to caring responsibilities I was really nervous. I needn’t have worried at all. Kate Miller (Reader Services Co-ordinator) met us by the main door of the John Rylands Library and everything was in place to make sure we were safe and felt secure. Hand sanitiser when we arrived, then we followed the one way system to the beautiful Historic Reading Room to set ourselves up and get ready for our readers. The day went quickly and it was lovely to welcome readers and help them settle in. Everyone was brilliant and abided by the rules, face masks were on from the start! I know that this situation is not normal and it doesn’t feel like it at all, but I’m glad we are gradually returning as a team and hopefully we will go from strength to strength and become even better. I returned home after the first day absolutely shattered, but really glad I’d done it. It was lovely to see my team mates again after such a long time away. 

Ian Graham, Reader Services Assistant: 

It is over-egging the pudding, perhaps, to say that on returning to the Rylands I felt like Odysseus setting ashore in Ithaca after his long time away; nonetheless, I was very glad to be back. 

Throughout the lockdown, we contemplated various safe ways of running Special Collections once the library building reopened. Whilst safety may yield some necessary evils, adopting the Historic Reading Room as our temporary home cannot be counted amongst them. The Room was chosen as it is spacious enough for everyone to maintain a healthy distance and is quiet and nicely lit; but also, as a bonus, it is hard to imagine a working environment more pleasing to the eye. 

Our working practices have altered considerably. Some changes require little to no effort on our part; we wear masks, keep our hands clean and quarantine all materials for seventy two hours in advance of a reader’s visit. Other changes, however, are a little more onerous. With the lifts restricted to prevent contamination, retrieving materials does sometimes mean we are using the stairs to navigate the Rylands’s four floors, basements and cellars; whilst the descents aren’t too bad, the ascents can be a touch punishing, and ruthlessly highlight the after-effects of any slovenliness and over-indulgence during the lockdown. 

Despite this, it is good to have an albeit limited number of readers using the Library again. One of the pleasures of working in Special Collections is keeping company with committed, focused scholars, many of whom are engaged in ground-breaking research; after the relative isolation of working from home, and the air of stagnation it sometimes produced, this is especially welcome. It is also good to see the (masked and distant) faces of colleagues and, naturally, to be amongst the collections once more. 

How did our readers find their visit? 

Since the partial re-opening of the service, there has been a high demand to book into the limited spaces available, especially by those who are facing looming deadlines. It is a real pleasure to welcome back familiar faces and we are so grateful for everyone’s support in abiding by the measures which are in place to keep everyone safe. 

Max Maxfield – Researcher says: 

It was great to be back after all this time and there were no problems at all with the set-up. The staff were very helpful, the rules were explained clearly and the workplace organisation was more than safe. Plus, I really appreciated the opportunity to finally work in the historic reading room, the only issue I had was stopping myself from gazing at the surroundings. 

So, what are digital appointments and how can you book one? 

The way we are living and working has changed. Many of us are now extremely familiar with the use of online tools for communication and collaboration.  

When planning our reopening, we knew that we would need to make changes to ensure those researchers who would be unable to visit us in person would still have access to the collections. 

The solution seemed quite clear. We already had a visualiser in the Library and we were all familiar with using Zoom for meetings. So with the expertise of colleagues (especially Dominic Marsh, Jamie Robinson and Chris Higson), the two were connected and we can now live-stream our world-class Special Collections across the world. 

Each appointment is an hour (slightly less if there are more than two participants) and we can go through the material at the direction of the researcher. Not all material is suitable for these appointments due to size, condition, content or location (we cannot yet access Main Library Special Collections) and it is always worth checking first if the material has already been digitised. 

So far, it has been extremely successful, and in the short time we have been open, we have helped many researchers to view material which they would ordinarily have to visit us to see. Reactions from those using the service have been positive, we’ve had comments such as: 

“it is a great kindness on your part and on the part of the UML, to be so flexible about helping overseas researchers like me during these uncertain times”  

“what a great service” 

Although this service was developed in reaction to the restrictions placed on us due to the pandemic, it is certainly something that is here to stay.  

The opportunities that come from us being able to open access to all researchers regardless of location, not just those that can visit, are huge.  

It is very straightforward to participate in a digital appointment- we are here to guide and help you at every step.  

If you are interested in arranging a digital appointment, please contact the Reader Services Team for more information. 

The Rylands Reflects, a new blog series, will explore the history of the John Rylands Library, our collections, and our current practice as heritage professionals in the context of racism, colonisation and representation of marginalised groups.

The series begins with a statement from the University of Manchester Library (also shared on our website) on diversifying our collections and practices. Over the next months, we will be sharing regular posts, starting in September by exploring the links both John Rylands and Enriqueta Rylands, founder of the library, had with the Atlantic slave trade and cotton cultivation by enslaved people. We welcome feedback on these posts.

Statement: Diversifying Collections and Practices within the University of Manchester Library

Following the shocking murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 and the worldwide protests that it provoked, we have taken time to reflect on the implications for us and the steps that we need to take at the University of Manchester Library, to dismantle racism and hateful ideologies wherever we encounter them in our practice as information professionals.

This statement is the product of extensive discussions across the Library, who naturally have a range of perspectives and opinions. It is not intended to be the final word on the subject, but the first: it reflects our initial thinking, which will no doubt change as we continue to learn and to act. Our commitment to counter historic and contemporary racism and other injustices must be demonstrated not only in words, but in a series of long overdue actions, which are outlined below.

We recognise that racial inequality is only one of many inequalities which permeate our collections and our work, but we believe that this is the moment to commit to permanent changes which will increase diversity in the sector and the representation and contributions of communities previously obscured within the collections we curate.

The University for which we work is committed to challenging racism and becoming proactively inclusive, reflecting the diverse communities whom we serve and work with. As professionals within a largely white sector of librarians and archivists, we acknowledge the racial inequalities in our sector, in our practices and in the collections we care for, share and promote. We will deepen our understanding of the challenges of curating this material, while also seizing the opportunities found in our commitment to active reflection and change. We will engage in respectful discussion and take specific actions to improve racial equality both in our sector and in the wider world which we influence.

There are particular resonances at the John Rylands Library, which was created and developed within a particular historical context which benefited from enslavement and the slave trade. The materials that have accrued over its 120-year history have largely been collected by individuals and groups from privileged white backgrounds, and many are directly linked to British imperialism. The same is true of many other collections held by the University of Manchester Library.

We can and will situate these materials in their appropriate historical contexts; engage with communities reflected in this material; encourage critical reflection and reinterpretation of our collections to reveal neglected histories; develop the collections to more faithfully represent Britain’s diverse society; and use the collections to promote meaningful dialogue to counter interpersonal, structural and institutional racism.

We will:

• Provide space and support for staff to deepen their personal and professional understanding of racism and discuss its implication in our practices.
• Collaboratively review the ways we describe the material in our collections and work to identify and address racial bias through initiatives such as content warnings and contextualising or amending historic metadata.
• Advocate and act to decolonise the curriculum through increased understanding and the sharing of relevant resources with colleagues directly involved in teaching.
• Review our content development policies to give greater priority to material reflecting stories and voices of traditionally marginalised groups and subjects.  
• Engage meaningfully with BAME communities to support the reinterpretation of collections materials and their research.
• Support the sharing of lived experiences, where this is appropriate, and listen with respect.
• Work to embed the stories and voices of diverse groups/histories in the way we interpret the library and its collections to visitors at the John Rylands Library, through exhibitions and public programmes.
• Support research and professional posts aimed at diversifying the workforce and improving diversity in the interpretation of collections.
• Express our views with empathy and respect and engage in meaningful debate where appropriate.

These actions will form a key strand of the Library’s operational plans and priorities, where they will be developed in greater detail and with measurable outcomes. We will regularly review and report back on progress towards diversifying our collections and practices.

Welcome to our collection encounter – Manchester, Maps, Beer and Victorians. Normally this collection encounter would be run in our fabulous Historic Reading Room by a member of our Visitor Engagement team. As a team, it is one of our favourite activities to be part of at the Library, as it allows us to bring out some of the amazing items from our collections and share them with everyone. As we can’t have a chat about these items in person at the moment, we thought we could still bring them to you via this blog. So let us dive in and have a look together at this wonderful map collection.

In this encounter we will be looking at the University of Manchester’s Map Collection, specifically at maps from the Manchester Geographical Society Collection.
The Manchester Geographical Society was founded in 1884 by a group of Manchester-based businessmen, whose aim was to publish geographical research on the north-west of England, to pursue geographical knowledge and to encourage interest into the topic. The Map Collection at the University is one of the largest collections in the North West, with over 140,000 maps sheets and 1,300 Atlases, spanning every country in the world.

The Manchester Geographical Society Collection contains amazing maps of the city where it was founded. The map below produced by William Green was the first large scale map of Manchester. The original print measured over eleven feet by nine feet. The map shows the expansion of Manchester as a powerhouse of the industrial revolution. Interestingly in this map you can see areas where streets have been plotted but not yet built upon.

Green intentionally extended the map beyond the boundaries of the existing city, recognising that Manchester’s rapid expansion would encompass the surrounding areas. A lot of the streets and layout are still recognisable on a modern map of Manchester.

At the top of the map we have this wonderful illustration of Manchester personified. Here Manchester is represented as a woman, on her left hand side stands Britannia representing trade and to her right kneeling is a figure representing industry. At the feet of the figure on the right hand side you can see a beehive surrounded by the tools of Manchester’s industrial success, bobbins and shuttles. This is also one of the earliest depictions linking Manchester with the bee, a symbol that can be found across the city from lampposts to buildings. The bee appeared as a symbol of Manchester during this period, the worker bee representing the hard working labours and the city being a hive of activity at the time.

Maps were not only created to show Manchester’s changing landscape, they were also used to keep track of other things – for example, beer. When people think of drinking maps, it is often associated with pub-crawls and long summer days, following a route more often than not marked out on Google Maps. However, anyone attempting this route would more than struggle to get through every public house shown on this drink map of Manchester, published by United Kingdom Alliance in 1889.

Each red circle on the map shows buildings where beer can be consumed in Manchester. In this close up we have zoomed into Deansgate, the home of our own library. Back then there would have been a few more places for our staff to have after work drinks.

This map was not only created to mark out the establishments, but was also used as part of an anti-drinking campaign created by United Kingdom Alliance, a Temperance movement. During this period public houses were the centre of the community in Victorian society. They were a place for people to meet and talk. But they also provided an escape from harsh working and living conditions. The warmth and liveliness of the pub and the availability of cheap beer due to the Beerhouse act of 1830 was an irresistible pull to those living in cold, squalid and cramped housing. The first drink map of Manchester was commissioned by the City Mayor and was produced for the use of local magistrates who were responsible for issuing drink licenses. Different licences were required for different types of premises and the type of drink they sold (beer, wine or spirits). Licensed vendors were shopkeepers who could sell a range of alcoholic drinks, whilst beer houses or beer shops could sell only beer, to be consumed either on or off the premises.

The drink map provides an insight into how maps can be used to form differing viewpoints. There is no such thing as a perfectly accurate map. All maps distort reality and convey bias in one form or another (whether deliberately or not). In the case of the drink map, it was first created for administrative purposes and for the issuing of drink licenses, then it was published in the Manchester Guardian in 1889, accompanied by an article about the drink trade in the city.

The map was then taken up by a Temperance movement, a movement that was founded as an anti alcoholic group in response to the rise in crime and poverty in industrial cities, which was seen to be caused by alcohol . Temperance societies worked hard to tackle the drink trade and relied heavily on print culture to disseminate their message through books, magazines, sermons, tracts and biographies of reformed drunkards. They used visual images (including the drink map) to great effect to promote their cause. The United Kingdom Alliance, reproduced the map again, this time with a commentary employing it as a tool of propaganda to argue against the distribution and consumption of alcohol. This was used to show that pubs and beer houses were concentrated within working class districts such as Ancoats, Hulme and Harpurhey whilst the more affluent suburbs are characterised by much fewer licensed premises of any type. The movement used the map to encourage a system whereby people could argue against a liquor licence being granted in their area. Looking at it from a social and historical perspective, the maps shows us that there are clusters in poorer areas of the city.

Alcohol was seen as being responsible for increased crime and poverty, placing an unwanted burden on a prospering city. The map shows the extent of liquor outlets like a rash all over the face of the city, with clusters in the poorer districts. The design of the map (red spots on a white background) reinforces their message. Accompanying text refers to “The foul blotches of drink that disfigure the map” and goes on to describe how money wasted on alcohol robbed decent trades of their profits. This further reinforces the message of alcohol as a blight on society.

Maps like these from our Manchester Geographical Society chart the history of our world and our city. Maps can tell us the thoughts and opinions of those that drew them and used them, as well as offering us a glimpse into the past. Though times have changed and technology has advanced, maps continue to help us navigate and understand the world around us. We hope this collection bite has provided an insight into Victorian Manchester and our map collection. Personally, it has been interesting to see the change in Manchester and at how the city was viewed from a Victorian perspective. Let us know what you thought of these maps and if you have enjoyed this map snapshot from our collection.

Many thanks to Carly Richardson and Donna Sherman for all of their help and research provided to write this piece.

The Photo Jewellery collection held at The John Rylands Library is an interesting, thought provoking insight into culture and identity.  Photography was an invention of the Victorian era and photographic jewellery represented a permanent way to store a memory and carry an image of beloved friends and family.  Since the opportunity to be photographed was not as prevalent as it is today, a photograph was a special and precious object.  

Small photographic portraits could be worn on silk or velvet ribbons around the neck, as brooches, rings, bracelets, in lockets, cufflinks and pocket watches.  Often the photographs were mounted onto gold, silver or non-precious metals and set under glass or celluloid covers for protection.  Portrait jewellery was a sentimental favourite, a place to hold a memory within a jewelled capsule to be carried or worn, kept close to the heart or placed discretely in a pocket or simply held in the palm of a hand. An engraved notation relating to specific dates and love messages was sometimes used as a personal touch.

In the image below we see a hand tinted daguerreotype portrait of an expressionless face looking out to meet our gaze. Unlike photographs printed onto paper from negatives, the daguerreotype is a one-of-a-kind, detailed photographic image made on highly polished silver-plated copper sheets exposed to iodine vapours. They are very delicate and easily damaged. Therefore, due to the fragile nature of the material, the images are usually placed inside a locket or other jewellery. The daguerreotype process required sitters to sit still for up to 15 minutes; today we capture an image in a moment.

The daguerreotype above is slightly damaged around the edges and fits awkwardly inside the bed of the brooch.  The design of the frame adds a decorative finish to the object. The identity of the person protected inside the gilded keepsake is unknown to us and a narrative is created.  The simple act of looking and assessing a face enables us to consider all visual clues regarding age, gender, mood and emotions.  We are curious about the relationship between the image inside the locket and the owner.  We scrutinise the portrait and automatically assess and formulate an opinion based on our own experiences and beliefs. Interestingly there are known specific mechanisms in the brain that react when we see faces.

The image below is a hand-coloured daguerreotype portrait of a fair-haired, bearded person.  The image and a lock of hair are placed together and we assume that the hair once belonged to the person in the photograph.  Victorians kept hair as a way of remembering their loved ones.  Hair does not decay, and if cared for properly it will remain as stable as on the day it was cut from a loved one’s hair.  The hair and beard in the image could be mistaken for today’s contemporary look but the outfit is clearly Victorian. The person in the portrait has not retained the same timeless quality as the hair; the hair looks freshly cut when compared to the faded image.

Today ‘selfies’ taken on mobile phones are now a common practice and part of today’s culture.  Obsession with the self and how we look and how we are seen is now the norm.  With the swipe of a finger we can access a multitude of images and manipulate the way we look to enhance or erase aspects of our features.  We store and carry images of loved ones, and other photographic memories on mobile phones held close and always within easy reach.  Interestingly, mobile phones are sometimes carried in highly decorative cases and as such have become a fashion accessory, a personal archive to store images.

Artists often use the face and discuss issues of identity in order to question trends and the human condition.  Regardless of time and technology, a portrait of the self or other transcends time and connects us to human emotions. Photography, portraiture and how we are seen is a crucial element of art history and popular culture. 

The Carcanet archives are living and growing constantly: this brings exciting research and outreach opportunities, an example being the exhibition celebrating 50 years of the press, which was supposed to be launched on the 19th of March in the Rylands and was halted because of the spread of COVID19.

The fact that a large proportion of the material included in this archive was collected in Manchester by a press specializing in all forms of contemporary English-speaking poetries is not only geographically but also conceptually significant.

In this blog I will explore some of the objects that are currently installed in the exhibition cases but haven’t been shown to the public yet: this publication will serve the purpose of giving my own reflections on items that I’ve found significantly stimulating to work on for a variety of reasons.

The starting point of this exhibition is the explosion of the bomb on Saturday 15 June 1996. The IRA detonated a 1,500-kilogram (3,300 lb) lorry bomb on Corporation Street in the centre of Manchester.

It was the biggest bomb detonated in Great Britain since the Second world war, it targeted the city’s infrastructure and economy and caused significant damage to neighbouring buildings, including the Corn Exchange, where the press was located.

If I had to choose an opening object that made me reflect and gave me more of a tangible feel of a shock to the system, it has to be the tile from the Corn Exchange that Michael Schmidt collected in the days following the explosion, and that has been kindly loaned to us for the exhibition.

As a book conservator, when faced with an object even so small and trivial at a first glance, I had an immediate discomfort in facing something that went beyond my knowledge in terms of treatment, and on the back on my mind whilst observing it, I couldn’t help thinking of the grandeur of the Victorian buildings in the area that was blasted, and the appearance of a Mancunian quarter that has changed exceptionally in the last 20 years.

The tile carried on its surface the memory of an incident that I wasn’t sure I wanted to erase: the patina, a thin surface layer that usually develops on something because of use, age, or chemical action.

I initiated a discussion with the curator, Jessica Smith, and after investigating cleaning procedures, we agreed that in this case it would have been better to give this small object a clean with a cotton swab and some deionized water.

A document that didn’t require any cleaning and was purposely left soiled is Sisson’s Bomb-damaged manuscript.

The physical memory carried by the documents contained in the Carcanet offices in the aftermath of such a pivotal event shines through the footprints and the wear and tear on this bundle of documents, where dust and dirt can be seen on the pages (covered by copyright).

For an observer outside a conservation department it might be tricky to leave a document like this in its current state, as in a naïve perception of the act of conserving we would want to restore a state of perfection that would unequivocally remove poignant traces of history. Once the information is lost, there is no way to get it back, other than using surrogates.

Such alterations ethically speaking are against one of the main principles of conservation: the minimum intervention. As conservators it is our main responsibility to respect the objects history and work on ourselves to find solutions that reflect on the choice of doing as little as possible.

I thought it useful to follow this thoughts with a frame from the footage filmed by Michael Schmidt in August 1996 when he was granted access to the Corn exchange building: this picture gives the reader a flavour of an unseen video that the heritage imaging team has worked on and that would have been in the digital kiosk in the gallery.

In my opinion this recording is invaluable in its striking content, and gave me as a foreigner an understanding of an historical event that I had no recollection about until I moved to Manchester.

The blast is now credited by some as kick-starting Manchester’s regeneration in architecture and creativity.

It certainly provided the poets associated with the press grounds for a boost of inspiration, like in Alison Brackenbury’s and Less Murray’s poems.

The beauty of these flat items resides mainly in the power of the text and the use of the blue colour, which stands out from the white background.

Their nature gives the conservator a satisfying job when choosing how to display them: they sit on a base made of conservation grade card, held with struts.  This creates the illusion of the items floating in the exhibition case, as in this picture:

I hope you have enjoyed this insight into exhibitions and Carcanet.

For a complementary perspective and further insight into the Carcanet archives check out the wonderful podcast series The Rylands Brief, produced by Jessica Smith and many collaborators during lockdown.

By Dr Natalie Zacek, American Studies, University of Manchester. The Rylands Reflects series will explore the history of the John Rylands Library, our collections, and our current practice as heritage professionals in the context of racism, colonisation and representation of marginalised groups. This is the second post of an ongoing series.

In recent years, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged universities and cultural institutions around the world to examine the ways in which their founding and flourishing was aided by the Atlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery, or by the profits thereof. In the Manchester context, it is appropriate that any such enquiry begin with the John Rylands Library: not only was Rylands one of Victorian Britain’s leading manufacturers of cotton, some of which was cultivated by enslaved men and women on plantations in the Americas, but his wife Enriqueta, the Library’s founder, was born in Cuba at the height of its era of “sugar and slavery.” Enriqueta’s childhood and family background is explored in the next post in this series: “Whiter than white: Enriqueta Rylands’s Cuban roots”. This post focuses on the monetary foundations of the John Rylands Library, the cotton business of John Rylands.  

Although John Rylands left a substantial archive (part of the Library’s collections: Rylands and Sons Archive, GB 133 RYL), it includes no hints of  his personal views of slavery. It’s worth noting that in 1845 Rylands & Sons offered its customers the option to purchase “free grown cotton” along with its standard product, which was, by implication, cultivated  by enslaved labourers, but the company’s motivations for doing so are unclear. It is possible that John Rylands had some sympathy for the abolitionist cause, and hoped to convince his customers to choose commodities generated by free labour; on the other hand, he may have been a canny businessman who was aware that many of his fellow Britons, including a large number of the inhabitants of Greater Manchester, detested slavery, even as practiced in other nations, and hoped to retain their custom by providing them with a guilt-free option, rather than causing them to boycott his products. It is quite plausible that Rylands’ actions were motivated by both of these ideas. Although he was willing to trade in slave-produced commodities, he also appears to have had some sympathy with the enslaved. He owned a copy of the Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference (R20358), an account of a meeting held in 1867 in Paris, and in January 1876 his name appears on the list of patrons of a series of concerts held at the Manchester Free Trade Hall by the “Jubilee Singers, emancipated slaves of Fisk University, USA.” The Jubilee Singers’ performance of “Quaint hymns and melodies” may have been particularly appealing to him, as he was a collector of hymns. A copy of the Special Report has been digitised by the Hathi Trust here.

It is, however, beyond doubt that the firm of Rylands and Sons, whose profits underwrote the creation of the Library, was intimately connected to the practice of slavery in the Americas.  The great majority of the cotton which this and other Lancastrian firms imported for processing was grown in the American South, and nearly all of it was picked by enslaved men, women, and children.  The extent to which Rylands and his fellow textile manufacturers were reliant upon slave-grown Southern cotton is clear from the fact that, after the outbreak of the American Civil War and the blockade of Confederate seaports by Union gunboats, the entire region suffered what became known as the “Cotton Famine.” As supplies dried up, factory owners laid off their workers, many of whom suffered tremendous hardship and were forced to rely upon private charity or public works projects to support themselves and their families. Although many of these “operatives” had little education, and some were illiterate, most were well aware of the reasons underlying the “Famine,” and knowledgeable about the connections between the Southern plantation and the Lancashire factory. This understanding was the cause of the famous meeting held at the Free Trade Hall on New Year’s Eve of 1862, at which the working men and women present expressed their support of President Lincoln’s blockade, of the war, and of the struggle to end slavery—despite the fact that these events were the source of great suffering for them.

But although they and many of their fellow Mancunians were actively opposed to slavery, the city’s rise to a position of unprecedented wealth and power within Britain was due primarily to the flourishing of cotton manufacturing and associated industries. The Library is just one of many buildings in and around the city, public and private alike, which is closely connected to slave-grown commodities.

By Elizabeth Gow, Special Collections Manuscript Curator and Archivist. The Rylands Reflects series explores the history of the John Rylands Library, our collections, and our current practice as heritage professionals in the context of racism, colonisation and representation of marginalised groups. This is the third post of an ongoing series.

Part of the ‘Rylands reflects’ series, this blog-post focuses on the Cuban childhood and family background of Enriqueta Rylands (1843-1908), founder of the John Rylands Library. This marble statue in the Historic Reading Room, portrays Rylands, like her husband, in the purest of whites. But what was her racial background? Does her childhood help us to think about the ways white supremacy is written into the John Rylands Library?

Enriqueta Augustina Tennant was born on 31 May 1843 in Matanzas, Cuba, then under Spanish colonial rule. Her mother, Juana Camila Dalcour (1818-1855), was also born in Cuba. She was not Spanish-Cuban, but came from French and Scottish roots. Her family had built up huge wealth trading in land and sugar, profiting from slavery and the exploitation of indigenous peoples in the southern states of America and in Cuba. Enriqueta’s father, Stephen Cattley Tennant (1800-1848), was a British merchant from a Leeds family, with a shipping business in Liverpool. In his 20s, Stephen moved to Havana, Cuba, to look after his family’s business interests. Like most trans-Atlantic merchants, the family profited from sugar, cotton, tobacco and timber – goods produced by the labour of enslaved people.

When Enriqueta was five, her life changed dramatically. On a business trip to England in 1848, her father died in a railway accident. The following year, his unnamed heirs (including presumably the six-year-old Enriqueta) were registered as British slave-owners in Havana. They owned an unknown number of “house slaves”, who were “hired out” – rented to other slave holders for a profit. It is likely that their mother also owned slaves independently of her husband, but as she wasn’t a British subject she wasn’t included in the report. In 1850, Enriqueta’s Cuban childhood came to an end. Juana Dalcour sailed with her daughters for New York (her son would join them later). There she married Julian Fontana, the pianist and Polish exile she had met in Havana. The family moved to Paris, living among radicals and artists. But they were still living from the proceeds of slavery, apparently receiving an income from Juana’s share in the sugar plantation and mill, La Reunion Deseada. When Juana died in 1855, Enriqueta and her twin were 12. The widowed Fontana went to Cuba where he tried, and failed, to seek Juana’s inheritance. Enriqueta’s sixteen-year-old sister Sofia died there in 1859. The younger children, including her half-brother Jules Fontana, were sent to live with members of the Tennant family in England.

Enriqueta was born at the height of Cuba’s era of “sugar and slavery.” In the weeks before her birth (and that of her twin brother), people enslaved on sugar plantations nearby began to rise up against their owners, and against other white Cubans. Increasing white paranoia led to claims of a conspiracy of British abolitionists with free blacks and slaves, which became known as the Escalera. The Spanish authorities responded with terror and violence. Not long after Enriqueta’s birth, her family moved to the relative security of Havana. Here, Stephen and Juana engaged in the literary, political and musical high life, meeting the Polish pianist Julian Fontana.

As a “white creole” in Cuba, Enriqueta Tennant had been born into wealth and privilege. By her teens she was in a precarious position both financially and socially. In Victorian Britain, creole heiresses were subject to racial discrimination even while they were tolerated for their wealth. Enriqueta did not have independent wealth, nor did she immediately marry into riches. Instead, she became a ‘companion’ to Martha, the second wife of John Rylands. This was an unpaid role usually given to young women without an independent income. After Martha died, some years later, Enriqueta married John Rylands. In the notice of their marriage, she was identified as the ‘eldest surviving daughter of Stephen Cattley Tennant, Esq. of Liverpool and Havana, Cuba.’ But she wasn’t proud of her Cuban roots in the same way she was proud of her Manchester connections. Only after her death was she claimed in Cuba as a ‘Una Habanera Altruista’ (a Havana philanthropist). Inheriting vast wealth from her husband, Enriqueta Rylands reappropriated the privileges of whiteness, and one of those privileges was perhaps that of forgetting. The Library she founded was devoid of references to Cuba or to her childhood.

By referring to the founder of the Library as Mrs. Rylands, we hide one of the few clues to her heritage, her forenames: Enriqueta Augustina. These names are however displayed with pride in the scroll which marks the ultimate accolade for an adopted Mancunian – the Freedom of the City of Manchester. The contribution Rylands made to Manchester and the world of books should be explored and celebrated. But we must also remember how different her story might have been if she had not been born white.

Find out more

Raul Ruiz, ‘Mrs Rylands’s Cuban Origins’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 85.1 (2003), 121–26.

Catherine Davies, ‘Stephen Cattley Tennant, 1800-48’, Bulletin of John Rylands University Library Manchester, 85.2 (2003), 115–20.

Cecilio Tieles, ‘Julián Fontana: El Introductor de Chopin en Cuba’, Revista de Musicología, 11.1 (1988), 123 (in Spanish).

Curry-Machado, Jonathan, ‘How Cuba Burned with the Ghosts of British Slavery: Race, Abolition and the Escalera’, Slavery and Abolition, 25.1 (2004), 71–93.

As western manuscripts curator I have the great privilege of keeping some of the most marvellous medieval manuscripts here in The John Rylands Library. They are fascinating objects and tell us their stories and histories not just through the texts that they contain but through their very materiality. Some, it is true, are more beautiful, more appealing than others and our illustrated and illuminated manuscripts fall firmly into this category. They are truly works of art.

Covering a time period of almost 1,000 years the Rylands western medieval manuscripts display decorative and artistic features from most of the major periods that make up what we can very loosely call ‘medieval art’; a term which does not really capture the complexity of temporal, geographic, religious and commercial influences that are reflected on the pages of these wonders. Like the scripts used, the illustrations evidence regional styles and an image of a particular saint or landscape included in a codex may be a great clue to the provenance of a particular book. For example, this image of St Genevieve is one of the earliest perspective views of Paris, by the Dunois Master in Latin MS 164, a manuscript of French production.

Perhaps one of the most surprising elements of looking at the illustration in any medieval manuscript is the freshness of the glorious colours and lustrous gleaming gold that adorn them. A few years ago the Rylands held a superb exhibition on the ‘Alchemy of Colour’ exploring the physical ingredients that formulated the colours that still appear vibrant to us.

It explored a number of pigments commonly used in manuscript illustration, including orpiment, a vivid yellow mineral, which is highly toxic due to its key component, arsenic; vermilion red, which was made by vaporising sulphur and equally poisonous mercury; the use of gold, either rolled so fine that it could be layered gently on the pages or powdered and mixed to form shell gold paint; and the pigment prized even more than gold, lapis lazuli. Mined only in Afghanistan, this fantastically rare and expensive mineral travelled countless miles to the scriptoriums and workshops to be transformed into the deep and flawless blue we are familiar with.

Different grades of lapis lazuli produce different hues of blue, as can be seen below in these images, both from the same Persian manuscript. The pale blue is ultramarine ash, the final and poorest quality pigment released from lapis lazuli.

The constellations Andromeda & Pegasus, from Rylands Persian MS 3

Given the rarity, expense and sometimes perilous production of some of these pigments, the decoration within these works is as much an indicator of the significance placed on them as the fineness of the vellum selected to embody the manuscript. The ability to identify these ingredients offers us further clues to the production processes and sometimes authenticity of manuscripts. Much research is now focused in this area and our own Imaging and Conservation teams have worked on supporting research into pigment and ink analysis.  

In short, although they have a true undeniable beauty of their own, the decoration within these works is not really art for art’s sake, it is more layered communication heavy with meaning and symbolism. A visual language that both enhances and in some cases undercuts the text it shares space with. We have ‘lost’ some of this language and we cannot always see and understand it as fully as a medieval reader would, but it still remains accessible to us. This set of posts on medieval storytelling will explore some of the more recognisable artistic features that can help us to read these images more closely and understand their function.

Next – Medieval Storytelling: Ave Marina

The pricelessness of lapis lazuli and the association of blue historically as a royal colour (certainly in the Byzantine tradition) meant that throughout the 14^th and 15^th centuries the ultramarine blue pigment that this rare mineral produced would be reserved for the most special and revered usage by western illustrators. It was used as the colour of the heavens and even more specifically, to clothe the Queen of Heaven herself, the Virgin Mary, who even gave her name to the colour, ‘Marian blue’. However, it must be noted that the blue pigment in a medieval manuscript is not always necessarily lapis lazuli, as azurite was a cheaper and more plentiful alternative.

Rylands Ivory 6 (6^th century) and the Nativity from Rylands Latin MS 38

In early iconography Mary was literally an Empress, commonly seated on a throne holding the Christ child as in this ivory above. In western art this image later softened and we begin to see an emphasis on the Virgin’s humanity, showing her more frequently as a tender young mother (1). The formality of her throne was gone but the ‘royal’ blue remained.

The four images below are all of the annunciation from Rylands manuscripts ranging from the 13^th to the 16^th centuries. Clearly there are significant stylistic differences, but in each a consistent symbolism is also apparent. Naturally, each of the figures of Mary is clothed either fully or partially in her characteristic blue.

Gabriel appears to Mary and the scene is an interior one: Mary is enclosed, reminding us that she is ‘intact’, i.e. a virgin. The archangel Gabriel is placed to the left and the Virgin is to the right; it is unusual to see these figures reversed. In each the divine word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove, signalling the moment of Immaculate Conception, is visible travelling towards Mary. In three of the examples Mary is kneeling, showing her submission to the will of God and she is also depicted reading, demonstrating her wisdom (2).

There are of course further clues in the images. The gold-strewn border from Latin MS 21 (above left) contains wild roses, a flower often associated with Mary (the rose without thorns) and also a peacock, an ancient symbol of Christ’s resurrection. The blue gown of Mary in Latin MS 24 (above right) is decorated with a pattern of three white dots which refers to the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In Latin MS 38 (above left) we actually see the heavenly father, a small figure in a burst of gold and of course blue, the exact blue in fact of the Virgin’s cloak, explicitly making a connection between the two figures. Similarly Latin MS 39 (above right) also signals the blue heavens between the arched frame of the room and the gold-strewn border in the same shade as Mary’s gown.

The use of gold in and around all the images (illumination) is liberal. This is another signifier. The light that shines back at us from the gold represents the light of Christ and also the eternal nature of God: unlike silver, it does not tarnish and the gold in these masterpieces remains gleaming centuries on.

Next – Medieval storytelling: From Golden Pages to the Golden Legend

• https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935420.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935420-e-62
• Wendy A. Stein. How to Read Medieval Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2016), p.109.

Symbolism around the Virgin and indeed Christ in medieval images is often multi-layered, as we have seen in the previous post; colours, animals, flowers all have their place in this sometimes very intricate communication. Perhaps the most straightforward depictions are those of the Christian saints, the early martyrs of the church who became forever associated with the recognisable features of their torture, miracles and deaths. As an example, many of us will be familiar with St Catherine and her wheel and understand that it played some part in her martyrdom.

This conversance is partly due to the success of another text of the 13^th century: the Golden Legend, a collection of hagiographies (biographies of saints and their miracles) by Jacobus de Varagine that was widely read in late medieval Europe.

This image from Latin MS 164 shows St Catherine about to be beheaded. It is a common misconception that she was martyred on the wheel, which according to the legend she miraculously breaks. This is clearly depicted in the image above.

However, not all presentations were so straightforward and sometimes a greater subtlety has been employed by the illustrator which makes us have to work a little harder to figure out the reference. The three images below are all of St Margaret. St Margaret of Antioch was tortured and imprisoned for her conversion to Christianity. She was tormented by the devil in the form of a dragon who swallowed her whole, but he was forced to expel her because of the cross that she still carried. This is shown in two of the images; the third chooses to show a far less common element of the legend, which is that Margaret was reputedly tortured with fire that miraculously did not scorch her skin.

From L-R, St Margaret in Rylands Latin 39, Rylands Latin 21, Rylands Latin 164.

The saints were the ultimate Christian role-models, aspirational in their faith and endurance, often achieving cult followings for their reported ability to intercede with God on particular matters, especially health. The popularity of saints sometimes increased and waned depending on the circumstances. St Margaret became associated with childbirth as she was essentially safely re-born from the dragon that swallowed her. This veneration of saints and retelling and re-showing of their physical piety also symbolised to the viewer that there was a link between ‘spiritual morality and earthly health’ and gave the ‘ever present possibility of a miraculous cure’ to their afflictions. (1).

Of course, one of greatest health threats to Europe in the later medieval period was the plague. It first reached the west in 1348 and killed almost half the population within a matter of months, continuing to break out periodically for centuries after (2). Characterised by discoloured swellings that sometimes developed into open wounds, some saints were identified as plague saints, able to intercede for recovery or to protect against the threat of sickness. One such example is St Sebastian whose punctured, bleeding body, shot repeatedly with arrows (from which he did not die – he miraculously revived and was later beaten to death) was a close visual reference for the marks of the disease and gave hope to those praying to him to aid recovery.

Next – Medieval Storytelling: Beyond the Borders

• Jack Hartnell, Medieval Bodies, Life Death and Art in the Middle Ages, Profile Book & The Wellcome Collection, London, 2019. P.23.
• Erika Langmuir, A Closer Look at Saints, National gallery, London, 2009, p.87.

As the final post in this series it is important to point out that there is more to the representations in medieval manuscripts than pretty and pious pictures. The devil, as it were, is in the detail and to be honest those details can get pretty weird. Let us consider the folio from Rylands Latin MS 117 below, A Psalter from the 13^th century.

Our eyes are drawn to the large gold burnished initial. It is an image of the Trinity – the Holy Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (in the form of a dove, but you knew that, didn’t you, from reading the earlier post). So far so good. Even without being able to read the Latin text we can surmise it is an important and serious section to have the full Trinity represented to introduce it. But wait, what is happening with the praying figure to the left of the initial? He seems to be being stretched between two strange beasts and come to think of it, what is going on here at the foot of the page? Acrobatic nuns and lion killing?

What is going on? Is it sacrilege? A not so subtle undercutting of the text? Possibly. A juxtaposition of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art is not a concept new to us in order to provoke a re-reading. But the important point is that a medieval reader would not be too ruffled by these images at all because of where they sit. In fact the placement is key. All are beyond the full border around the initial and completely separated from the text providing a safe disconnect. As Mikhail Bakhtin writes in Rabelais and His World:

“The men of the middle ages participated in two lives: the official and the carnival life…they co-existed in their consciousness… However in medieval art a strict dividing line is drawn is drawn between the pious and the grotesque; they exist side by side but never merge.”(1)

Certainly these grotesques as they are sometimes called are not confined to religious texts: take this example from Rylands French MS 1, Lancelot du Lac, c.1300. The tale is one of courtly love, an Arthurian romance literature focusing on the relationship between ill-fated lovers Lancelot and Guinevere. One does have to wonder what part a grumpy nun breastfeeding a monkey has to do with the story; she can be found at the bottom of a folio in volume II, sitting next to a next repair in the vellum.

Michael Camille in his seminal work on marginalia, Image on the Edge (1992), posits that this ‘naughty nun’ is likely a swipe at lax monastic celibacy, where the supposed ‘virgin’ nun has given birth to a literal monstrous sign of her all too human mistake, a mirror opposite of the Virgin Mary feeding the infant Jesus (2).

What hopefully has become clear is that in every image from a medieval manuscript that we have looked at over the course of these posts communicates much more to us if we take pains to stop and ‘read’ it. These sometimes exquisite, sometimes almost comically crude illustrations are rarely there simply to beautify the pages of a codex. It is certainly possible through practice and a little research to build up your visual vocabulary and to enhance your level of understanding of what lies beneath the surface.

• Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, Indiana University Press, 1984, p.96.
• Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art, Reaktion Books, 2004, p.30.

This post is by Collections Assistants Clare Baker and Karen Jacques

We have made good use of our time working at home during the lockdown to start the process of cataloguing the University Photographic Collection (UPC) by making additions to and amending the metadata from legacy spreadsheets.  The collection is broken down into three categories: UPC1 – portraits of staff, UPC2 – buildings on campus and UPC 3 – events and group portraits.

The University Photography Collection is a visual history of the University, its buildings and the people who helped to shape it from its beginnings as Owens College, which opened in 1851 in Richard Cobden’s house on Quay Street, Manchester, to today’s University of Manchester, created in 2004 by the amalgamation of the Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). 

These 1000 or so, mainly monochrome, photographs depict the changing campus landscape, the buildings and the people who have worked and studied here.  The images reflect not only the renowned figures who have left their mark on the University, but also some of the unsung heroes, such as porters and support staff.  It has been fascinating to put faces to names while going through these images.  Many of them are recognizable from buildings on campus, where sites have been named after these inspirational figures.  We start our journey with an image of John Owens and the buildings named after him. He was the merchant and philanthropist whose legacy in 1846 enabled the founding of Owens College.  So our present day University owes him a great debt of thanks.

Another familiar name from campus was that of ‘Roscoe’, although the person himself was a mystery to us, but no longer! Meet Sir Henry Roscoe (1833-1915). Here we have his portrait and images of the buildings named after him.  He was Professor of Chemistry at Owens College 1857-1886, and an administrator overseeing huge changes at the University. His approach to university education was egalitarian; he was ahead of the game in seeing that research-led teaching was important and that widely sharing knowledge, to his students and to the public, was hugely beneficial.

The metadata for this collection of images conveys the breadth and range of study conducted at the University.  It also highlights the huge range of backgrounds of our academics and students, giving a view of the international nature of our campus from the earliest of days.  For example Samuel Alexander (1859-1938), known to us all from the Jacob Epstein bust in the Arts Building.  He was a philosopher and a Manchester celebrity. He grew up in Melbourne, Australia, studied philosophy in Oxford and visited Germany to learn about psychology, then a new discipline, before becoming Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester 1893-1925.  Ironically, Alexander is already well-known to us at Rylands as we hold his papers, noted particularly for his varied and extensive correspondence.  A detailed catalogue of the Samuel Alexander Papers is available here.

Many of the portraits are formal and posed in traditional face-on format.  However, the ones we liked the most are the ones where the subject is viewed with the implements of their ‘trade’, such as the image of Professor of A. D. MacDonald and Mr Davison (a steward) both dressed in lab coats in an ‘action’ shot.  They are standing together in a laboratory conducting an experiment. Another is of Marie Stopes, renowned advocate of birth control, seen below with her microscope and spherical flask.  Stopes was the first woman to join the scientific staff of the University of Manchester. She was appointed assistant lecturer and demonstrator in Botany in 1904. There is a blue plaque commemorating her on the Beyer Building. Both of these portraits seem to hark back to images of the medieval saints with their attributes –the images are easy to read; we know that these people are busy at work, experimenting or teaching.

How many times have you passed these buildings or seen blue plaques and wondered who these characters were? This collection along with the University Archives help to provide a corporate memory of the University of Manchester.  They provide a fantastic source of material for those interested in the history of the University and the development of education.

Our blog today has mainly concentrated on images from UPC1.  To celebrate #LibrariesWeek, (5^th – 10^th October), the campaign celebrating the nation’s much-loved libraries and their vital role in the UK’s book culture, we’ve decided to use images from UPC2 in a Twitter campaign concentrating on libraries past and present that have been housed at the University of Manchester.  Why not follow us this week @UoMSpecColl for #LibrariesOnCampus  

If you wish to read more about the History of the University our colleague, Dr James Peters, Curator of University, Scientific, Technical and Medical Archives, has recently written about The University Campus 1872-1945 on our Teaching & Learning Resources pages.