Contact details
- Name:
- Dr Elizabeth Savage
- Qualifications:
- FSA FRHistS FHEA
- Position:
- Senior Lecturer in Book History and Communications (School of Advanced Study), Head of Academic Research Engagement (Senate House Library)
- Institute:
- Central Services of the School
- Location:
- University of London Senate House, Malet Street London WC1E 7HU
- Email address:
- elizabeth.savage@sas.ac.uk
Research Summary and Profile
- Research interests:
- History of art, History of the book
- Regions:
- Europe
- Summary of research interests and expertise:
-
Dr Elizabeth Savage FSA FRHistS FHEA explores how information was printed in the pre-industrial west, especially 1400–1600 and in colour, by identifying material evidence of historical materials and techniques of printing and recreations at historically appropriate printing presses.
Institute Roles
She is Senior Lecturer in Book History and Communications, School of Advanced Study, and Head of Academic Research Engagement, Senate House Library, at the University of London. She has been Honorary Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University since 2020. In 2025–28, she is Joint Reviews Editor of Journal of the Printing Historical Society and advisory board member of Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. She serves as a mentor for Science for Ukraine and Historians of Netherlandish Art.She studied History of Art, taking an MA at the Courtauld and a PhD at Cambridge in 2013. As a postdoc, she was Munby Fellow in Bibliography, University Library, and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of English, both at Cambridge, before joining the School of Advanced Study in 2016. Her teaching, research, and engagement activities are informed by her professional background in exhibitions of contemporary art and design, for which she also lectured on curation for the MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster 2006–13.
Publications
Her books include Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum; Printing Colour, 1400–1700: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions (Award: International Fine Print Dealers Association Book Awards, Honorable Mention) and Printing Colour 1700–1830: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions. Her next book is tentatively entitled Printing Things: Blocks, Plates, and Other Objects that Printed, 1400–1900, for British Academy Proceedings.In addition to capturing £800k in funding from UK, US, and European bodies, her research and publications have won major international awards including:
- Association of Print Scholars: Schulman and Bullard Article Prize
- American Printing History Association: Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History
- Bibliographical Society of America: New Scholars award
- Wolfgang Ratjen-Preis: ‘distinguished research in graphic arts'
Wider Academic Work
She has engaged over 500,000 visitors in print heritage by curating exhibitions at the British Museum and Cambridge University Library, and contributing to others in Belgium, France, and Germany, including the Musée du Louvre.
Supervision and Teaching
She supervises PhDs on the history of printing techniques, the history of collections (especially by women), and prints and books in pre-industrial Europe, including England. Her current PhD candidates' projects include collaborations with heritage collections, including the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford; the Royal College of Physicians, London; and the Society of Antiquaries.Through hands-on postgraduate teaching and professional training, for example through the London Rare Books School and at Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University, she has taught diverse aspects of western preindustrial print cultures to 100s of postgraduates, heritage professionals, and academics in practice- and collection-based modules in libraries, museums, and historical print workshops. Her modules span the history of books, prints, and printing practices in the late medieval, early modern, and 18th-century western cultures.
Publications
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7274-2471
- Publication Details
-
Related publications/articles:
Date Details 23-Aug-2024 Review of Edina Adam, William Blake: Visionary and David Bindman and Esther Chadwick, eds, William Blake’s Universe Review
In Burlington Magazine 166 (August 2024): 864–7.
01-Mar-2024 ‘Berlin’s Woodcuts (and Woodblocks) from 1400 to Today’. Review of Holzschnitt: 1400 bis Heute, ed. Christien Melzer/Georg Josef, in Print Quarterly XLI (March 2024): 48–50 Review
02-Jan-2021 Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum Monographs
This richly illustrated publication reproduces and describes effectively every early modern German colour print held at the British Museum. It is one of the world’s most significant collections of these rare milestones of cultural heritage and technology. New photography reveals 150 impressions in jaw-dropping detail, most life-size. Some have never been seen in public or reproduced. It is the first major study of the first wave of German colour printing. It spans medieval printing in the late 1400s through the Renaissance and Reformation of the 1500s.
Early Colour Printing features masterpieces by leading figures like Erhard Ratdolt, Lucas Cranach, Hans Baldung Grien, and Hans Burgkmair, as well as unfairly overlooked entrepreneurs and innovators like Erasmus Loy (and his daughter Anna). Their breakthroughs reproduced artworks and simplified astronomical calculations. They created trends in interior design and signalled ‘red-letter days’. They helped musicians sight-read and they colour-coded metals for goldsmiths. These diverse new functions and markets might seem unrelated. But they are connected, and they cannot be understood in isolation. From artworks to missals, icons to wallpapers, this book breaks new ground by revealing the fascinating underlying technologies that enabled the production of these colour-printed objects.
The many inventions of colour printing in the German-speaking lands began with medieval novel solutions. They were devised long before colour printing inks could be formulated. Then, colour printing techniques transformed how printed material could be used during the technological and cultural revolutions of the sixteenth century. Later designers and artists around Europe celebrated these techniques’ heritage for centuries, from the ‘Dürer Renaissance’ until chromolithography revolutionised the print market in the nineteenth century. Early Colour Printing captures this story in rich detail. It sets the stage for second wave of German colour woodcut, which was triggered by the Expressionist revival at the turn of the twentieth century. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, this collection guide will be a standard reference on German graphic art, early modern visual culture, and the history of printing itself.
Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum offers significant new research, including previously unidentified examples of early modern colour-printing. Some are believed to be unique in the world; others were made decades before the landmark invention of colourful chiaroscuro woodcut in Italy in 1516. By modelling a printer- and technology-based approach to the history of printing, it contributes to scholarship by pinpointing attributions to printers—not just to artists or designers. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for a new understanding of the history of print, one that encompasses all forms of printed material. This publication derives from an exhibition at the British Museum curated by Elizabeth Savage.
REVIEWS: Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance (Mark Evans); The Book Collector (Simon Beattie); Burlington Magazine(Hans Jakob Meier); Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Rachael Carlisle); Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews (Larry Silver); Fine Books Magazine (Alex Johnson); Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte (Ursula Rautenberg); Multiples (Chris Pig); Art History (Patrick J Murray); Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (Elisabeth Brander); Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture (Suzanne Karr Schmidt); Print Quarterly (Achim Reither)
01-Nov-2019 Hans Wechtlin, Christus am Kreuz mit Maria, Johannes und Maria Magdalena, um 1510’ / ‘Hans Baldung Grien, Christus am Kreuz zwischen Magdalena, Johannes und Maria, um 1510–12 Chapters
in Hans Baldung Grien. Heilig | unheilig, ed. Holger Jacob-Friesen (Karlsruhe: Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2019), 296–297, nos. 136–137
01-Nov-2019 Review of Lucy Peltz, Facing the Text: Extra-Illustration, Print Culture and Society in Britain 1769–1840 Review
L’Illustrazione 3 (2019): 122–26
01-Oct-2019 Identifying Hans Baldung Grien’s colour printer, c.1511–12 Journal articles
Burlington Magazine 161 (October 2019): 830-839
Five colour woodblock prints designed by Hans Baldung Grien in Strasbourg in the second decade of the sixteenth century are exceptional both in his work and for their time. Analysing them in the context of contemporary book printing in the city helps to explain their technical excellence, allows their printer to be identified as Johann Schott and provides a firm dating.
AWARD: Association of Print Scholars: Schulman & Bullard Article Prize
01-Sep-2019 Review of Edward H. Wouk, Frans Floris (1519/20–1570): Imagining a Northern Renaissance Review
Oud Holland Reviews (September 2019)
01-Dec-2018 Anicius Manlius Boethis, De consolatione philosophiae Chapters
in Colard Mansion: Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges, ed. Evelien Hauwaerts/Evelien de Wilde/Ludo Vandamme (Heule: Snoeck; Bruges: Groeninge Museum, 2018), 83
01-Dec-2018 Alain Chartier, Le Quadrilogue invective Chapters
in Colard Mansion: Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges, ed. Evelien Hauwaerts/Evelien de Wilde/Ludo Vandamme (Heule: Snoeck; Bruges: Groeninge Museum, 2018), 84
01-Nov-2018 Review of Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance Review
Burlington Magazine (November 2018): 980–981
01-Oct-2018 Hans Burgkmair, L’Emperor Maximilian à cheval Chapters
Séverine Lepape/Elizabeth Savage, in Gravure en clair-obscur. Cranach, Raphaël, Rubens, ed. Séverine Lepape (Paris: Musée du Louvre/Liénart, 2018), 36–39
01-Oct-2018 Hans Burgkmair, Couple d’amants surprise par la Mort Chapters
Séverine Lepape/Elizabeth Savage, in Gravure en clair-obscur. Cranach, Raphaël, Rubens, ed. Séverine Lepape (Paris: Musée du Louvre/Liénart, 2018), 44–45
01-Sep-2018 Review of Susanna Berger, Philosophy of Art Review
Renaissance Quarterly 71/3 (September 2018), 1165–1166
01-Jun-2018 Review of Kathryn M. Rudy, Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts, Piety in Pieces, and Postcards on Parchment Review
The Library (June 2018), 231–232
01-Apr-2018 Une histoire des matériaux et techniques de l’impression en couleur en Occident Chapters
Elizabeth Savage/Ad Stijnman, Under the Rainbow, ed. Tatiana Rihs (Lausanne: Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, 2018), 171–198
01-Apr-2018 A History of the Materials and Techniques of Colour Printing in the West Chapters
Elizabeth Savage/Ad Stijnman, Under the Rainbow, ed. Tatiana Rihs (Lausanne: Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, 2018), 199–222
01-Mar-2018 Hans Burgkmair’s Colour Prints: An Overview Chapters
Hans Burgkmair. Neue Forschungen, Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in München, ed. Wolfgang Augustyn/Manuel Teget-Welz (Passau: Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte/Dietmar Klinger, 2018), 333–366
01-Mar-2018 Review of Eric Marshall White, Editio princeps, Review
Journal of the Printing Historical Society New Series 28 (March 2018): 97–98
01-Mar-2018 Printing Music: Technical Challenges and Synthesis, 1450–1530 Chapters
Elisabeth Giselbrecht/Elizabeth Savage, Early Music Printing in German-Speaking Lands, ed. Elisabeth Giselbrecht/Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl/Grantley McDonald (London: Ashgate, 2018), 84–99, plates 1–17
01-Jan-2018 Review of Tributes to Jean Michel Massing, ed. Mark Stocker/Phillip G. Lindley Review
Burlington Magazine CLX (January 2018): 74
01-Apr-2017 Early Modern Frisket Sheets: A Regularly Updated Census Research aids
BibSite: The Bibliographical Society of America, first version 2015
01-Apr-2017 Die Farbholzschnitte von Lucas Cranach dem Älteren: Werke und Druckzustände Chapters
In Lucas Cranach der Älter. Meister Marke Moderne, ed. Gunnar Heydenreich, Daniel Görres and Beate Wismer (Düsseldorf: Museum Kunstpalast, 2017), 58–62
01-Aug-2016 A Renaissance Art History of the Blockbook Canticum canticorum (review of Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, An Allegory of Divine Love) Review
In Print Quarterly 34/3: 319-324
01-Jan-2016 The Mystery of the Scrappy Fragments: Untangling Robert Steele's Discovery of Frisket Sheets Journal articles
Printing History (American Printing History Association) New Series 19 (Jan 2016): 16-32
01-Sep-2015 'Material Colours': The Heritage of Colour Knowledge in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Printshops Chapters
Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, in Colour Histories: Science Art, and Technology in the 17th and 18th Centuries, ed. Magdalena Bushart and Friedrich Steinle (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2015), 95-113, 364-369
01-Aug-2015 A Historical Overview of Printed Colour before 1700 Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, in Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, eds., Printing Colour 1400-1700: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, Library of the Written World: Handpress World 41, ed. Andrew Pettegree (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1-7
01-Aug-2015 The Materials and Techniques of Early Colour Printing: A General Survey Chapters
Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, in Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, eds., Printing Colour 1400-1700: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, Library of the Written World: Handpress World 41, ed. Andrew Pettegree (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 11-22
01-Aug-2015 Colour Printing in Relief before 1700: A Technical History Chapters
Elizabeth Savage, in Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, eds., Printing Colour 1400-1700: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, Library of the Written World: Handpress World 41, ed. Andrew Pettegree (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 23-41
01-Aug-2015 A Printer's Art: The Development and Influence of Colour Printmaking in the German Lands, c.1476-c.1600 Chapters
Elizabeth Savage, in Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, eds., Printing Colour 1400-1700: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, Library of the Written World: Handpress World 41, ed. Andrew Pettegree (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 93-102
01-Aug-2015 Printing Colour 1400-1700: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions Edited Book
Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Savage, eds., Printing Colour 1400-1700: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, Library of the Written World: Handpress World 41, ed. Andrew Pettegree (Leiden: Brill, 2015); reprint 2015.
• AWARD: IFPDA Book Awards, Honourable Mention: ‘every dealer, collector, and curator of old master prints will need this volume in their library’
• REVIEWS: De Boekenwereld; L’Illustrazione (Ilaria Andreoli); The Library (Roger Gaskell); Journal of the Printing Historical Society (Timothy Wilks); Renaissance Quarterly (Pablo Alvarez)
01-Jul-2015 Jost de Negker's Woodcut Charles V (1519): An Undescribed Example of Gold Printing Journal articles
Art in Print 5/2 (July-Aug 2015): 9-15
01-Mar-2015 New Evidence of Erhard Ratdolt's Working Practices: The After-Life of Two Red Frisket-Sheets from the Missale Constantiense (1505) Journal articles
Journal of the Printing Historical Society (Spring 2015): 81-97
01-Dec-2014 Red Frisket Sheets, c. 1490-1700: The Earliest Artefacts of Colour Printing in the West Journal articles
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 108/4 (Dec 2014): 477-522
27-Nov-2014 Art in Books: Lambrecht Hopfer's Crucifixion (c.1525–50) in the Opuscula of Saint Bonaventure (1497) Articles
Cambridge University Library Incunabula Project Blog, 27 Nov 2014
01-Jun-2014 Flying Colours Journal articles
Apollo (June-July 2014), 44-49
14-Mar-2014 Renaissance Colour Prints at the Royal Academy are Unmissable (review of Renaissance Impressions, Royal Academy of Art, London) Review
The Conversation (2014)
01-Jan-2014 Color Prints before Erhard Ratdolt: Engraved Paper Instruments in Lazarus Beham's Buch von der Astronomie (Cologne: Nicolaus Götz, c. 1476) Journal articles
Ad Stijnman/Elizabeth Upper, in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 89 (2014): 86-105
16-Dec-2013 Printing Colour in Tudor England: A New Exhibition Articles
Cambridge University Library Special Collections Blog, 16 Dec 2013
01-Dec-2013 Printing the Rainbow (review of Michael Twyman, A History of Chromolithography) Review
Apollo (Dec 2013): 112-13
01-Sep-2013 Review of Byron and Politics: 'Born for Opposition' (Maughan Library, Kings College London) Review
SHARP News (Society of the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) 22/4 (Autumn 2013): 14
01-Jun-2013 White Spirit (review of Victoria George, Whitewash and the New Aesthetic of the Protestant Reformation) Review
Apollo (June 2013): 124-25
01-Jun-2013 Celebrating Maximilian I's Augsburg (review of Gregory Jecman and Freyda Spira, Imperial Augsburg) Review
Print Quarterly 30/2 (June 2013): 183-86
06-Apr-2013 Printing Music and Art Together Articles
Elisabeth Giselbrecht/Elizabeth Upper', Renaissance Art and Music, 6 Apr 2013
01-Feb-2013 Crafting Prints (review of Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400-2000) Review
Apollo Magazine (Feb 2013): 92-93
10-Oct-2012 Tudor Colour Printmaking Articles
Centre for Material Texts Blog, Cambridge University, 10 Oct 2012
01-Sep-2012 Review of Shakespeare: Staging the World (British Museum, London) Review
SHARP News (Society of the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing) 21/4 (Autumn 2012): 18
01-Apr-2012 The Wonders of the Kunstkammer: Hapsburg Collections Come to Cambridge, review of Splendour & Power: Imperial Treasures from Vienna (Fitzwilliam Museum) Review
Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies (Apr 2012): 10-13
01-Mar-2012 'Plays of Light and Blazes of Colour (review of Melanie Grimm, et al., Lichtspiel und Farbenpracht) Review
Print Quarterly 29 (Mar 2012): 48-49
01-Mar-2012 'Printed Paintings (review of Hercules Segers and his 'Printed Paintings', British Museum, London) Review
Apollo (Mar 2012): 178-179
01-Jan-2012 Glittering Woodcuts and Moveable Music: Decoding the Elaborate Printing Techniques, Purpose and Patronage of the Liber selectarum cantionum (1520) Chapters
Elisabeth Giselbrecht/Elizabeth Upper, in Senfl-Studien I, ed. Birgit Lodes and Stefan Gasch, 17-67, Wiener Forum für ältere Musikgeschichte 5 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2012)
01-Dec-2010 A Happy (Re)marriage (review of Ad Stijnman and Claudia Kleine-Tebbe, Hochzeit von Bild und Buch) Review
Print Quarterly 27/4 (Dec 2010): 401
01-Mar-2010 Zao Wou-Ki and the Art of Nature Articles
Above 13 (Spring 2010): 166-83
09-Jan-2010 Earth Movers: Quaking up Land Art's Legacy of Feminism Articles
co-authored with Nancy Thebaut, Bitch 48 (Fall 2010): 36-42
01-Dec-2009 A Visual Timeline for A Heavenly Craft (review of A Heavenly Craft, ed. Daniel De Simone) Review
Print Quarterly 26 (Dec 2009): 371-373
01-Dec-2009 Dr Livingstone's Lament: An Unpublished Letter by David Livingstone Articles
Above 11 (Winter 2009): 86-87
Publications available on SAS-space:
Date Details Aug-2024 Review of Alexander Samuel Wilkinson, ed., Illustration and Ornamentation in the Iberian Book World, 1450–1800 NonPeerReviewed
Elizabeth Savage, review of Alexander Samuel Wilkinson, ed., Illustration and Ornamentation in the Iberian Book World, 1450–1800, in Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte 25 (2024): 186–7
Aug-2024 ‘Meeting the Gutenberg Bible in a Virtual Reading Room’, SHARP In the Classroom NonPeerReviewed
Virtual reading rooms (VRRs) started to become more common during closures due to Covid-19, as institutions increasingly created set-ups to allow for interactions with librarians who can facilitate live, responsive research, in real time, with physical objects. But they have not become embedded in research, teaching, research-led teaching, and public engagement. Much of the discussion about VRRs for research and teaching has focused on more common material, not least because research and teaching with highly valuable, rare, and restricted artefacts has by default been in person. This is especially the case for specialist research and teaching related to their materiality. But this model is exclusionary. It demands the health, personal and professional circumstances, and wealth for travel as well as connections to be granted access, while causing an ecological impact. This call for action explores how VRRs can be used to facilitate participant-directed interactions for advanced teaching and research into materiality of rare artefacts of print heritage, based on virtual object-based teaching with perhaps the most special of all special collections: the Gutenberg Bible.
Nov-2017 ‘Frisket Sheet for Printing Text in Red Ink’ NonPeerReviewed
A beautiful parchment manuscript was cut up and used for its strength, twice.
Dec-2024 Printing Colour 1700–1830: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions PeerReviewed
Printing Colour 1700–1830 offers a broad-ranging examination of the rich period of invention, experimentation and creativity surrounding colour printing in Europe between two critically important developments, four-colour separation printing around 1710 and chromolithography around 1830. Its 28 field-defining contributions by 23 leading experts expand the corpus beyond rare fine art impressions to include many millions of colourprinted images and objects. The chapters unveil the explosive growth in the production and marketing of colour prints at this pivotal moment. They address the numerous scientific and technological advances that fed the burgeoning popularity for such diverse colour-printed consumer goods as clothing, textiles, wallpapers and ceramics. They recontextualise the rise in colour-printed paper currencies, book endpapers and typography, and ephemera, including lottery tickets and advertisements. This landmark volume launches colour printing of the long eighteenth century as an interdisciplinary field of study, opening new avenues for research across historical and scientific fields.
Dec-2024 The Politics of Process Mezzotint: Jacob Christoff Le Blon’s Reputation, 1700–89 PeerReviewed
Jacob Christoff Le Blon invented translucent printing inks, which allowed for optical mixing, and a way to use them with three or more mezzotint plates to reproduce all ‘natural colours’. His revolutionary approach to colour printing in the 1700s is widely celebrated and considered a precursor to today’s CMYK colour system. But his career was a series of high-risk ventures, with each success followed by devastating failure and a fresh start, often abroad. His workshop’s direct legacy ended just 40 years after his death, after his student Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty tried to destroy his reputation and his last student’s students stopped producing trichomatic mezzotints. This essay assesses the reception of Le Blon’s printing techniques from his research and experimentation until he invented his method of optically mixing colour separations in 1710 in Amsterdam, through his careers in London and Paris until his death in 1741. It ends with the production of the final material in the direct legacy of his workshops around 1790. It draws on Le Blon’s writings, advertisements, and Gautier-Dagoty’s public correspondence.
Dec-2024 Colour Printing Inks and Colour Inking in 18th-Century Europe PeerReviewed
In many ways, the history of colour printing is the history of often overlooked and little understood materials: historical colour printing inks. While the history of printing has focused on stylistic trends or, to a lesser degree, the engineering of the printing press, printing inks were profoundly entwined with developments in tools, machines, and approaches, and allowed printing surfaces or matrices to be worked in new ways to create new styles. This introductory chapter offers an overview of the ways colour printing inks were prepared in the long 18th century, whether by craftswomen and men who combined ingredients to informal recipes or factory workers who formulated colour printing inks from standardised components, including synthetic colourants, using mechanised if not industrial means. It then describes common approaches to applying colour printing inks, for single-sheet artworks and book illustrations, as well as cognate, cross-fertilising trades including textile, pottery, and wallpaper.
Dec-2024 Tools, Machines, and Techniques for Colour Printing in 18th-Century Europe PeerReviewed
The history of the technology of printing in each of the three approaches to printing, relief, intaglio, and lithography, diverges for the history of printing colour. This is especially the case in Europe in the long 18th century, as colour printing was not mechanised at the same time or in the same way as ‘normal’ black printing. It could require that working methods or press structures be tweaked, or inspire wholly novel, colour-specific printing machines that were designed to accommodate equally novel printing surfaces or matrices. By focusing on the tools, machines, and workshop methods that were developed to print colour, rather than the end results, this chapter presents a technical overview of how colour was printed at this time, c.1700–1830. It concludes by indicating how techniques could be further adapted and combined. It includes printing in letterpress, relief, intaglio, and lithography, as well as cognate, cross-fertilising trades including textile, pottery, and wallpaper.
Dec-2024 Introduction, in: Printing Colour 1700-1830 PeerReviewed
This introduction presents the volume’s objectives in the context of recent developments in—and longstanding omissions from—the fields of art, book and print history. It surveys the current state of scholarship and describes the new contributions made by each of the 28 chapters. Some present new methodologies for reassessing colour in the long 18th century, for example through heritage science. Others present newly discovered, or unjustly overlooked, colour prints, tools for colour printing and archival records. It explains how they expand the corpus from a limited number of fine prints and celebrated scientific images to millions of colour-printed objects, from ladies’ muffs to polemical pottery. It also contextualises how many were able to newly identify producers and audiences, especially women. Finally, it explains how the contributions redefine the corpus of colour printing and offer new avenues for future scholarship in the long 18th century in Europe, including Scandinavia and Russia, as well as some areas under colonial control.
Mar-2023 Pre-Industrial Western Printing Inks, c.1450-1850 PeerReviewed
It is often assumed that all printing inks are the same: black, inert, and stable over centuries. However, the ingredients in their recipes (or, as measurements were standardised in the 18th century, the components in their formulation) have varied enormously since their invention in the mid-1400s. This chapter offers a starting point for understanding the kind of pre-industrial oil-based printing inks that were commonly used for printing texts, images, music, and other kinds of content, mainly on paper and parchment supports, in a printing press, first in Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe, areas under European colonial control, and other areas as the printing press spread. (Block-printing in Europe and relief printing in Asia conventionally uses a water-based ink.) This study begins with the invention of printing ink c.1450, when Johannes Gutenberg (d. 1468) created black printing ink for his first publications, and red printing ink c.1455 for the Gutenberg Bible. It ends with transformation of its production due to industrialisation and the development of synthetic constituents around1850. Relief, intaglio, and planographic (i.e. lithographic) printing inks had different pathways to industrialisation, but 1850 is a broadly indicative turning point because this timespan largely overlaps with the handpress period, c.1450–1830. Given the paucity of literature on this topic, it is believed that this chapter is the most substantial survey of the materiality of pre-industrial printing inks to date.
Jul-2025 The Creation of “Medieval” Woodblocks PeerReviewed
Elizabeth Savage FSA and Edward Potten FSA reveal intriguing antiquarian dimensions of purported medieval woodblocks.
May-2025 Review of Cathleen A. Baker and Rebecca M. Chung, eds., Making an Impression: Women in Printing and Publishing and Cristina S. Martinez and Cynthia E. Roman, eds, Female Printmakers, Printsellers and Print Publishers in the Eighteenth Century: The Imprint of Women c.1700–1830 PeerReviewed
NA
- Research Projects & Supervisions
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Research projects:
Current PhD topics supervised:
Dates Details From:
Until:The Print Collection of Count Saverio Marchese (1757–1833) Krystle Attard Trevisan, Institute of English Studies; second supervisor: Jean Michel Massing (Cambridge)
From:
Until:Women’s Ownership of Medical Knowledge in Tudor and Stuart England, 1485-1714 Catherine James, Institute of English Studies; ARHC Collaborative Doctoral Award with Royal College of Physicians; hertiage supervisor: Katie Birkwood (Royal College of Physicians)
From:
Until:Richard Rawlinson’s Copper Plates: The Materiality, Provenance, and Use of an 18th-Century Collection of Printing Plates Chiara Betti, Institute of English Studies; AHRC Oxford GLAM Collaborative Doctoral Studentship with Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University; heritage supervisor: Alexandra Franklin (Bodleian Libraries)
From:
Until:Printing Ink Manufacturing in Britain and its Impact on Print Culture and Society, 1850–1900 Ian Dooley, Institute of English Studies; second supervisor: Andrew Nash
From:
Until:Illustrating Nature, Printing Utopia: Lucy Way Sistare Say (1800–1886) Katherine Prater, Institute of English Studies; second supervisors: Raphaële Mouren (British School at Rome), John Tresch (Warburg Institute)
Past PhD topics supervised:
Dates Details From: 2022
Until: 2022Gemma Cornetti, ‘Portrait Prints of Rulers and Military Commanders in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Warburg Institute, University of London Examiner
From: 2021
Until: 2021Julia Smith, ‘Prints in Polychrome: Hand Colouring Prints and Illustrated Books in Nuremberg, 1490–1528’, University of Edinburgh Examiner
Available for doctoral supervision: Yes
- Professional Affiliations
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Professional affiliations:
Name Activity Linda Hall Library 2024–25: Virtual Fellow Science for Ukraine 2024–present: Mentor British Museum of Printing 2022–24: Steering Group, Higher Education Liaison Books of Prints Working Group 2022–present: member Association of Print Scholars 2020 Schulman and Bullard Article Prize Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University 2020–present: Honorary Fellow University of Leiden 2019/20: Scaliger Fellow/Visiting Researcher Society of Antiquaries 2019–present: Fellow Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte 2017/18–2018/19: Wolfgang Ratjen Fellow Association of Print Scholars 2017–2019: Grants Program, founding jury member; 2019: Sponsored session at College Art Association conference, advisor; 2021: Working group on Engaging Diverse Perspectives, member; 2023–25: Grants Committee, member Royal Historical Society 2019–present: Fellow; 2016–2019: Member Printing Historical Society 2016/17–present: Publications Sub-Committee, member; 2017/18–present: Grants & Prizes Sub-Committee, member; 2023–present: PHS Journal Digitisation Working-Group, member Churchill College, Cambridge 2016–19: Postdoctoral By-Fellow International Council of Museums 2015–present: UK Committee, member Huntington Library 2015/16: Chandis Securities Fellow Newberry Library 2015/16: Newberry Library-Kress Foundation Fellow Herzog August Bibliothek 2014/15: Stipendiatin des Landes Niedersachsen Bibliographical Society of America 2014 New Scholar American Printing History Association 2014 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellow in Printing History Department of History of Art, Cambridge University 2013–18: Research Fellow Darwin College, Cambridge 2012–13: Research Fellow Collaborations:
Name Type Activity Start date End date Making Knowledge through Word, Image, Print: Premodern History of Multimedia Science 1450–1800 DAAD research group member 2022 2024 University of Birmingham: Hazel Wilkinson: ‘Compositor: Recovering the Grammar of Ornaments', AHRC Leadership Fellowship Advisory Board member 2022 2024 Digital Resuscitation: The Officina Plantiniana’s Collection of 14,000 Woodblocks Advisory Committee member 2019 2021 Registering the Matrix: Printing Matrices as Sites of Artistic Mediation (convened by Jun Nakamura) College Art Association annual conference: Association of Print Scholars session advisor 2019 2019 Graphic Arts Group (British Museum/Courtauld Institute of Art) member 2012 Centre for Material Texts, Cambridge University member 2012 2016 Printing Colour Project co-founder, co-director 2009 2018 - Relevant Events
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Related events:
Date Details 10-Oct-2024 Series co-convenor: Working Group on Colour Studies, Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM) 06-Dec-2023 Conference paper: co-presenter, 'Colour Printing Ink Matters: Exploring Colour and Chromatic Materialities in Printing Inks in the Late 18th and Early 19th Century', Colour Matters (Trinity College, Oxford) 09-Sep-2022 Public lecture: ‘Celebrating the 9,000,000th Acquisition: 900 Woodblocks from the Propaganda Fide Press’, relaunch of Hanes Lectures in Bibliography, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill The Rare Book Collection’s long-running lecture series returns with a talk commemorating the University Libraries’ 9 millionth volume, the woodblock archive of the Propaganda Fide Press. Dr. Elizabeth Savage will highlight her groundbreaking work on color printing and share her expertise in the study of printing surfaces.
The Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has just announced a landmark ‘volume’ for its 9,000,000th acquisition: nearly 1,000 woodblocks, most wrapped in sheet of paper with an identifying impression. They were produced for the press of Propaganda Fide, the Roman Catholic Church’s evangelisation arm, between its foundation in 1626 and c.1850. This acquisition contributes to an internationally significant research trend to understand ‘printing things’, such as woodblocks and copper plates, as cultural heritage objects in and of themselves—independent of the materials they were used to print. This talk introduces what this collection of centuries-old woodblocks can reveal today, as well as why this kind of collection is so important for the future of book history and the historical humanities more broadly.
12-Jul-2022 Keynote: ‘The Power of the Printed Word beyond the Book in Incunable Europe’, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, annual conference, Amsterdam In the study of the history of the book, the terms ‘book’ and ‘text’ have often been used interchangeably. Even the neo-Latin term ‘incunabula’, or ‘in the cradle’, meaning books from the infancy of printing, was first presented as ‘incunabula typographiae’: the infancy of typography. But many earlier, manually printed images include lettering and text. This talk explores the power of the printed word in late medieval western Europe in print cultures that pre-dated Johannes Gutenberg and his Bible of c.1455. It begins with a woodblock cut c.1370 to produce first words known to have been printed in western Europe, and it continues through the first generations after Gutenberg invented the printing press. By drawing on manually printed words in materials as diverse as single-sheet prints, block-printed textiles, and woodblocks for tattoo designs, it focuses on the power of printed words before and beyond the printed book. Overall, it argues for an expanded, interdisciplinary approach to book and print history, one that considers the full gamut of artefacts of printed texts and images in late medieval western Europe.
29-Jun-2022 Convenor, London Rare Books School Special Lecture: Sarah Werner, ‘Feminist Bibliographical Praxis‘ The study of how books were made and how we interpret the signs of their making has been shaped predominantly by men. And while a feminist approach to book history has been growing, with studies of women in the book trade, as textual scholars, and as librarians increasingly being pursued, we still need a consideration of what a feminist praxis of studying the making of books could be. The lecture will address the need for a feminist approach to bibliography through the lenses of feminist theory and bibliographical prctices. Arguing that a feminist praxis of bibliography does not focus on the matter that is studied but the approaches to the materials and the questions asked of it, Dr Sarah Werner will model a way of teaching and opening up the study of books that attendees will be able to bring to their own research and classrooms. This lecture forms part of the London Rare Books School programme - all are welcome to attend.
23-Jun-2022 Keynote: ‘The International Trade in Printed Colour, 1400–1600’, Printing Colour and Colouring Prints in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe: Comparative Perspectives, University of Warsaw In the past ten years, it has been accepted that the history of printing is also the history of printing colour. But the history of colour printing is the history of art, the history of books, even the history of fashion, of decorated paper, and so many more kinds of objects. From first time colour was printed in a press in Europe, red text in some early copies of the Gutenberg Bible of c.1455, the trade in these consumer and luxury goods was fully international, far beyond the borders of western Europe.
Focusing on the period 1400–1600, when relief was the dominant technique for printing, this talk explores how the producers, objects, and waste of printed colour circulated in international trade networks, within and beyond Europe. It does so by tracing the paths of individual artworks, books, pieces of waste from colour-printing processes, and textiles across borders.
It calls for the conventional foci of colour print research, late medieval and early modern German, Italian, and Netherlandish artworks, to be contextualised with other forms and sites of colour printing, such as Russian block-printing, and copies in other media, including stained glass and majolica. It concludes by calling for research into the production of colour-printed (including block-printed) materials produced for a European audience in areas subject to 'exploration', colonial control, and missionary conversion projects, including India, New Spain, and China.
28-May-2022 Public workshop: co-convenor, 'Storylines: Printing Tristram Shandy' (Bodleian Bibliographical Press) In this practical workshop, find out what happens when a story breaks free of words. Join expert printmakers at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press to learn first-hand the techniques used in the convention-defying pages of a 250-year old novel.
Peter Lawrence (Society of Wood Engravers) will introduce the technique of carving illustrations in wood; paper-marbler Louise Brockman will demonstrate the marbling of a single page; Richard Lawrence and the workshop team will guide you through setting type, and demonstrate the printing of intaglio plates.
Particpants must be 18 years of age or older.
Presented by Novel Impressions, a project run by Helen Williams (Northumbria University) and funded by the British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards. It is a series of research- and practice-led events that will create network of early career researchers, printers, and curators producing print workshops for public audiences inspired by eighteenth-century literature. This particular event is supported by the Institute of English Studies, the Bodleian Library, and Book and Print Initiative.
27-May-2022 Public lecture: co-presenter, 'The Making of Tristram Shandy', lecture and object session Laurence Sterne’s multi-volume work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, is one of the most creatively printed novels of the handpress period. Sterne personally intervened in the printing, insisting that each copy have different material features to make readers handle and interpret the text in an entirely new way.
Explore the pages of this novel with Helen Williams and Elizabeth Savage, who will guide us through the unique features which bring the book itself into the story.
Presented by Novel Impressions, a project run by Helen Williams (Northumbria University) and funded by the British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards. It is a series of research- and practice-led events that will create network of early career researchers, printers, and curators producing print workshops for public audiences inspired by eighteenth-century literature. This particular event is supported by the Institute of English Studies, the Bodleian Library, and Book and Print Initiative.
17-May-2022 Respondent: History of the Book in Mexico: An Introduction, UNAM UK - Centre for Mexican Studies 15-Apr-2022 Public lecture: 'After Hours with Erhard Ratdolt', Linda Hall Library Lates European printers of the fifteenth century were working with what was, to them, an experimental technology. These early print workers helped define what a printed book could look like, eventually re-creating a number of features that were originally left to scribes. One of the most challenging to execute was printing in more than one color. Indeed, Johannes Gutenberg tried and almost immediately abandoned two-color printing in his 42-line bible! Though we normally associate color printing with art or even biology, the very first two-color woodcut prints were a striking series of eclipse diagrams, executed in Erhard Ratdolt's Venice workshop in 1482. Throughout Ratdolt's remarkable career, he mastered a color printing process that remained in common use for hundreds of years. His ambitious printing program innovated with color to produce clearer scientific diagrams, and successfully produced two and even three-color printed text, images, music, initials, and calendars.
Join scholar and printer Elizabeth Savage and the Library's Assistant Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts, Jamie Cumby on a journey through Ratdolt's experiments in color printing, as told through copies in the Library's collection.
22-Feb-2022 Masterclass: convenor, ‘Teaching with Printing Plates and Blocks’: Copper Plates Unfolded: ECR Multidisciplinary Masterclass on Printing Plates, Bodleian Library & Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University 21-Feb-2022 Invited lecture: ‘Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum’: Graphic Arts Group, British Museum/Courtauld Institute of Art 13-Dec-2021 Invited lecture: ‘German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum’, Bibliographical Society, London In the last ten years, art historians have begun to recognise the significance of colour in print history—but the role of printed colour in books has been overlooked. This lecture offers a new approach, one centred on printers, based on a survey of the British Museum’s holdings of German prints, ephemera, broadsides, and books printed in 1450–1600.
The lecture will be followed by the launch of Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum (Paul Holberton Publishing, in association with the British Museum, 2021).
15-Sep-2021 Public lecture: ‘Where is Colour in Book History?', 2021 Frederik Muller Lecture in Book History, Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam: Print heritage is not black-and-white; it only seems to be. In the last ten years, a wave of publications and exhibitions has transformed the history of prints by revealing that art history has ‘erased’ colour in prints since the field developed 300 years ago. It is now established that colour-printed images were far more common than had been thought possible: they communicated ideas, clarified scientific knowledge, and aided religious devotion, for example. But new research reveals that the history of colour printing is centred in books, not artworks, and that book history has similarly been ‘bleached’ by academic conventions, collecting practices, and cataloguing protocols. This talk is a call to bring the colour revolution from printed imagery to texts. By exploring the role of printers (not designers) and focusing on varied kinds of content including texts and diagrams, it lays the groundwork for a parallel, vibrant transformation of the history of books in pre-industrial Europe.
30-Jan-2020 Invited lecture + object session: ‘Hans Baldung (Grien) and Johann Schott: Rediscovering the Most Prolific Colour Printer of the Holy Roman Empire, 1510–1530’, lecture + object session, Oxford Bibliographical Society & Ashmolean Museum 06-Jan-2020 Keynote: ‘Colour Printing in New Spain’, Congreso los verbos del libro, Feria del libro, University of Guadalajara (cancelled due to Covid-19) 28-Nov-2019 Invited paper: 'Mysteries of Printing the Book of St Albans', Print and Book Initiative, School of Advanced Study, University of London 18-Jul-2019 Invited lecture: 'Finding Hans Baldung Grien’s Colour Printer', Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich 03-Jul-2019 Masterclass: convenor, ‘Five Centuries of the Nuremberg Chronicle’, with David McKitterick, Institute of English Studies/Senate House Library 03-Jul-2019 Convenor, London Rare Books School Annual Lecture: David McKitterick, 'Books for Breakfast: Mid-Victorian Collecting, Changing Tastes and Different People', Institute of English Studies 26-Jun-2019 Convenor, public lecture/demonstration: 'Writing Women: Reviving Kana Shodo (‘Woman-Hand’), a Forgotten Female Script: Lecture & Demonstration by Kaoru Akagawa, Master of Japanese Calligraphy', Book and Print Initiative, School of Advanced Study Official Event of Japan-UK Season of Culture 2019-2020 & National Writing Day 2019
23-Apr-2019 Convenor, hands-on workshop: 'Reconstructing the Colour-Printing the Book of St Albans',Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies 23-Apr-2019 Invited lecture: 'Printing Colour in Late Medieval England: The Baffling “Craft” of the Book of St Albans (1486)’, Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies 10-Apr-2019 Poster: 'Original Revivals: New Old Master Colour Prints for the Collecting Market in the Long 18th Century', Printing Colour 1700–1830, School of Advanced Study, University of London 26-Mar-2019 Poster: co-author, 'Historical and Chemical-Physics Characterisation of a PreviouslyUnknown, Unique, Six-Colour Relief Print', Innovation in Art Research and Technology (InART), Parma 30-Jan-2019 Masterclass: convenor, 'Restitution and Re-education: Postwar Cultural Policy for/in Germany: Sources and Methodology', with Iris Lauterbach. Institute of English Studies + Warburg Institute + Institute of Historical Research 30-Jan-2019 Convenor, public lecture + book launch: Iris Lauterbach, ‘The Central Collecting Point in Munich: A New Beginning for the Restitution and Protection of Art’, Institute of English Studies/Warburg Institute/Institute of Historical Research 28-Nov-2018 Invited paper: ‘Finding Hans Baldung Grien’s Colour Printer’, Work in Progress Seminar, Institute of English Studies 18-Oct-2018 Invited paper: ‘Identifying Hans Baldung’s Colour Printer,c.1511–12’, Hans Baldung Grien. Neue Perspektiven auf sein Werk, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe 07-Sep-2018 Public lecture: 'The Advent of Colour Printing an Illustrated Talk on the Book of St Albans’, St Albans Museum 28-Jun-2018 Panel chair, Science and Knowledge, at Multiplied and Modified: Reception of the Printed Image in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, University ofWarsaw/National Museum in Warsaw 10-Apr-2018 Conference: Printing Colour 1700–1830: Discoveries and Rediscoveries in the Long Eighteenth Century (IES) Eighteenth-century book and print cultures are considered to be black and white (with a little red). Colour-printed material, like William Blake's visionary books and French decorative art, is considered rare and exceptional. However, recent discoveries in archives, libraries and museums are revealing that bright inks were not extraordinary. Artistic and commercial possibilities were transformed between rapid technical advances around 1700 (when Johannes Teyler and Jacob Christoff Le Blon invented new colour printing techniques) and 1830 (when the Industrial Revolution mechanised printing and chromolithography was patented). These innovations added commercial value and didactic meaning to material including advertising, books, brocade paper, cartography, decorative art, fashion, fine art, illustrations, medicine, trade cards, scientific imagery, texts, textiles and wallpaper.
The saturation of some markets with colour may have contributed to the conclusion that only black-and-white was suitable for fine books and artistic prints. As a result, this printed colour has been traditionally recorded only for well-known ‘rarities’. The rest remains largely invisible to scholarship. Thus, some producers are known as elite ‘artists’ in one field but prolific ‘mere illustrators’ in another, and antecedents of celebrated ‘experiments’ and ‘inventions’ are rarely acknowledged. When these artworks, books, domestic objects and ephemera are considered together, alongside the materials and techniques that enabled their production, the implications overturn assumptions from the historical humanities to conservation science. A new, interdisciplinary approach is now required.
Following from Printing Colour 1400-1700, this conference will be the first interdisciplinary assessment of Western colour printmaking in the long eighteenth century, 1700–1830. It is intended to lead to the publication of the first handbook colour printmaking in the late hand-press period, creating a new, interdisciplinary paradigm for the history of printed material.
01-Dec-2017 ECR Training Day: Researching Print Matrices/Printing Surfaces This free, hands-on, object-based training day will introduce 10 ECRs to the research of historical matrices/printing surfaces (e.g. cut woodblocks, etched metal plates, litho stones). The emphasis is pre-1830. By analysing the objects and resulting impressions, participants will learn how to describe them; identify how they were made, used and copied; relate them to printed content; and use them as primary material in their own research. The interdisciplinary remit includes text and image, as well as decorations, initials, medicine, music, mathematical symbols, scientific imagery, and more. This event is the first application of a new research framework, which will later be published open access. Participants will learn new research skills and, through their feedback, help shape the future of research in fields related to print heritage. The training is convened by Elizabeth Savage and facilitated by Giles Bergel and Roger Gaskell.
22-Sep-2017 Conference: The Matrix Reloaded: Establishing Cataloguing & Research Guidelines for Artefacts of Printing Images The material turn in fields that rely on printed matter has led to interest in how those texts and images were—and are—produced. Those objects, including cut woodblocks, etched/engraved metal plates, and lithographic stones, could be fundamental to research. Tens of thousands survive from the last 500 years, but the vast majority are inaccessible because they do not fit into the cataloguing structures and controlled vocabularies used by the libraries, archives and museums that hold them. Those that are accessible tend to be under-used, as few researchers are equipped to understand them or communicate about them across disciplinary boundaries. Even the most basic term is debated: to book historians/in libraries, pieces of type are multiples cast from a matrix (mould); to artists and art historians/in museums, the resulting types are the matrices (the sheets printed from them are the multiples).
As new possibilities to catalogue and digitise these artefacts are revealing their research potential, a common framework could advance knowledge of image-printing processes and images’ role in the print trade. This twelve-month project will create a research network and distil a single, interdisciplinary best practice from existing standards across disciplines and heritage collections to train researchers to engage with them.
As a precondition for this training is consensus on terminology, methodology and best practice, (1) an international, interdisciplinary working group will be formed. It will agree on recommendations following (2) a conference and (3) this closed summit in September 2017. The aim of BARSEA scheme is to cascade benefits to early career researchers, so this framework will be put into practice at (4) a training session for ECRs in December 2017, refined, and (5) published open access in March 2018 so that researchers in many places and disciplines can use these objects in their research from the start of their academic careers.
This research is supported by a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award.
21-Sep-2017 Poster: 'Fabric-Covered Woodblocks Printed with “Oil Paints” in Late Medieval England?', Blocks Plates Stones: Matrices/Printing Surfaces in Research and Collections, Courtauld Institute of Art 21-Sep-2017 Conference: Blocks Plates Stones: Matrices/Printing Surfaces in Research and Collections (Courtauld Institute/British Academy) The material turn in fields that rely on historical printed matter has led to interest in how those texts and images were—and are—produced. Those objects, including cut woodblocks, etched and engraved metal plates, and lithographic stones, could be fundamental to research. Tens of thousands survive from the last 500 years, but the vast majority are inaccessible because they do not fit into the cataloguing structures and controlled vocabularies used by the libraries, archives and museums that hold them. Those that are accessible tend to be under-used, as few researchers are equipped to understand them or communicate about them across disciplinary boundaries. Even the most basic term is debated: in book research, a matrix is the mould for casting pieces of type; in art research, each resulting type is a matrix (and the sheets printed from them are the multiples). As new possibilities to catalogue and digitise these artefacts are revealing their research potential, it is essential to establish how they can best be made available and how they can be used in research.
This deeply interdisciplinary conference will survey the state of research into cut woodblocks, intaglio plates, lithographic stones, and other matrices/printing surfaces. It will bring together researchers, curators, librarians, printers, printmakers, cataloguers, conservators, digital humanities practitioners, and others who care for or seek to understand these objects. The discussion will encompass all media and techniques, from the fifteenth century through the present.
15-Sep-2017 Invited lecture: Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group: ‘Early Colour Printing and Book Illustration’, Symposium 31-Aug-2017 Invited paper: ‘Relief and Intaglio Colour Printing Techniques before the 19th Century’, Printing, Colour, Design: Historical Perspectives, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik 21-Jun-2017 Panel respondent: People of the Book, The Book in the Low Countries: New Perspectives, Hidden Collections, Institute of Historical Research 06-Apr-2017 Conference session convenor: Prints in Books: The Materiality, Art History and Collection of Illustrations (Association of Annual Art Historians annual conference) Book illustrations, especially from the hand-press period (1450–1830), are an essential but traditionally overlooked source of art historical information. Although the hierarchies of fine art over popular art are dissolving, and modern disciplinary distinctions between text and image (or art and book) are giving way to cross-disciplinary and holistic approaches to printed material, printed images that happen to be inside books often fall outside the remits of art historical, literary, bibliographical and material research.
One reason is that practical and academic barriers impede access to the art historical information that book illustrations can provide. Due to incompatible cataloguing standards adopted by libraries and art museums, researchers can struggle to identify book illustrations across collections. Cataloguing protocols may reduce hundreds of significant woodcuts in a book to the single word ‘illustrated’; some world-leading graphic art digitisation initiatives exclude book illustrations. As the global digitised corpus expands, will book illustrations be more represented in print scholarship or will they continue to fall into the gap between art and book? As material objects and visual resources, should they be considered bibliographical, art historical or iconographical material? And how do such classifications influence their interpretation?
This interdisciplinary panel seeks to establish a platform for discussion about the position of printed book illustrations in graphic art scholarship. Theoretical and object-based papers related to any aspect of collecting, cataloguing and interpreting printed book illustrations, broadly defined, are welcome, as are papers that explore the materiality, iconography, historiography or art history of printed pictures inside books.
31-Mar-2017 Invited lecture: ‘Paper, Ink, and Fabric? Illustrating the Book of St Albans, 1486’, Objects of Study: Paper, Ink, and the Material Turn', Philadelphia Museum of Art and Kislak Center for Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania 12-Dec-2016 Poster: 'Printing Fabric with “Oil Paints” in Late Medieval England?', Manuscripts in the Making: Art and Science, Cambridge University/Fitzwilliam Museum: 30-Sep-2016 Invited paper: ‘The Language of Scientific Illustrations: Cross-Disciplinary Cataloguing Conundrums’, Materiality of Scientific Knowledge: Image-Text-Book, Kislak Center for Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania 01-Sep-2016 Conference paper: 'An Unidentified Fifteenth-Century Printing Technique? Reconstructing Workshop Methods for the Book of St Albans, 1486’, The 15th Century Conference (Royal Holloway, London) 01-Jul-2016 Invited paper: “Spotlit” Soldiers: Sixteenth-Century Works-in-Progress or Eighteenth-Century Forgeries?’ Retirement Symposium and Celebrations in Honour of Jean Michel Massing, King’s College, Cambridge 20-Jun-2016 Invited public lecture + object session: ‘A Previously Undescribed Printing Technique? Re-examining the 1486 Book of St Albans’, Cambridge University Library 12-May-2016 Invited lecture and book signing: ‘Printing Colour 1400–1700’, Library of Congress (Washington, DC) 25-Apr-2016 Invited lecture: ‘A Previously Undescribed Printing Technique? Re-examining the 1486 Book of St Albans’, Huntington Library (San Marino, California) 20-Mar-2016 Invited lecture: ‘Deciphering the First Colour-Printed Images in England: The Book of St Albans, 1486’, University of Reading 23-Feb-2016 Invited paper: Faculty of English, Cambridge University: Renaissance Research Workshop 12-Feb-2016 Invited paper: ‘‘Whitewashing’ the Early Modern Print’, Placing Prints: New Developments in the Study of Print, 1400-1800, Courtauld Institute of Art (London) 19-Oct-2015 Invited lecture: ‘“Unmasking" the Most Common Colour-Printmaking Technique in Early Modern Europe', Oxford Bibliographical Society 23-Sep-2015 Invited paper: ‘A Baffling Breakthrough? Making Colour in the 1486 Book of St Albans’, Research Seminars, John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester 24-May-2015 Panel respondant: Ephemerality and Durability in Early-Modern Visual and Material Culture, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and Trinity Hall, Cambridge 26-Mar-2015 Conference paper: 'Frankfurt Printers and the Market for Colour Prints in the Sixteenth Century', Frankfurt and the Art Market in the Sixteenth Century: Prints and Books', Renaissance Society of America/Historians of Netherlandish Art (Berlin) 20-Jan-2015 Invited paper: 'The Many Inventions of Colour Printing: Art, Books and Ephemera, 1470-1600', Comparative Social and Cultural History Seminar, Faculty of History, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge 11-Dec-2014 Invited paper: 'Burgkmairs Farbholzschnitte', Hans Burgkmair: Neue Forschungen zu einem Künstler der deutschen Renaissance, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Munich) (unable to attend) 13-Nov-2014 Invited paper: 'Manuscript to Press to Binding: Red Frisket Sheets and the Creation of Colour Printing, c.1490-1630', Landmarks of Printing: from Origins to the Digital Age, Printing Historical Society 50th Anniversary Conference, St Bride Institute 08-Nov-2014 Invited lecture: 'Moondials & Maps, Medicine & Mathematics: Printing Colour in Early Scientific Publications', Naturwissenschaft & Illustration im 15.-16. Jh.', Kunsthistorisches Institut, Philipps-Universität (Marburg, Germany) 09-Oct-2014 Invited paper: 'The Materiality of the Press: Use and Reuse in Early Modern Printshops', Print and Materiality in the Early Modern World, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester 01-Oct-2014 Series convenor: John Rylands Research Institute Research Showcase, monthly seminar, 2014/15 07-Jul-2014 Invited lecture: 'Mapping the Dissemination of Early Colour Printmaking Technologies, 1476-c.1600', Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, Germany) 27-Jun-2014 Invited lecture: 'Printing the 1505 Missale Constantiense: New Artefacts from Erhard Ratdolt's Press', Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, Germany) 14-Jun-2014 Invited paper: 'Colouring the Reformation Book', Reform and Reformation: The Seventh Research Colloquium, St John's College, Cambridge 02-Jun-2014 Invited paper: 'Reconstructing Early Modern Workshop Practice for Colour Printing, c.1490-1630', Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages, British Library (London) 12-Feb-2014 Conference paper: 'Early Modern "Decals": Printing Intarsia in the German-Speaking Lands, c.1550-c.1650', Annual conference; Panel: Objectifying Prints: Hybrid Media 1450–1800, College Art Association, Chicago 10-Feb-2014 Invited lecture: 'Hiding in Plain Sight: Rediscovering Printed Colour in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1600', University of Chicago 26-Jan-2014 Invited paper: 'The Earliest Artifacts of Color Printmaking in the West: Red Frisket Sheets, c.1490-1630', Bibliographical Society of America annual conference (Grolier Club, New York) 16-Jan-2014 Invited lecture: 'Colour Printing in the Renaissance: The Strasbourg Edition of Ptolemy's Geography (1513)', Map and Society Lectures, Warburg Institute, University of London 27-Nov-2013 Invited lecture: co-author, 'The Colourful Printed Past: Early Colour Printmaking, 1450-1700', Pure Print: Classical Printmaking in Contemporary Art, Universidade do Porto 18-Oct-2013 Invited paper: 'Rediscovering Colour in German Graphic Art, 1487-ca. 1600', Seeing Color/Printing Color (annual conference), American Printing History Association (Grolier Club, New York) 16-Oct-2013 Invited lecture: 'Early Modern Colour Woodcuts (They Existed!) and Their International Context (There were Lots of Them!)', Humanities Talks, Darwin College, Cambridge 01-Oct-2013 Invited paper: 'ArtStor: A Case Study', Managing Digital Images: An Introduction for Researchers, Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Cambridge University 27-Sep-2013 Invited paper: 'Saving Waste: Early Modern Colour Frisket Sheets as Palimpsests of Functions', Ephemerality and Durability in Early Modern Visual and Material Culture, Early Modern Studies Institute, University of Southern California/Huntington Library 15-Aug-2013 Invited paper: 'Palimpsests of Functions: Manuscripts as Frisket Sheets for Colour Printmaking as Binding Scraps', New Bownde: New Scholarship in Early Modern Binding, Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC) 18-May-2013 Invited lecture: co-author, 'Early European Colour Prints, 1450-1800, with a Note on Colour-printed Early Japanese Etchings', Kanazawa College of Art (Kanazawa, Japan) 01-May-2013 Invited lecture: 'Beheaded Cows, English Religious Politics and the Title Vignette of Rede me and be nott wrothe (1528)', Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Cambridge University 22-Mar-2013 Conference paper: A Survey of Early Modern Colour Printmaking in Europe', Printed Image and Decorative Print, 1500-1750, Early Modern Research Centre, University of Reading 21-Mar-2013 Invited paper: 'Printing with Gold before the Reformation', Colour in Prints and Drawings, Graphic Arts Group, British Museum (London) 12-Mar-2013 Invited lecture: 'The Invisibility of Colour in European Printmaking, 1500-1600', Research Seminar, Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Wales (Trinity Saint David, Bangor & Aberystwyth Universities, via Welsh Video Network) 21-Feb-2013 Invited lecture: 'Cycles of Invention: Historical Developments of "New" Innovations in Colour Printing, c.1600–1700’, co-author, Centre for Material Texts, Cambridge University 18-Dec-2012 Invited lecture: 'Colour Printmaking in Tudor Books', Bibliographical Society, Society of Antiquaries (London) 15-Oct-2012 Invited paper: 'Erasmus Loy's Printed "Intarsia"', Graphic Arts Group: Colour in Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London 28-Jun-2012 Invited paper: 'Early Modern Colour Printing, 1600-1700', Colour in the 17th and 18th Centuries: Connexions between Science, Arts, and Technology, Technische, co-author, Universität Berlin 10-Feb-2012 Invited lecture: 'God's Red Fingernails & Half a Wild Child: Accident and Innovation in Colour-Printed Book Illustrations from Early Modern Germany, ca. 1500-1550', King's College Seminar, King's College, Cambridge 08-Dec-2011 Invited paper: 'Blood in Books and Woodgrain on Walls: Previously Unknown Functions of Colour Woodcuts in Sixteenth-Century Germany', Impressions of Colour: Rediscovering Colour in Early Modern Printmaking, ca 1400-1700, CRASSH, Cambridge University 08-Dec-2011 Impressions of Colour: Rediscovering Colour in Early Modern Printmaking, ca 1400-1700 The absence of colour has been long been considered a defining characteristic of early modern printmaking. Colour printing from the hundreds of years between the invention of the printing press and 1700, when Jacques Christophe Le Blon developed the three-colour method we use today, has been thought of as rare and extraordinary. However, new research has revealed that bright inks added commercial value, didactic meaning and visual emphasis to subjects as diverse as anatomy, art, astronomy, biology, cartography, medicine, militaria and polemics in both single-sheet prints and books.
Despite the significance and scale of these discoveries, the bias against colour continues to dominate print scholarship; the colour in colour prints is often ignored. As the technology to disseminate images in their original colour has spread, much important material has suddenly become available to scholars. Now that techniques that were thought to have been isolated technical experiments seem to have been relatively common practice, a new, unified history of, and conceptual framework for, early modern colour printing has become necessary, and significant aspects of early modern print culture now must be reconsidered. This conference aims to explore new methodologies and foster new ways of understanding the development of colour printing in Europe through an interdisciplinary consideration of the production.
The conference will feature a demonstration of early colour printing techniques in the Historical Printing Room, a display of books with early colour printing at the University Library and a display of early colour prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum.
02-Nov-2011 Invited lecture: 'Die Drucker Schott und Grüninger: Straßburg, ein Zentrum der Farbdruckerei um 1510-1530', Druckvorgänge: Drucktechniken vor 1600, co-author, Justus-Liebig-Universität (Gießen, Germany) 17-Oct-2011 Invited lecture: 'The (Re)Inventions of Colour Printing: The Significance of Johann Grüninger's Failed Experiments of 1517-1518', Art History Seminar, Warburg Institute, University of London 01-Jul-2011 Conference paper: 'Printing Colour in Early Modern German Book Illustrations: The Significance of Johann Grüninger's Failed Experiments of 1517-1518', Book Encounters 1500-1750, Research Centre for Book, Text and Place, Bath Spa University 01-May-2011 Invited lecture: 'Printing Colour in the Age of Dürer: German 'Chiaroscuro' Woodcuts, 1487-ca. 1572', History of Art Graduate Symposium, Cambridge University 24-Mar-2011 Conference paper: 'Golden Woodcuts and Movable Notes: Printing Technology and Patronage in Early Modern Germany', Decorated Music: Visual Art in a Musical Context, co-author, Renaissance Society of America (Montreal) 24-Nov-2010 Invited lecture: 'The Prestige of Printing in Gold and…Gray? New Research on Hans Burgkmair's Maximilian I (1510)', New Research Lecture Series, Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) 30-Apr-2010 Invited lecture: 'Printing Gold in the "Golden Age" of German Prints', Lunchtime Seminar, King's College, Cambridge University 03-Feb-2010 Invited lecture: 'Mit Fleiss getruckt': The Glittering Coat of Arms of Cardinal Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg in Ludwig Senfl's Liber selectarum cantionum (1520), Interdisciplinary Early Modern Seminar, co-author, Cambridge University 01-Oct-2009 Series convenor: New Research Lecture Series (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), monthly seminar, 2009/10 Series co-founder and co-convenor: Book and Print Initiative seminars, School of Advanced Study, 2019–2024 Other editing/publishing activities:
Date Details Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats peer reviewer
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (DSH) peer revewier
International Journal of Creative Multimedia peer reviewer
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library peer reviewer
De Gruyter peer reviewer
Routledge peer reveiwer
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI): Talent Peer Review College peer reveiwer
Printing Historical Society: Grants and Prizes Sub-Committee peer reviewer
Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine (FSP) (Foundation of Heritage Science, France) peer reviewer
European Research Council peer reviewer
Narodowe Centrum Nauki (NCN) (National Science Centre, Poland) peer reveiwer
Herzog August Bibliothek peer reveiwer
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 2025–28: Advisory Board, member
Journal of the Printing Historical Society 2016–present: Publications Sub-Committee, member; 2025–28: Joint Reviews Editor
Knowledge transfer activities:
Details Exhibition contributor, ‘Making the Invisible Visible: Women’s Ownership of Early Modern Medical Knowledge’, installation in A Body of Knowledge: Discover 500 Years of Book Collecting at the Royal College of Physicians (Sept 2025–July 2026) ‘Making Visible’ is a new site-specific artwork by Catherine James, installed in summer 2025 in the Dorchester Library of the Royal College of Physicians. This artwork aims to make visible the previously overlooked contributions of women to the RCP library. It has grown from James’ ongoing doctoral research project into the history of women’s ownership and use of the books in this room. 1,966 books have been wrapped by hand in blue paper to represent the proportion of the books once owned or used by women. The blue has been chosen as it contrasts with the cream, brown and red tones of the book spines, making women’s contributions starkly manifest.
There has been a library at the Royal College of Physicians (the RCP) since its foundation in 1518. The first library collections were almost entirely destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666; a loss of over 1,100 books. After this devastation, Lady Grace Pierrepont in 1686 generously gave the RCP the books that had once belonged to her father Henry Pierrepont, first Marquis of Dorchester. These books were installed in a new library in 1688 and remain the core of the collection you see around you today.
Although many of the books in this room were given to the college by Lady Grace, the library is named for her father, obscuring her role as a major benefactor to the RCP. Similarly, women’s contributions to the collection have historically not been visible in the library catalogue. As the collection has grown over time, many books were donated and bequeathed by members and fellows. The library catalogue documents the names of some of these and other previous owners, but historic cataloguing practice conventions meant that women’s names were often not included.
Catherine James’ research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the London Arts and Humanities Partnership. ‘Making Visible’ was installed with generous assistance from Ruth Andrew, Ella Boucht, Natalia Clark, Cristina Dario, Kathryn Davies, Annabel Dorling, Felix Lancashire, Yvonne Lewis, Finn Manders, Anita Simonds, Holly Wilkins, Katherine Wills and others.
Exhibition contributor, 'Hans Baldung Grien heilig | unheilig' (Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 30 November 2019–8 March 2020) Hans Baldung, also called Grien (1484/85–1545), ranks among the most original artists of the 16th century. Living in a time of radical upheaval characterised by the Protestant Reformation with its iconoclasm and the Great Peasants’ Revolt, he created novel and often eccentric works. His highly expressive paintings, virtuoso drawings and powerful woodcuts remain fascinating to this day.
Never satisfied with common achievements, he was always in search of original forms of expression and structured his creative work along two axes: sacred art on the one hand (imposing retables, luminous stained-glass windows and intimate devotional pictures), and profane works on the other (expressive portraits, depictions of contemporary or ancient scenes, enigmatic paintings for humanistic patrons, and suggestive nudes, including his famous representations of the Fall and graphic images of witches).
The masterworks from the Karlsruhe collection are complemented by some 200 loans from museums in London, Paris, Prague, Madrid, Vienna, Basel, Nuremberg, New York, Florence, Warsaw and Copenhagen. A parallel exhibition held at the Junge Kunsthalle helps children and youth to learn about Baldung through playing. Last but not least, the project also includes events related to the artist that will take place in Freiburg (Augustinermuseum and choir of the minster) and Strasburg (Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame).
Exhibition contributor, 'Gravure en clair-obscur. Cranach, Raphaël, Rubens' (Musée du Louvre, Paris, 18 October 2018–14 January 2019) Réunissant de manière inédite près de 120 estampes conservées dans les collections parisiennes les plus importantes (collection Edmond de Rothschild, musée du Louvre ; Bibliothèque nationale de France ; Fondation Custodia et Beaux-Arts de Paris), ainsi que des prêts emblématiques de musées français (musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon) et étrangers (British Museum, Ashmolean Museum et Rijksmuseum), l’exposition retrace à la fois une technique et une esthétique particulières de l’estampe : la gravure en clair-obscur, dite aussi en couleurs.
Elle en propose un panorama chronologique et géographique à travers les chefs-d’oeuvre gravés par ou d’après les plus grands maîtres de la Renaissance et du maniérisme européen, tels que Cranach, Raphaël, Pierre Paul Rubens, Parmigianino, Domenico Beccafumi ou Hans Baldung Grien. L’exposition s’appuie sur un projet de recherche scientifique, financé par la fondation Patrima, portant sur l’analyse des pigments et colorants d’une quarantaine de gravures en clair-obscur et faisant collaborer le musée du Louvre, la BnF et le Centre de recherche et restauration des musées de France (C2RMF).
Exhibition contributor, 'Haute Lecture by Colard Mansion: Innovating Text and Image in Medieval Bruges' (Groeningemuseum, Bruges, 1 March–3 June 2018) The exhibition takes you back to fifteenth-century Bruges, a cosmopolitan, dynamic city, famous for its book production. In the middle of this book world stands the figure of Colard Mansion, producer of luxury books. Initially, Mansion was the man of beautiful manuscripts, but he quickly switched over to the brand-new medium of the printed book. Mansion created the most magnificent incunabula of his time, in an unprecedented typography and very specially illustrated. He primarily printed French texts that had never been published before.
This unprecedented beauty of Mansion’s printed oeuvre is a main focus of the exhibition. Incunabula from the Public Library of Bruges and the Bibliothèque nationale de France are supplemented by volumes from libraries all over the world. Never before has such a large number of Mansion’s incunabula been assembled in a single exhibition. The exhibition offers insight into Mansion’s dazzling works – but the man behind it all doesn’t betray his secrets. For example, there are many unanswered questions about his collaboration with William Caxton, the first English printer. And what happened to Colard Mansion himself after 1484 also remains shrouded in mystery: he disappeared from Bruges just as suddenly as he had appeared there. No one knows where he came from, no one knows where he fled to. Can his books solve this puzzle?
Exhibition contributor, 'Cranach. Meister – Marke – Moderne' (Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, 8 April–30 July 2017) Lucas Cranach the Elder ranks among the most eminent painters of the German Renaissance. He was a close friend of Martin Luther and had a significant influence on artists across the centuries. One of the highlights of the anniversary year in the, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf is a major exhibition dedicated to the Wittenberg painter from 8 April to 30 July. For the first time the exhibition explores Cranach the Elder’s productivity/activity in its entirety and modernity, demonstrating his successful/winning strategies and the influence of this exceptional artist on modern and contemporary art. The latest research results reveal hitherto unknown sides of this exceptional artist.
For the Düsseldorf exhibition, which will be the highlight of the Luther decade 2017, about 250 works will be brought together from international museums and collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, as well as the Nationalmuseum Stockholm High-quality works/exhibits will be on show like the live-size “Venus” from St. Petersburg, “Christ and the Adulteress” from Budapest, and the so-called Prague Altarpiece, whose widely-scattered component parts will be united for (the duration of) this important exhibition in Düsseldorf. A range of further high-quality panel paintings, drawings and prints will document Cranach’s influential role in the spread of the Reformation, as well as his prudent dealings with the most eminent aristocratic patrons of the 16th century. In juxtaposition with works by Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Jacopo de’ Barbari and Lorenzo Costa the Elder the exhibition will explore Cranach’s position within the network of the artists of his time.
The exhibition traces the impact of Cranach’s art still in evidence in modern and contemporary art. Works by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Alberto Giacometti, Otto Dix, Andy Warhol and Martial Raysse reveal the significant influence of Cranach’s pictorial language on the principal pioneers of Modernism.
The most recent results from technological examinations and archival research provide fascinating insight into the daily working routine of the important and most productive 16th century German painter.. Cranach’s paintings testify to an enormous range of innovative compositional solutions and novel subjects, that he as a close friend of Martin Luther, developed during this period of religious conflict and which were rapidly disseminated across the European continent.Exhibition curator, German Renaissance Colour Prints (British Museum,Nov 2015-Jan 2016) This display of colour printmaking in Germany spans the first attempts to incorporate colour into woodcuts in the early 1400s (before Gutenberg invented movable type in about 1450) through the revival of classical forms and learning in the Renaissance and the Reformation (the religious movement that led to the creation of Protestantism) of the 1500s, up to the decline of woodcut around 1600. It shows that colour printing was integral to the emerging aesthetic of the press in German Renaissance book, print and visual cultures. Early German colour prints are now considered rare because comparatively few impressions have survived. In their day, however, they were commonplace with thousands of them in circulation for uses as diverse as illustrating books to decorating furniture.
Exhibition curator, Tudor Colour Printing (Cambridge University Library, Dec 2013–Jan 2014) The colourful heraldic devices in the Book of St Albans (1486) have long been celebrated as the first and only images printed in colour in England until the mid-1700s, when technical breakthroughs allowed pictures to be printed in colour on a commercial scale. The 250-year gap between these landmarks of the history of English colour printing has been explained with reference to the absence of colour printing technologies or austere Reformation tastes, for instance. But images were indeed printed in colour in England throughout the sixteenth century, circulating in perhaps thousands of individual impressions. Because all known examples are illustrations or visual elements in books and because there is no standard descriptive vocabulary for their colour printing, this printed colour has hidden in plain sight until now.
This is the first ever exhibition on colour printmaking in Tudor England (1485-1603). These brightly printed pictures transform our understanding of the spread of technologies of visual communication in the English Renaissance, and more generally, in early modern Europe. Each theme explores a different technical approach; each object provides another piece of the story. The exhibition presents aspects of Dr Elizabeth Upper’s research as the 2012/13 Munby Fellow of Bibliography. Access to the Library’s collections on the same terms as the members of its permanent staff, a unique feature of the Fellowship, allowed her to search for these vivid images in the thousands of sixteenth-century English books in the Rare Book stacks.
Exhibition contributor, European Colour Woodcuts, 1500-1600; section of'Good bookes to be sought': Munby the Collector (Cambridge University Library, June–Sept 2013) The latest exhibition in the North Front Corridor marks the centenary of the birth of one of Cambridge’s most eminent twentieth-century librarians. Born on Christmas Day 1913, A.N.L. ‘Tim’ Munby studied at King’s College (1932-1935) before working in the antiquarian book trade with Quaritch and Sotheby’s. He spent 27 years as Librarian of King’s College, and wrote widely on many aspects of book history and book collecting. Known for his generosity and hospitality, Munby made a great impression on all he met. The library’s Rare Books Reading Room is named after him, and the department holds a significant number of volumes from his own collection, some of which are included in the exhibition, alongside Munby’s own gifts to the library and copies of his works.
Exhibition curator, maps: MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster (Ambika P3, London) Exhibition curator, Voice of the Grain: MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster (Ambika P3, London) Exhibition curator, MAPS, MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster (Ambika P3, London, September 2011) Exhibition curator, Light Sensitive: MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster (Ambika P3, London) Exhibition curator, Dying to Know: MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster (Ambika P3, London) Exhibition curator, Skip Intro: MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster (Ambika P3, London) Curatorial researcher, 'Making our Mark: The Church of England's Response to the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act' (Church of England UK dioceses, 2007) Exhibition curator, SPAM: MA Photographic Studies, University of Westminster (Shoreditch Town Hall, London) - Consultancy & Media
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- Available for consultancy:
- Yes
- Media experience:
- Yes