Events

Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - 17:30
Micha Lazarus, Theophilactus & a Nyght Capp: The Social Life of Books in Tudor England

Change of speaker: Rachel Jacobs is unable to give her paper on 'Waddesdon Manor: A Rothschild Collection' on this occasion.

We are grateful to Dr Micha Lazarus (Trinity College, Cambridge) who has offered at the last minute to give a paper on 'Theophilactus & a Nyght Capp: The Social Life of Books in Tudor England'.

Alexander Nowell's rough notebook contains a series of remarkable booklists, amounting to a collection of almost 250 individual titles owned by Nowell as he moved from Oxford to Westminster in the early 1540s. Recorded in and among draft letters, memoranda, and page upon page of chaotic accounts, these booklists describe an intellectual community tied together by books. Not only do Nowell's accounts name over fifty individuals who bought, borrowed, loaned, and sold his books, but they also trace books circulating among clothes, groceries, and debt in complex, multi-party transactions. More than simply a large, hitherto unknown book collection, therefore, Nowell's manuscript poses the question: what kind of thing was a book in Tudor England?

Before the lecture the Society’s Gold Medal will be presented to Professor James P. Carley.

Location:
Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE
Tuesday, February 18, 2020 - 17:30
Trude Dijkstra: Between mercantilism and materia medica: printing and publishing Chinese medicine in early modern Europe.

Recent studies of the intercultural exchange of medical knowledge between Europe and Asia during the First Global Age and the impact of non-European materia medica on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease in early modern Europe have been invaluable in establishing the interconnectedness between Asia and Europe during the early modern period, while also demonstrating that cross-cultural exchange of scientific and medical knowledge and products went in both directions. However, as the focus has primarily been on the content of printed materials, less attention has been paid to the book-historical properties of text and image through which knowledge of medicine circulated. This paper will address the composition, mediation, survival and transformation of written communication in print to present a new image of the production, distribution and reception of early modern knowledge about Chinese medicine and pharmaceuticals.

Location:
Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE
Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - 17:30
Margaret Lane Ford: Bookselling and bibliography.

Presidential Address
Despite their essentially ephemeral nature, catalogues of books for sale have played an important role in the history of bibliography, and it may be useful to look afresh at the influence commerce and scholarship exercised on each other, largely down to the end of the eighteenth century, through our modern lens of the archaeology of the book.

Location:
Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - 17:30
David Shaw: Paper for octavos: Innovation in early sixteenth-century book production.

Graham Pollard Memorial Lecture

Medieval paper makers produced paper in four distinct sizes. Paul Needham has identified several variants used by fifteenth-century printers and another variant introduced by Aldus Manutius for his octavo classics. These paper sizes, new and old, continued in use in the sixteenth century.

Location:
Tuesday, May 19, 2020 - 17:30
Mirjam Foot: New movements in French twentieth-century binding design: Marius Michel and what followed.

Homee and Phiroze Randeria Lecture

In the first half of the twentieth century, a group of designers in France, initially encouraged by an enlightened patron and book collector, started to produce wonderfully varied, and often amazingly beautiful designs for bindings, applying to books and bindings the philosophy and artistic skills that had inspired their drawings, engravings or etchings, as well as their designs for furniture and ceramics. They chose the best forwarders and finishers to carry out their designs, producing the most stunning results. Their work was mostly, but not entirely, intended for discerning collectors. This talk will concentrate on this group of designers who worked mainly in Paris until c. 1960.

Location: