MHS News

Stop the press! Or perhaps more appropriately… start the press!

We are currently undertaking a project to make prints public; cataloguing, researching and digitising approximately 1,500 prints held in our collections.

This will mean you will be able to use our online ‘collections search’ function to find these items, see (and order) high resolution images of them.

These items have not previously been thoroughly investigated, making it an exciting project to be involved with. We already know there are important and rare astronomical broadsides by Benjamin Martin (a scientific instrument maker, compiler of an early dictionary and popular lecturer on science – think of an Eighteenth Century Brian Cox!). The collection also includes a rare set of 105 separate prints created in Seventeenth Century China by Ferdinand Verbiest, a Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. They illustrate the form and construction of instruments for the Imperial Observatory in Beijing, using the Tychonic model. See our Online Exhibition on the ‘Images of Tycho Brahe’ for more details.

The rest of the material ranges from portraits of scientists, to historic images of the museum building, to paper instruments with movable parts, to ephemera such as advertisements for public lectures and more.

A day in the life of a cataloguer-researcher

We are currently cataloguing portraits, where the first jobs are identifying the printing technique used, the artist and subject of the portrait and when it was made. Usually this is fairly simple as inscriptions at the bottom of the print often tells you the artist and engraver, and sometimes the date and publisher. If not, it takes a little longer to research.

The main techniques used for the prints in our collection are relief processes such as woodcuts, wood-engraving; intaglio processes such as engraving (line and stipple), etching, mezzotint, aquatint; and planographic processes such as lithography.

The above images show differences between two different intaglio techniques; a line engraving and an etching. The engraving (on the left) is created with tool called a burin which cuts into the metal plate, removing a sliver, which then provides grooves for the ink when the plate is wiped clean. A dampened sheet of paper is pressed into the plate, leaving the characteristic intaglio plate mark on the paper. The engraved lines often taper off towards the end coming to a sharp point. In an etching (see right hand image), the grooves are created by acid corroding the surface of the plate. The lines are created with a needle scratched through an acid resistant substance called the ground. The lines are freer than with an engraving and of even width, with rounded ends. In practice prints often use a combination of techniques.

All the prints are given inventory numbers, catalogued in our collections database, and the records become available online. Items or people of particular interest give us the opportunity to do a little extra research to give more context to the prints.

It is a varied collection, so each day can throw up some interesting and unexpected finds!

 

The Garden, The Ark, The Tower, The Temple: biblical metaphors of knowledge in early modern Europe, an MHS exhibition held in the Bodleian Library from 2nd February to 2nd May, 1998, had an accompanying book (ISBN 0 – 903364 – 09 – 3). A small print run was made which soon sold out. It can occasionally be found to buy, with the price varying from a few hundred to over a thousand pounds (as I write this it is available for £1,128.75).

The exhibition and book, written by Jim Bennett, former director of the museum, and Scott Mandelbrote, investigate biblical metaphors of knowledge in early modern Europe.

INTRODUCTION

The stories of the Garden of Eden, Noahs Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the Temple of Solomon are among the best known in the Old Testament. They were alluded to frequently during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were often used at that time to frame accounts of the progress of knowledge. The narrative history which could be found in the Bible presented a coherent story of the growth and decline of knowledge, in which moral and spiritual factors helped to determine natural and practical outcomes.

As metaphors of knowledge, the four stories gave information about both the acquisition and the ideal state of human understanding. But they also issued warnings about the necessary difference between human and divine knowledge and suggested ways by which knowledge might be married to piety and wisdom in order to achieve an improvement in the condition of mankind. The image that they conjured up was thus both hopeful and threatening. It demanded that human beings temper material and intellectual change with spiritual or moral development. The stories seemed to many to allow for the possibility of transforming the world through the application of human intellect and endeavour. Yet they also emphasized the contemporary belief that the earth had once been a better place, and that human ignorance and suffering were themselves the products of disobedience, error, and folly. The knowledge which was needed to change human life and the natural environment for the good depended on an understanding of the dangers of moral frailty as well as of the achievements of intellectual ingenuity. That understanding could best be developed through an awareness of biblical history and a sense of the working of providence, both of which were enhanced by acquaintance with the lessons of the Garden, the Ark, the Tower, and the Temple. …

An online version of this exhibition can be found on the MHS website; a kindle version of the book has been published, February 2013, with the same content plus useful ebook functionality. An interesting and convenient publication which will also help support the Museum’s broad range of work!