Prints Archives - Inside HSM Oxford

In Print Exhibition Now in the Entrance Gallery

25 March 2014 by Naomi Sackett

The In Print exhibition, currently in the entrance gallery, is a selection of the interesting prints we’ve come across as part of the Making Prints Public project. This exhibition is one of two print related exhibitions in the museum at the moment, with Comets, Meteors and Fireballs in the basement gallery.

If you come to see In Print you may be initially surprised by what appears to be holes in the top of the prints in the tall glass cases at the front of the exhibition. This is the first time that the museum has used a magnet-mounting technique (instead of framing the prints). The holes are actually tiny neodymium magnets which we have used to clamp the prints against custom-made steel paper covered mounts. Magnetic strips were also used to hold on display labels.

The Making Prints Public project has been cataloguing, digitising and tweeting the museum’s print collection over 7 months. Many of the prints were taken from R.T. Gunther’s own personal collection, the Hope Portrait Collection, the Gabb collection and the Radcliffe Observatory collection. There were also items donated by John de Monins Johnson (1882–1956), printer, ephemerist, and classical scholar, and by Lewis Evans (1755–1827), mathematician, astronomer and sundial enthusiast.

A digital version of In Print can be found here. It closes on 11 June 2014

Making Prints Public: John Bird – Connecting the Collections

10 March 2014 by Naomi Sackett

Although our Making Prints Public project has been focused on cataloguing and researching the prints held in our collection, it has also highlighted the inter-connections between the prints and the object and library materials.

Scientific instrument maker John Bird (1709-1776) is a good example. Bird was particularly known for his large-scale astronomical instruments produced for observatories across Europe. His large mural quadrants (used to measure the altitude of celestial bodies) were constructed on new principles which greatly improved their accuracy. He was one of a series of outstanding mathematical instrument makers in eighteenth-century London whose new techniques of construction and high technical standards made the English instrument-making industry world-renowned.

The museum holds various items relating to Bird; prints, instruments and books. In the prints collection you can find a commemorative mezzotint by leading engraver Valentine Green. The mezzotint is particularly interesting viewed in the context of the collection as a whole as it illustrates all aspects of the museum’s relevant holdings; Bird seated alongside a table with a tool of his trade, a treatise on constructing quadrants, as well as a printed technical diagram of a quadrant.

Mezzotint of John Bird of London, by Valentine Green after Lewis, Published by Valentine Green, London, 1776. Inv 14176

The printed diagram within the mezzotint includes the detail text ‘J. Bird Sculp’, indicating Bird engraved the printing plate himself. It was not unusual for scientific instrument makers to also be involved in printing. The act of engraving a printing plate and, for example, engraving scale gradations on a quadrant were similar techniques and there existed greater freedom to work based on technical skill rather than specific knowledge. John Senex, a bookseller, printer and map and globe-maker, is another example, and the museum holds both globes and prints attributed to him.

The engraving and printing of his own technical diagrams is confirmed through our other prints relating to Bird. We have three technical diagrams of his famous mural quadrant, all bearing the lettering ‘J. Bird Sculp’.

Engraving, Bird’s Mural Quadrant, Engraved by John Bird, London, c1768. Inv 14477

Bird’s interest in ‘showing his workings’ is further revealed through his published works held in our library collection. These books were published thanks to funding from the Board of Longitude, which alongside its remit to solve the longitude problem, also aimed to encourage any relevant developments and benefit the instrument-making trade. In 1766 Bird proposed to the Board that for £500 he would instruct others in making astronomical instruments and write an account of his method, resulting in his 1767 Method of Dividing Astronomical Instruments and 1768 Method of constructing mural quadrants exemplified by a description of the brass mural quadrant in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Catalogue records of these works can be found here on the University’s SOLO search.

One of Bird’s famous large mural quadrants can be seen on display, mounted on a wall next to the main stairs in the museum. It was commissioned by Thomas Hornsby (the first Radcliffe Observer) in advance of the foundation of the Oxford Radcliffe Observatory in 1772. Hornsby stated to the Trustees that ‘there is unquestionably but one person living, who is capable of making them’.

Much of the original equipment for the Radcliffe Observatory, including other work by John Bird, was donated in the 1930s and provides a rare example of a near-complete outfit of an eighteenth-century observatory.

A Look Inside the Prints Collection: Flies!

16 January 2014 by Naomi Sackett

We have come across several prints in our collection featuring flies, showing just how broad-ranging our prints and ephemera collection is! They reveal some interesting stories…

Lithograph, Magnified Foot of Forest Fly, by H. Knight, London, 1895

Firstly are two lithographs of microscopic views of the foot of the forest fly (Hippobosca equina).

Lithograph, Magnified Foot of Forest Fly, Side View, by H. Knight, London, 1895

These were published in Eleanor Ormerod’s nineteenth Report of Observations Injurious Insects Common Farm Pests during the year 1895, with Methods of Prevention and Remedy, a journal set up by Ormerod in 1887.

Eleanor Ormerod has been largely neglected despite being compared to Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville and named as ‘our best authority on farm and garden entomology’ by the journal Nature in 1904. She did much to establish the field of economic entomology in Great Britain, publishing books such as A Text-Book of Economic Entomology (1892), and giving lectures at the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester and South Kensington’s Institute of Agriculture.

The lithographs were prepared from fresh specimens and drawn by Horace Knight from West, Newman & Co. In her report she writes that the “two figures of the complicated structure of the foot of the Forest Fly will be found of much interest”.

Engraving, Hooke’s Micrographia, The Face and Eyes of a Drone Fly, Printed by J. Bowles, London, 1745

Robert Hooke’s plates from Micrographia are much better known, and we have four microscopic plates of flies; the foot, eye, and wing of a fly; the face and eyes of a drone fly; the female gnat, and the blue-bottle fly and wing.

Engraving, Hooke’s Micrographia, The Blue-bottle Fly and Wing, Printed by J. Bowles, London, 1745

Hooke’s plates are particularly noteworthy for their detail and accuracy. He observed the specimens in different positions and lighting conditions in order to get the most accurate representation. Having been apprenticed to Dutch painter Peter Lely, he had the artistic understanding, as well as his instrument-making and experimental abilities, to capture his careful microscope observations effectively.

‘The Fly Danger’ with illustration by Grace Edwards, Issued by the British Museum (Natural History), London, 1918

Hooke’s Micrographia revealed a hidden universe right under people’s noses and was a bestseller, popular both with the public and the scientific community. Samuel Pepys famously called it ‘the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life’, recorded in his diary that he sat up until 2am reading it, and was inspired to purchase a microscope for himself.

Lastly, a poster advertising ‘Fly Danger’! It was produced by the Natural History Museum in 1918 (then the British Museum (Natural History)) and 20,000 copies were printed, sold at one halfpenny each.

With advances in bacteriological research in the 1880s and 1890s, the image of the fly was transformed. An annoying but friendly domestic creature became known in the popular imagination as a disgusting host of disease, and ‘One of Man’s Greatest Enemies’. The image of the fly on the poster is magnified highlighting its ‘gruesomeness’, and the parts responsible for transmitting disease are labelled. It gives information on breeding places, preventative measures such as covering food, and instructs how to kill flies with traps, swatters and chemical preparations (even stating that “fly killing competitions are useful and to be encouraged”).

A Japanese clock-work fly trap is recommended for killing flies, though “there may be a difficulty in obtaining them in this country”. We are lucky enough to have a Japanese clockwork fly trap in our collection… see our former director Jim Bennett explaining how it works in a film made for our 2011 Eccentricities exhibition.

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