Cultural Histories of the Material World (workshop)

Cultural Histories of the Material World: Early Modern Books and Objects

A Workshop in partnership with the Bard Graduate Center and the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Board Room

Description: In collaboration with the Bard Graduate Center, the Folger Institute will host a day-long workshop on early modern material studies. Topics to be discussed may include books-as-artifacts, relations of texts and practices as exemplified by food knowledge, collecting practices and institutions, craft and design, and natural historical objects. The different perspectives on material culture of the anthropologist, art historian, archaeologist, literary critic, and historian will be highlighted.

The workshop participants examined multiple holdings in the Folger collections, including this 1615 embroidered binding, from the Robert S. Pirie collection.

Organizers: Andrew Morrall and Deborah Krohn of the Bard Graduate Center, and Kathleen Lynch and Owen Williams of the Folger Institute.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

9:00

Coffee and Pastries

9:30

Welcome and Introductions

Owen Williams (Folger Institute) and Kathleen Lynch (Folger Institute)

9:45

Early Modern Texts and Cultural Practices (Part 1: Embroidery)

Speakers: Anna Bertolet (Auburn); Andrew Morrall (Bard)

For this session, Georgianna Ziegler curated a collection of embroidered bindings from the Folger.

Other display items included:

• Embroidered binding, English
• The Whole booke of Psalmes collected into English meeter
• The whole booke of Psalmes
• A facsimile of the Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608
• Mr. VVilliam Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies : published according to the true originall copies]

11:00

Break

11:30

Early Modern Texts and Cultural Practices (Part 2: Natural History, Food Knowledge)

Speakers: Deborah Krohn (Bard); Caroline Duroselle-Melish (Folger)

12:45

Lunch, including small group discussion

(Foulke Conference Room)

2:00

Circulation, Reception, Afterlives

Speakers: Stella Beddoe (Retired Senior Keeper of Decorative Art, Brighton Royal Pavilion & Museums); Claire Farago (University of Colorado Boulder)

Display items included:

• Delftware tile (Liverpool) : Mrs Yates as Jane Shore
• Sheet music Title page: 'Buy Image'
• Derby porcelain figure: David Garrick as Richard III
• Worcester porcelain figure: John Liston as Paul Pry
• 2 x Bow porcelain figures: Kitty Clive and Henry Woodward
• Derby porcelain figure: Mme Vestris as the Broom Girl
• Small circular porcelain box: William Henry West Betty
• A treatise of painting, by Leonardo da Vinci
• Prodromus coptus sive Aegyptiacus

3:15

Tea (Folger Tea Room)

3:45

Fashion, Through Time, and On the Stage and Off

Speakers: Michele Majer (Bard); Amanda Wunder (History, Lehman College (CUNY); and Department of Art History, CUNY Graduate Center);

Tatiana String (Associate Professor of Art, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

Display items included:

• Geometria y traça para el oficio de los sastres
• Tailor’s pattern book, 1589
• As you like it, set of engravings of costumes for the characters in the play
• Two costume sketches: (1) Merchant of Venice, Portia's clock in the casket scene ; (2) Much ado about nothing, Beatrice in the last scene
• Costume designs for the Viola Allen production of Winter's tale at the Knickerbocker Theatre
• Charles Kean's scrap book
• Costume for Julia Marlowe
• Edwin Booth Costume for Iago

5:00

Reformulated Questions

Speakers: Kathleen Lynch (Folger); Deborah Krohn (Bard); Andrew Morrall (Bard)

5:30

Closing Reception