̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - heritage

Ukraine’s cultural heritage faces destruction

fpjl2 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 15:55:11 +0000

Ukraine has a cultural inheritance that has outlasted atrocities and Soviet oppression, writes Dr Olenka Pevny. We must ensure it survives Russia's brutal invasion.

Sir Isaac Newton’s Cambridge papers added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register

sjr81 — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 09:36:33 +0000

Held at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, Newton’s scientific and mathematical papers represent one of the most important archives of scientific and intellectual work on universal phenomena. They document the development of his thought on gravity, calculus and optics, and reveal ideas worked out through painstaking experiments, calculations, correspondence and revisions.

In combination with alchemical papers at King’s College, Cambridge and his notebooks and correspondence at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum, this represents the largest and most important collection of Newton’s papers worldwide.

Katrina Dean, Curator of Scientific Collections at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library said: “Newton’s papers are among the world’s most important collections in the western scientific tradition and are one of the Library’s most treasured collections. They were the first items to be digitised and added to the Cambridge Digital Library in 2011 and featured in our 600th anniversary exhibition Lines of Thought last year. In 2017, their addition to the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register recognises their unquestionable international importance.”

̽��ֱ��Memory of the World Project is an international initiative to safeguard the documentary heritage of humanity against collective amnesia, neglect, the ravages of time and climatic conditions, and wilful and deliberate destruction. It calls for the preservation of valuable archival, library and private collections all over the world, as well as the reconstitution of dispersed or displaced documentary heritage, and the increased accessibility to and dissemination of these items.

Newton’s Cambridge papers, and those at the Royal Society, now join the archive of Winston Churchill, held at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Churchill Archives Centre, on the UNESCO Register. They also join Newton’s theological and alchemical papers at the National Library of Israel, which were added in 2015.

̽��ֱ��chief attractions in the Cambridge collection are Newton’s own copies of the first edition of the Principia (1687), covered with his corrections, revisions and additions for the second edition.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge papers also include significant correspondence with natural philosophers and mathematicians including Henry Oldenberg, Secretary of the Royal Society, Edmond Halley, the Astronomer Royal who persuaded Newton to publish Principia, Richard Bentley, the Master of Trinity College, and John Collins, mathematician and fellow of the Royal Society who became an important collector of Newton’s works.

Added Dean: “One striking illustration of Newton’s experimental approach is in his ‘Laboratory Notebook’, which includes details of his investigations into light and optics in order to understand the nature of colour. His essay ‘Of Colours’ includes a diagram that illustrates the experiment in which he inserted a bodkin into his eye socket to put pressure on the eyeball to try to replicate the sensation of colour in normal sight.”

Another important item is Newton’s so-called ‘Waste Book’, a large notebook inherited from his stepfather. From 1664, he used the blank pages for optical and mathematical calculations and gradually mastered the analysis of curved lines, surfaces and solids. By 1665, he had invented the method of calculus. Newton later used the dated, documentary evidence provided by the Waste Book to argue his case in the priority dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over the invention of the calculus.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian Jess Gardner said: “Newton’s work and life continue to attract wonder and new perspectives on our place in the Universe. Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library will continue to work with scholars and curators worldwide to make Newton’s papers accessible now and for future generations.”

Isaac Newton entered Trinity College as an undergraduate in 1661 and became a Fellow in 1667. In 1669, he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, a position he held until 1701.

Among the more personal items in the Cambridge collections are Newton’s daily concerns as recorded in an undergraduate notebook which records Newton’s expenditure on white wine, wafers, shoe-strings and ‘a paire of stockings’, along with a guide to Latin pronunciation.

A notebook of 1662-1669 records Newton’s sins before and after Whitsunday of 1662, written in a coded shorthand and first deciphered between 1872 and 1888. Among them are ‘Eating an apple at Thy house’, ‘Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar’ along with the more serious ‘Wishing death and hoping it to some’ before a list of his expenses. These included chemicals, two furnaces and a recent edition of one of the most comprehensive compilations of alchemical writings in the western tradition Theatrum chemicum, edited by the publisher Lazarus Zetzner.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is also hosting a series of talks open to the public by Sarah Dry and Patricia Fara on Newton’s manuscripts and Newton’s role in Enlightenment culture and polite society on December 7 and December 14 respectively. For details and bookings, see: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/using-library/whats

̽��ֱ��Cambridge papers of Sir Isaac Newton, including early drafts and Newton’s annotated copies of Principia Mathematica – a work that changed the history of science – have been added to UNESCO’s International Memory of the World Register.

Newton’s papers are among the world’s most important collections in the western scientific tradition and are one of the Library’s most treasured collections.

Katrina Dean

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Image from Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Three Jane Austen letters are shown together for the first time

sjr81 — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 09:59:18 +0000

On 5 May 1801 the novelist Jane Austen sat down in an upper room of a terraced house in Bath to write to her sister Cassandra. She had that day arrived in the popular spa town, following her father’s decision to leave the family home at Steventon in Hampshire.This decision had been distressing to Austen, who was 25 years old when she wrote this letter.

Austen’s letter is rich in detail about Bath, some damp accommodation, “the exorbitant price of fish”, and current fashion (“Black gauze Cloaks are worn as much as anything”). She would go on to set parts of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in the town which she described to her sister as being “all vapour, shadow, smoke & confusion”.

This letter is the earliest of the correspondence displayed in an exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death on 18 July 1817. ‘Jane Austen: Letters and Readers’ exhibits three manuscript letters held in Cambridge collections: the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library and King’s College. Only about 160 letters written by Austen survive worldwide.

‘Jane Austen: Letters and Readers’, which runs from 28 March to 8 April 2017, is a rare chance to view these precious letters along with other significant items relating to Austen in the ̽��ֱ�� Library’s collection. It is the first time that the letters have been shown side by side.

̽��ֱ��other two letters on display relate to the publication of Emma, Austen’s much-loved novel of 1816. An exchange of letters between Austen and Frances Parker, Countess of Morley, to whom Austen sent a copy of Emma, provides an insight into Austen’s contemporary readership.

Although Austen remained widely unknown during her lifetime and her novels were published anonymously, her reputation was growing, notably among aristocratic circles. In her letter to Austen, Frances Parker speaks of her intimacy with Austen’s characters, the “Bennetts [sic], Bertrams, Norriss & all their admirable predecessors”.

Frances Parker’s private responses give scholars valuable information as to how Austen’s work was being received. Elsewhere, the Countess testified to not liking Emma as much as Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, because of its lack of story. Intriguingly, Parker herself was suspected by some to be the author of Austen’s fiction.

̽��ֱ��last of the letters in the exhibition, dated 1 April 1816, is a short message from Austen to her publisher, the influential John Murray. In it, Austen discusses the novelist Walter Scott’s review of Emma, which was the first extended appreciation in print of Austen’s writing.

Scott recognised Austen’s innovative talent in “keeping close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life”. Austen also refers in this letter to another admirer, the Prince Regent, to whom the novel is (probably unwillingly) dedicated.

Alongside these letters, printed works are exhibited, including first editions of Austen’s fiction and items from the collection of Geoffrey Keynes, Austen’s bibliographer. A highlight from the Keynes collection is Oliver Goldsmith’s An History of the earth, and animated nature (1774), one of the few books known to have been owned by Jane Austen. Her signature inside the front cover, dated 1799, is on display.

̽��ֱ��exhibition coincides with a conference at Trinity College (29-31 March 2017) to celebrate, in particular, the bicentenary of Sanditon, Jane Austen’s last, unfinished novel. ̽��ֱ��manuscript of Sanditon, which Austen was writing in the final year of her life, is held at King’s College. ̽��ֱ��last page is dated ‘March 18’. Austen died exactly four months later on 18 July 1817.

Participants in the conference will have the chance to see at King’s the manuscript of Sanditon, with other items from the College’s rich Jane Austen collection, including the manuscript continuation of the novel (in private ownership), written by Anna Lefroy, Austen’s niece. Lefroy was close to her aunt and received Austen’s literary advice. ̽��ֱ��two manuscripts are exhibited together for the first time.

Austen’s great-nephew Augustus Austen-Leigh was Provost of King’s between 1889 and 1905. He married Florence Emma Lefroy, another Austen descendent (her great-great niece). Florence’s sister, Mary Isabella Lefroy, gave the manuscript of Sanditon to King’s in memory of “the most popular Provost, and Provostess “Kings” has ever had”.

‘Jane Austen: Letters and Readers’ runs from 28 March to 8 April 2017, 9am-6.30pm weekdays, 9am-5pm Saturdays, closed Sundays, in the entrance hall of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. No charge.

For full details of the Trinity conference, events and registrations see: https://sanditon200years.wordpress.com.

An exhibition offering a rare chance to see some of Jane Austen's letters has opened at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. ̽��ֱ��correspondence on display is held by three different Cambridge collections. This is the first time that the letters have been shown together.

Austen’s letter is rich in detail about Bath, some damp accommodation, “the exorbitant price of fish”, and current fashion (“Black gauze Cloaks are worn as much as anything”).

Jane Austen's letter to her sister Cssandra dated 5 May 1801

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Museum archive reconnects a London-based Congolese community with its heritage

lw355 — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 09:30:18 +0000

̽��ֱ��community is a London-based group called the Congo Great Lakes Initiative (CGLI). Its members aim to help people with Congolese and African heritage, some of whom are victims of post-conflict trauma, better integrate in the UK.

“One way for building confidence and skills has been to re-connect ourselves and our children to their heritage through museum collections,” says Didier Ibwilakwingi Ekom, Executive Director of CGLI and project coordinator. “It’s helping us to find new ways to tell our stories.”

Reverend Smith’s collection of 242 photographs is held at Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and now forms part of a collection that numbers around 650 images from the Congo Basin, many of them still on their original glass plates. In addition, the Museum has around 1,200 objects from the Congo, just under 400 of them associated with members of the Baptist Missionary Society.

With funding raised from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the CGLI worked with the Museum to unlock new understanding of the images through CGLI members’ unique indigenous insights. Their collective efforts have resulted in an exhibition, 'Carriers of Culture: Women, Food and Power from the Congo Basin', currently at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Hear what matters about the photographs to the community, how the Museum has some brand-new materials, and why every party needs kwanga...

“During the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain was a major supplier of missionaries to Africa and around the world, many of them sending home materials from these early encounters,” explains the Museum's Dr Chris Wingfield. “Missionary collections have been under-researched and overlooked in Britain and yet histories of missionary activity can really matter to people in these now strongly Christian parts of the world. One of our interests has been to understand who cares about this material today, in what ways, and how this can influence the ways we engage with collections.”

̽��ֱ��Great Lakes region of Africa straddles the equator of the continent and in recent decades has suffered interlinked conflicts, famine, violence and refugee-related problems. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone, the war that officially ended in 2003 claimed up to six million lives, displacing over two million people.

“When refugees first arrive, questions of heritage are not necessarily the priority,” adds Wingfield. “But after 10 or 20 years there can be a search for connection and a desire to discover traces of shared histories. This group in particular has been very active in drawing out those aspects of Britain’s history that connect and crossover with the Congo.”

One CGLI member describes what the exhibition has meant to her and her family: “Involvement in political activities led to me fleeing my country. This exhibition has made me really proud that [information] can be passed on from generation to generation. I’ve got my grandson who is five years old and he keeps on asking me questions. He has learned, and in the future he can pass it to his brother, his siblings.”

Wingfield adds: “Re-engaging with the collection, identifying themes and then co-curating the exhibition with the community has been enlightening. This project has partly been about giving children who are growing up in London a link to their Congolese heritage. These kinds of collections are a resource they can draw on. But it’s also given the Museum a sense of the different ways people feel they have an ongoing stake in historic collections.”

Among the collection is a series of photographs showing women making kwanga, a manioc bread. It’s a laborious process. Manioc roots are harvested, then soaked, dried, sieved, boiled, pounded, wrapped, re-steamed and re-dried – the multistep process is needed to rid the starchy vegetable of its cyanide-like poison.

̽��ֱ��community returned again and again to these images, and suggested they form the heart of the exhibition. “We looked at these pictures of women carrying huge baskets of manioc to market and we thought that’s really where the power lies – in those who sustain life,” explains Pamela Campbell, Vice Chair of CGLI. “That’s not to denigrate men. But keeping things going is powerful and that power lies with women.”

Kwanga is still an important part of Congolese life both in the DRC and in the UK. As Ibwilakwingi-Ekom says, “there is no single party where you won’t find kwanga… if there is none there has not been a party.”

Remarkably, women are still processing the vegetable almost the same way, a century on, as shown in contemporary photographs donated to the Museum by the CGLI. One photograph taken in the DRC shows a woman carrying the manioc she’s harvested, the effort etched on her face of hauling the heavy basket. It’s surprisingly similar to photographs taken in the 1890s by Smith; the basket is almost identical to one collected by Baptist Missionaries and given to the Museum in 1910, and which now forms the centrepiece of the exhibition.

For Wingfield and his colleague Dr Johanna Zetterström-Sharp, the project represents a “new path” for working with museum collections. “It’s really important to work with communities like the CGLI because they bring fresh approaches to the curation of objects,” she says. “We often think about our collections in relation to the disciplines that we come from but there are lots of other forms of knowledge and understanding that projects like this bring out, and our perspectives are shifted as a result.”

̽��ֱ��community describes the partnership as one in which universities have the knowledge, but members have the information.

Ackys Kituba, President of the Congolese Community in the UK, adds: “Although we are educated, we are discovering new things about our country. ̽��ֱ��link will be stronger than before. We are learning something as a group but we are doing it for our children.”

Nine-year-old Enoch was born in the UK and travelled to Cambridge with his Congolese family to see the exhibition. Asked what he’d remember most, he says: “How they make kwanga. It was really interesting. It’s helping me find out more about my family. It’s kind of clever… they wouldn’t make it for no reason.”

'Carriers of Culture: Women, Food and Power from the Congo Basin' is at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology until 2 April 2017.

Inset images: photographs from the exhibition (credit: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology).

When Reverend Kenred Smith captured moments of life in the Congo over 120 years ago, he couldn’t have imagined that the photos – now in Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – would be chosen by a Congolese community to help them remember a country that many of them had fled.

We looked at these pictures of women carrying huge baskets of manioc to market and we thought that’s really where the power lies – in those who sustain life.

Pamela Campbell, Vice Chair of CGLI

Josh Murfitt

CGLI members visit the exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Flamenco: what happens when a grassroots musical genre becomes a marker of culture

amb206 — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 09:03:16 +0000

For audiences around the world, flamenco symbolises the colour and romance of southern Spain. An energetic blend of song, guitar and dance, it is most strongly associated with Andalusia, one of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions. With historic connections to Islamic North Africa, Andalusia stands at a geographical crossroads and its culture is rich with influences from far beyond its shores.

̽��ֱ��government of Andalusia has long supported flamenco as an important element of regional identity and a magnet for tourism. In 2010 flamenco was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (ICH), a designation that signals its contribution to culture worldwide. It was a seminal moment in the history of flamenco which has progressed from a tradition embedded in gypsy and working class communities to a genre taught in conservatoires alongside more classical styles.

̽��ֱ��listing of flamenco as an ICH raises important questions about culture and identity: how best to keep regional art forms alive and flourishing in an increasingly globalised world and, most specifically, how musical forms intersect with politics. Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth (Faculty of Music) addresses these topics and more in his book Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain, a detailed study of the ways in which an iconic performative tradition contributes to the formation of identity at local, regional, national and international levels.

Machin-Autenrieth comes to his subject matter as an ethnomusicologist and classical guitar player interested in the shifting politics of a ‘grassroots’ art form that has been packaged both as a global commodity and as a symbol of regional identity. His understanding of the guitar and grasp of colloquial Spanish, together with his deep interest in the relationship between music and politics, qualify him for the task of unravelling the ways in which music is grounded not just in place but in notions of place which contribute to powerful ‘landscapes’ of belonging.

Much has been written, and contested, about the origins of flamenco which emerged as a genre only in the mid-19th century when it was ‘discovered’ by middle class audiences searching for the exoticism and romanticism of folk traditions. Its deeper roots are entwined with the music of gypsies and other marginalised groups. Its themes play on the highs and lows of human experience – love and loss, death and sorrow – reflecting the suffering of a population living in a region scarred by centuries of feudalism.

Flamenco is not universally popular in its country of origin where some see it as a relic of a more ‘backward’ Spain and ‘not really European’. Machin-Autenrieth writes in his introduction: “Many Spaniards I have met (from outside Andalusia) disregard and even detest the conflation of flamenco with Spanish-ness, viewing it as nothing more than an Andalusian-Gypsy tradition. Arguably, a similar process of appropriation is occurring within Andalusia, the tradition being developed by institutions and in the popular media as a definitive symbol of regional identity.”

In setting the context for his discussion, Machin-Autenrieth traces the recent history of flamenco which was repressed and then appropriated by the Franco regime. When the regime ended in the mid-1970s, Spain underwent a process of democratisation and decentralisation in which flamenco was a political tool, becoming a potent marker of the culture of Andalusia. Its popularity may not be universal across the region but, by virtue of educational initiatives and a programme of festivals, all Andalusians are familiar with its distinctive style.

Music has a powerful cohesive effect on communities, and orally-based traditions in particular offer a voice to groups who might remain unheard. But when music is appropriated by institutions, its authenticity and relevance for local communities may be under threat. Concerns about the alleged commercialisation of flamenco are nothing new. Early in the 20th century, the poet Federico García Lorca and composer Manuel de Falla, both Andalusians themselves, emerged as champions for an art form which had gained negative stereotypes, and was under attack by antiflamenquistas intent on depicting flamenco as an outdated cultural phenomenon out of step with Spain’s European ambitions.

In recent years, however, flamenco has seen an increase in institutional support in a country where regional identity is high on the agenda. But institutional involvement in the arts can be counter-reproductive. Making a point that could apply equally to other art forms, Machin-Autenrieth quotes the Spanish sociologist, Aix Gracia, who argues that “the affability with which the administrations treat flamenco in Andalusia, through ‘festivalisation’ and its preservation as a representation of identity, is also its biggest threat… I cannot resist the question: could this art die of success? Or more specifically, could it lose its autonomy?”

In exploring the question of artistic freedom, Machin-Autenrieth attended dozens of flamenco performances and interviewed many of those involved as artists and promoters. He describes the tensions that exist between the styles of flamenco approved by the heritage industry and forms out of favour with the dominant institutions. Strength of feeling against the institutional development of flamenco led to the emergence of Flamenco es un derecho (Flamenco is a right), a protest movement that claims flamenco is a gift to humanity – but one over which Andalusians have a right.

Much scholarly research on flamenco in Andalusia has focused on the role of three cities (Seville, Cadiz and Jerez) as the defining ‘golden triangle’ for its performance. As well as exploring the regional politics behind flamenco, Machin-Autenrieth looks beyond the ‘golden triangle’ to focus on flamenco in Granada, a city famous for its stunning Moorish architecture. Focusing on specific case studies, he explores the relevance of flamenco for local identity in Granada beyond its regional associations. ̽��ֱ��book provides an insight into the range of distinct contexts and styles in Granada that speak to a vibrant and historically-significant flamenco community.

Spanish identity, by virtue of the country’s history, is strongly local. To be Andalusian is to feel a strong sense of regional belonging, to be granadino or granadina (from Granada) is to have even stronger allegiance to a city with its own sense of history and tradition. With flamenco, a sense of locality splits even further into the competing styles performed in different clubs and venues. It is this richness of diversity, rather than adherence to proscribed authenticity, that will keep the genre moving forward.

Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain is published by Routledge.

Inset images: Flamenco (Paolo Signorini); Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain front cover (Routledge).

What happens when a musical genre becomes an identifier for a region? In his book Flamenco, Regionalism and Musical Heritage in Southern Spain, Matthew Machin-Autenrieth unravels the cultural complexity and contested politics of an iconic art form.

In 2010 flamenco was recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (ICH). It was a seminal moment in the history of flamenco which has progressed from a tradition embedded in gypsy and working class communities to a genre taught in conservatoires.

Flickr Creative Commons (Veyis Polat)

Flamenco by Veyis Polat (cropped)

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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From Pulp to Fiction: our love affair with paper

tdk25 — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 08:30:27 +0000

How’s this for a measure of the pace of the tech revolution? Twenty years ago, you would have read this article only on paper; now it is also available on your tablet, smartphone or computer. ̽��ֱ��impact of digital media has become so pervasive that even remarking upon it feels trite. Where predictions that printed books and newspapers are dying once seemed far-fetched, the future now seems less certain.

If we do become a paperless society, we will be terminating a relationship with one of the most successful technologies of all time; one that has endured for 700 years in England, and much longer elsewhere. Our reliance on paper runs so deep that it seems strange to think of it as technology at all. Yet to a person living in 14th-century England, paper would have been an advanced new material. Most writing was on parchment (made from animal skin), and an alternative made of pulped rags represented a truly disruptive innovation.

“Paper was economical – not in the sense that it was cheap, but because it was lighter, more portable and enabled you to write more,” explains Dr Orietta Da Rold from the Faculty of English and St John's College. “Its arrival had a huge impact. People could share ideas in a way that hadn’t happened before. Paper became a pivotal technology for a subsequent explosion in the transmission of knowledge.”

Da Rold is leading a project called Mapping Paper in Medieval England, the pilot phase of which was carried out last year. ̽��ֱ��aim is to understand how and why paper was adopted in England and eventually became a dominant technology – more so even than electronic media have today.

Its historical importance goes beyond paper’s significance as a device for dissemination. Paper, Da Rold suggests, helped to precipitate the spread of literacy and literature. It could be used to teach and practice reading and writing, and it enabled the emergence of a reading public that consumed and shared the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, among others.

It is also a history that has never been fully explored. We know that England was slow to adopt paper, because paper-based manuscripts started to appear in archives only from about 1300 onwards, later than on the continent. How and why this happened, however, has never been properly studied.

In 2015, thanks to a Cambridge Humanities Research Grant, Da Rold and her team spent eight months trawling archives up and down the country in search of paper manuscripts written or based in England between the years 1300 and 1475, when William Caxton set up his first printing press. They found 5,841 manuscripts, of which 736 were paper.

“That’s not the final number because some records don’t state whether a manuscript is paper or not,” Da Rold says. ̽��ֱ��information has, however, been enough to set up an electronic database – the most comprehensive of its kind – with ambitions to crowd-source more data in the future.

Working out how the use of paper spread across England means establishing where each of these manuscripts was based, which is easier said than done because both manuscripts and scribes moved. In some cases, the dialect used in the text suggests a possible point of origin, while other documents can be specifically ‘localised’, usually because they contain a direct reference to their source.

Da Rold has tentatively begun to plot this information onto a map of England. Refining it will be part of the project’s next phase. Each sheet within a manuscript also bears a watermark – an emblem, such as an animal or a star. Tracking this watermark gives some clues as to where the paper was made, where it was used and the wider network of use.

Tentative patterns are already emerging. Some centres in the East of England, like Lincoln and Norwich, appear to have held significant stocks of paper that gradually spread westwards. “There are capillaries that go out across the country, but they don’t go everywhere,” Da Rold says.

Why this happened will be covered in a forthcoming book: From Pulp to Fiction.

Da Rold has two main theories about why paper first came into use, both of which have much wider implications for understanding how any technology succeeds. First, it appears to have undergone a phase of cultural acceptance. This did not necessarily involve people using paper to write – it was just as common in late medieval England to use it to wrap up spices or jam – but the process established paper within the culture.

Second, paper was actively championed by specific groups of people who found it useful: lawyers, merchants, secretaries and anyone who needed to record financial transactions. Paper was easier for them to use than parchment. “It became convenient because people living at the time decided that it met their needs,” Da Rold says.

Why England adopted paper so late remains unclear, but paper is thought to have emerged from China, then gradually spread westwards. England’s position at the end of this paper trail meant that it took longer for the technology to arrive, and the medieval equivalent of a tech cluster to support its development and use may also have been lacking.

Certainly, after the first attempt at establishing an English paper mill, near Hertford, failed in 1507, paper was not produced domestically until the 17th century. This contrasts with, for example, Italy, where major centres like Fabriano emerged. These paper mills, however, drew on a network of supporting industries that helped to refine the production process. It may be that these vital clusters of ideas and expertise were what appeared faster overseas than in England, thereby determining the rate at which paper was adopted and diffused.

Importantly, the paper revolution failed to end the use of parchment overnight. Indeed, there seems to have been a prolonged period of hybridisation during which time those who wrote used paper and parchment (which had different and complementary properties) side by side.

This, Da Rold suggests, has implications not just for establishing how England became a paper-based culture, but also for understanding any process of technological acquisition. It also hints that paper should not, perhaps, be written off just yet.

“ ̽��ֱ��human mind is constantly preoccupied with what is new, and at the same time instinctively conservative,” she reflects. “History such as this shows that at moments of transition the most successful people are those who work with all technologies, and get the most out of everything. There is coexistence as well as friction, and sometimes there is no winner. That may explain why even though we now have iPads we are still taking notes and writing on paper.”

Inset image: A dragon-shaped watermark can be seen on the fold between the sheets of this medieval manuscript, giving clues about where the paper was made and used (credit: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library).

It may seem strange to describe paper as technology, but its arrival in England in about 1300 was a pivotal moment in cultural history. That story is being pieced together for the first time in a new project that also promises to reveal much about why some innovations succeed where others fail

Paper became a pivotal technology for a subsequent explosion in the transmission of knowledge.

Orietta Da Rold

St John's College Library, Cambridge

Page from an edition of ̽��ֱ��Brus, produced in the early 15th century, and an example of an early manuscript on paper

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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‘Crown jewels’ of English lute music go online

amb206 — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:00:00 +0000

Cambridge Digital Library is launching a new Music Collection with the online release of the 'crown jewels' of English lute music. Dating from the late 16th and early 17th century, the manuscripts contain handwritten copies of scores by John Dowland, Francis Cutting and dozens of other early modern composers.

Digital versions of the manuscripts will go online today (Thursday, 11 December 2014) as the first items in a new digital Music Collection, which will grow to reflect Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library's important holdings in this area. ̽��ֱ��Library’s holdings range from music scores and texts on music to ephemera and concert programmes to archival materials documenting the life and work of composers. Such items play a crucial role in the preservation of musical heritage on a national and international level.

̽��ֱ��new online collection of lute music comprises high-resolution zooming images of around 650 pieces contained in eight manuscripts, allowing full access to these unique items to anyone with an internet connection. Pieces from the collection range from celebratory jigs and dances, to popular ballads and sorrowful music for funerals, giving an extraordinary insight into the role and uses of music in early modern England.

̽��ֱ��digitisation has been created in collaboration with the Lute Society. ̽��ֱ��images are accompanied by scholarly descriptions of the manuscripts’ physical properties and inventories of their contents. Four of the eight manuscripts were handwritten by Mathew Holmes, choirmaster at Westminster Abbey until 1621.

̽��ֱ��hundreds of pieces, crammed into more than 600 pages, preserve a cross-section of the lute repertoire in common use in England during the period 1580-1615, the ‘Golden Age’ of English lute music. Together they form the leading source for the music of the best-known lute composers from the English Renaissance. ̽��ֱ��manuscripts shed light on the Tudor celebrities to whom some of the pieces are dedicated - from the courtier Sir Walter Raleigh to the Shakespearean actor Will Kemp.

John Robinson of the Lute Society commented: “A huge number of manuscripts have been lost over the centuries, which makes the survival of this collection all the more remarkable. Today it is an invaluable legacy for professional musicians and musicologists as well as amateur enthusiasts. Digitisation means that the original sources of lute music can be viewed, studied and played by people worldwide.”

Also digitised are personal items. Shown online for the first time is the lute book of an English government official which remained in his family for over 350 years, and a manuscript painstakingly reassembled from fragments cut up and used in the bindings of later printed books.

̽��ֱ��European lute was probably derived from the Arabic Ud and was one of the most important musical instruments during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. ̽��ֱ��first lute music to have been written down dates from the late 15th century. English Tudor court musicians included paid lutenists. Learning the lute was an important part of the education of royalty and nobility.

̽��ֱ��1580s onwards saw the emergence of composers who developed the characteristically English lute music that flourished into the second decade of the 17th century. Among them are John Johnson, Francis Cutting, Anthony Holborne, Daniel Bacheler, John Dowland and Robert Johnson. This crucial period in English lute music coincides with the copying of the Cambridge lute manuscripts.

Robinson said: “ ̽��ֱ��manuscripts are written in French tablature with the notation providing a guide to where to put the fingers on the lute neck, rather like chord shapes in modern guitar tutors. Nearly all the music is for Renaissance lute which is tuned as a guitar except the third string is a semitone lower on the lute. ̽��ֱ��unfamiliarity with tablature notation led to lute sources being largely excluded from mainstream musicology. Now both amateurs and professionals are taught to read it and generally prefer to sight read tablature, especially from copies of original sources.”

In putting this magnificent collection online, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is not only making the manuscripts available to the existing international community of lute enthusiasts, but also reaching new audiences. Anne Jarvis, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian, said: “We are delighted to have had the opportunity to work with the Lute Society to put these unique manuscripts online as the first documents in our new Music Collection.”

Cambridge Digital Library’s new Music Collection is being launched with a private recital at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge by one of the world’s leading lutenists, Jakob Lindberg, who will be performing pieces found in these recently digitised manuscripts.

Handwritten copies of scores by composers of English lute music have been digitised in a programme to make a precious legacy available to professional and amateur musicians around the world.

̽��ֱ��collection is an invaluable legacy for professional musicians and musicologists as well as amateur enthusiasts. Digitisation means that the original sources of lute music can be viewed, studied and played.

John Robinson, Lute Society

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Mr Knight’s galliard by John Dowland

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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̽��ֱ��“wonderful rubbish” of the Gilf Kebir desert

amb206 — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 07:00:00 +0000

Captured by the camera, she looks enviably elegant with her sketching paper and paint brush. Working in the baking heat of North Africa in 1933 a young German artist called Elisabeth Pauli created meticulous records of the vivid paintings made at least 6,000 years ago in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers in Gilf Kebir, an area on the border of Egypt and Libya famed for its rock art.

On the same expedition out in the Eastern Sahara were the Hungarian aviator and desert explorer László Almásy, the renowned German ethnographer Leo Frobenius, and his colleague Hans Rhotert, who published the results of the expedition in 1952 in the volume Libysche Felsbilder. It was Almásy whose rip-roaring adventures across North Africa and beyond provided the inspiration for the main character in Michael Ondaatje’s prize-winning novel ̽��ֱ��English Patient, made into a film by Anthony Minghella.

̽��ֱ��watercolour sketches that Elisabeth Pauli made, and the striking photographs that show her at work in the Gilf Kebir, belong to the Leo Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt am Mein. Copies of both sets of images feature in an exhibition, Leo Frobenius et L’Art Rupestre Africain, opening today (17 June 2014) at the Goethe Institute in Paris.

̽��ֱ��remarkable discovery of some of Pauli’s original materials in the Cave of Swimmers by a team of Egyptian and Italian archaeologists – among them Dr Giulio Lucarini, currently a researcher at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� - adds an extra dimension to the story of human encounters told by these images.

Shown for the first time at the Goethe Institute are Lucarini’s photographs of the tubes of watercolours Pauli used, and the drawing pins (or thumb tacks) that held the paper on which she skilfully recorded what she saw, in the newly-discovered site which takes its name from the swimmer-like forms of the humans depicted.

“These artists’ materials date from a time when many archaeologists were enthusiastic amateurs and intrepid travellers. Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert drove across the sea of sand in open cab pickups,” said Lucarini. “In an era before accurate colour photography, Pauli’s watercolours show us with a high degree of accuracy the startling beauty of the human and animal figures painted in the cave.”

In 2010 Lucarini was the Field Director of the Italian Conservation Project in the Gilf Kebir, run by the Italian-Egyptian Cooperation Programme, working on the conservation of the art in the Cave of Swimmers in the first phase of pioneering efforts to preserve a remote rock art site. ̽��ֱ��intervention in the Gilf Kebir was supported and promoted by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the framework of a long-lasting activity that the Italian Development Cooperation leads in Egypt for the protection of threatened areas.

Overseen by Professor Barbara Barich of the Sapienza ̽��ֱ�� of Rome and ISMEO, the archaeologists and restorers were undertaking the delicate task of stabilising an area of cave art that was becoming increasingly eroded. As a preliminary to starting the work, the team cleared the floor of the cave beneath the drawings. Rock art sites have proved a magnet for tourism with its attendant litter and, with no control on access, many have also been extensively vandalised.

“We needed to sweep the floor clear of debris introduced by visitors so that we would immediately be aware of any material loosened from the painted surface in the process of the conservation work,” said Lucarini. “ ̽��ֱ��chief restorer Maria Cristina Tomassetti and I came across a group of items that had lain hidden for almost 80 years just a few feet from the art we were conserving – first I picked up a drawing pin and then a watercolour tube.”

Within minutes, Lucarini was almost certain that he was holding in his hands the watercolour tubes and drawing pins that Elisabeth Pauli had used and discarded in 1933. What could have been swept into a black bin bag, along with the detritus of visiting tourists, for disposal back at Dakhla Oasis, were items that told a poignant story about the history of the exploration of the site.

“ ̽��ֱ��labels on the six watercolour tubes we found have survived and are marked with the name of Dr F Schoenfeld, the founder of a company called LUKAS, which still manufactures artists’ supplies in Düsseldorf. ̽��ֱ��tubes also carry the names of the colours: caput mortuum, ultramarine, Chinese white, brown ochre and raw umber. These shades tally closely with Pauli’s paintings and the predominant colours of the rock and the figures which were made using mainly red and yellow ochre and white kaolin,” said Lucarini.

̽��ֱ��heads of the dozens of artist’s drawing pins that Lucarini picked up in the cave bear the name Günther Wagner with an eye-catching logo of a pelican feeding four chicks. Once he had access to the internet back in Dakhla Oasis, he was able to trace them to the Pelikan company, a firm which still makes writing and craft materials.

He said: “I was thrilled to discover that Pelikan publishes a wonderfully detailed history of its logo on its website. In 1938 the logo was changed slightly and the number of pelican chicks was reduced from four to two which allowed me to date the manufacture of the drawing pins to the time slot that Pauli was working in the Cave of Swimmers."

Also found on the cave floor were two fountain pen nibs, a Haus Neuerburg aluminium cigarette box of the type used by German troops, and a spent soda capsule.

“It would be romantic to believe that the capsule was used by Almásy to make a drink to celebrate his discovery of the cave in 1933,” said Lucarini. “But any idea of romance is eclipsed by the threats faced by Cave of Swimmers and other sites in the Egyptian Western Desert and the whole Sahara that offer us such an immediate and vivid connection with our ancestors.”

̽��ֱ��eight decades that have elapsed since the inter-war years in which Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert publicised their finds have seen the unfolding of a bitter-sweet story for the priceless artworks of the Eastern Sahara. Gilf Kebir has attracted increasing numbers of tourists whose incursions into archaeological sites are largely unregulated and all too often damaging.

Vandalism by a small number of people determined to destroy and disfigure works of art has become a growing problem with caves and shelters defaced by graffiti. Among the sites affected is the Wadi el Obeiyid Cave, in the Farafra Oasis, which was first investigated by Barich in 1995.

“Archaeological projects working in the Sahara must make safeguarding these sites an absolute priority. Professor Rudolph Kuper and colleagues from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cologne, have been working in the Gilf Kebir for many years and have been pioneers in desert protection programmes,” said Lucarini.

“ ̽��ֱ��only way to safeguard these amazing sites is through extensive and long-term educational programmes that teach local communities, and especially the new generations, about their unique heritage and inform guides and other groups about the importance of artworks not only in the Gilf Kebir but in the whole Sahara."

Lucarini says that the Paris exhibition celebrating Frobenius’s work was the perfect opportunity to reveal photographs of his finds from the Almásy expedition to the public for the first time. “As items I see these artists’ materials as a kind of ‘wonderful rubbish’,” he said. “They are a symbol of early desert exploration and, if they have any role today, it is to help raise public consciousness about the fragility of the desert and about the capacity of humankind to create such magnificent pieces of art.”

Inset images: Elisabeth Pauli copying the rock art paintings in the Gilf Kebir (Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt am Mein), watercolour tubes and drawing pin used by Elisabeth Pauli, rock art painting in the Cave of Swimmers, restoration work in progress (all photos: Carlos de la Fuente, Italian Conservation Porject in the Gilf Kebir).

A chance find in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers adds a colourful twist to an exhibition in Paris celebrating the work of ethnographer Leo Frobenius in raising awareness of the rock art of Africa. ̽��ֱ��discovery by Italian archaeologist Dr Giulio Lucarini, currently at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, underlines the vital importance of safeguarding the heritage of the Gilf Kebir.

We came across a group of items that had lain hidden for almost 80 years just a few feet from the art we were conserving – first I picked up a drawing pin and then a watercolour tube.

Giulio Lucarini

Carlos de la Fuente, Italian Conservation Project in the Gilf Kebir

View of the desert from the Cave of Swimmers

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