Preserving ceramics – a work placement project

Posted on May 9, 2024 by Clair Waller

We welcomed three university students to the archives earlier this year to work on ceramic objects in our Holt Bairnsfather Collection and Graham Thomas Collection. The students were joining us on work placements as part of their studies, and were asked to complete a number of tasks to help us preserve, catalogue and make accessible these collections:

Reviewing: Carrying out a condition report for each item in the collection and photographing each item
Cleaning: Using conservation materials to gently clean the items to ensure they are free of dust and grime
Repacking: Creating custom enclosures for each item using plastazote and ‘Really Useful Boxes’
Listing: Creating descriptions for each item in a spreadsheet that will be imported into Calm, our Collection Management System

You can find out more about these collections on our catalogue:
Holt Bairnsfather Collection
Graham Thomas Collection

Harvey (Canterbury Christ Church University)

Working on the Bairnsfather Collection has been my first experience working as a part of an archival team. It has been an amazing experience and has taught me a lot about not only how working in an archive works but also about a part of history that I did not know a lot about before starting my placement here.

The work I did as part of the team was cataloguing, filling out condition reports, and packaging the items that were to be added to the collection. When cataloguing and completing condition reports it was vital to note down every important detail which people might find important when looking to study these items. Fully assessing the condition was also important as it could be that a detail that someone wanted to look at is damaged, or it could help the archival team know what needed to be handled with a little extra care. When looking into the items to write up their description I learned a lot about not only the items themselves but also about the history surrounding them. This was history I was unlikely to look into myself as I am more of a medievalist.

The beginnings of packaging being constructed

The process of creating protective packaging for the items was a very interesting one as it was not something I had considered as a part of working in an archive before this point. It was one of the reasons for which I applied to do my placement at the Kent Special Collections and Archives department. The way I created the packaging for the items changed throughout my placement.

The figure of President Wilson, depicted holding an ammunition shell.

At first I took measurements at every new layer of plastazote (the main material used in the creation of the packaging). However, by the end, I would measure the first layer and then use that as a template for the rest of the layers. Using scraps of the foam was also a way in which I could make layers on particularly unique shapes of items as it was easier to use the smaller, already-cut pieces than it would be to cut out new ones.

Overall, I found my time working with the Bairnsfather Collection to be very rewarding. The skills and history I learned are invaluable and I look forward to going back and helping out again.

Nirvanna (Canterbury Christ Church University)

This post is dedicated to commemorating the University of Kent’s Special Collections and Archives department and their continuative effort to make unique historical collections available to the benefit of wider society. This department houses and stores over one hundred and fifty collections which range from materials including memorabilia, ceramics, and publications. Throughout the duration of my time working alongside this department, I assisted with the archival processing of the Graham Thomas Collection.

The Graham Thomas Collection

This collection was gifted to the University’s Special Collections and Archives Department by the former lecturer in politics Dr Graham Thomas, after he passed away in April 2023. Dr Graham Thomas was an active participant in the founding of the British Cartoon Archive in the early 1970s. His addition to the Archives consists of the personal items he acquired throughout his lifetime, relating to theatre and cartoons, including the political and cartoon ceramics that will follow in this post.

F.C.G “Toby” Jugs

Fig 1. Pictured is the F.C.G “Toby” Jug Collection depicting seven of the eleven allied war leaders, President Woodrow Wilson depicted in navy blue to the left, Marshall Foch in the centre and David Lloyd George on the right.

A large part of this collection is the political memorabilia collected by Dr Thomas in the form of ceramics. An example of this is the F.C.G “Toby” series pictured in figure 1. This collection represents the full series created by political cartoonist Sir Francis Carruthers Gould in 1917, depicting eleven allied war leaders as decorative ceramic toby jugs. These figures include Winston Churchill (pictured in figure two below) and President Woodrow Wilson (pictured in figure one above), both of whom were widely influential during World War I.

Figure two: pictured Winston Churchill Soane and Smith Toby Jug, 1918, © University of Kent Special Collections and Archives

The accumulation of this series has proven to be a rarity as, upon research, only a limited number of each character toby jug was produced by the makers, Wilkinsons Ltd. Accompanying the figures of the Toby jugs is documentation explaining the release of this toby series as pictured in figure three below. The documentation briefly states that during the time the series was released, there was an increase of demand leading to a ‘reserve list’ for subscribers enquiring after these unique pieces, which consequently required buyers to pay a high price for them. With their existence being in demand from consumers it prompted the producers Soane and Smith to destroy the moulds after their creation so that others could not attempt to replicate them.

Background of Political figure ceramics

The use of ceramics to depict images has been historically significant to convey wider societal opinions on specific subject matters. For modern-day political artists, ceramics and cartoon depictions will be created with the intention to capture the common thoughts and reactions to the affairs of political leaders. The narrative behind these creations has followed the attempt to admonish their audience using satire to question political thought and encourage subversion in the public.

Fig 3: Documentation of a poster promoting the release of the F.C.G “Toby” Series © University of Kent Special Collections and Archives.

The importance of archiving and housing records of such suggestive ceramics is so that there is an inclusive record of public opinion. Not only the fact of historical events, but the lasting effect of politicians on public lives. Many of which, during their time period, did not have a voice to change or challenge governmental authority on their own.

Concluding thoughts

In credit to the Special Collections and Archives department, the artefacts they collect continue to increase the exposure of unknown stories to the wider public. Thus, allowing the general public to access resources that sustain the education of past culture for current and future generations.

Greenwood’s Epitome (1838): of Kentish Manors and Sweeney Todd

Posted on January 16, 2024 by Clair Waller

With thanks to Rebecca Nesvet, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin for this blog contribution.

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, glares menacingly and a bit provocatively out of a 1927 picture postcard, a component of the Melville Collection at the University of Kent at Canterbury’s Special Collections. As played by actor Andrew Melville II (1882-1938), Todd is an eighteenth-century artisan, his hair bound back into a ponytail, his sleeves voluminous. He frowns at the viewer, refusing to share his terrible business secrets. Sweeney Todd, demonic personification of the man-eating metropolis of the industrial revolution, would seem to have little to do with the Kentish countryside, but at the Templeman Library’s Special Collections, they are connected.

Photograph of a black and white print showing Andrew Melville as Sweeney Todd in SWEENEY TODD (MEL/PHO/A II : 600643)

Among the Templeman’s treasures of local history are two copies of Christopher Greenwood’s 1838 Epitome of County History… of Kent. In 1838, Greenwood was Britain’s top practitioner of antiquarian mapmaking.^[1] Many of his maps described counties or larger regions in England and Wales and he also published an Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales, ‘engraved with forty-six … vignette views’ (1828). According to Greenwood’s biographer J.B. Harley, Greenwood’s maps were ‘essentially transitional in character between the traditional features of eighteenth-century map-making and the new era of scientific cartography inaugurated by the Ordnance Survey’.^[2] Greenwood was also exceptionally well-connected. He counted among his patrons many aristocrats and the late King George IV.^[3]

An epitome of county history wherein the most remarkable objects, persons and events are briefly treated of the seats, redidencies, etc. of the nobility, clergy and gentry … : each county illustrated by a map. V. 1, County of Kent (Q DA 1001, Baldwin Collection)

Evidently, Greenwood planned a multi-volume series of geographies of several counties. In the end, he only completed the volume concerning Kent. This Epitome consists of an elaborate, up-to-date map of Kent (see above) and a description of its natural and human geography. A collection of plates illustrate Canterbury Cathedral and many of the county’s stately homes. In some surviving copies, the plates are bound into the volume, adjacent to Greenwood’s descriptions of the landmarks they illustrate.

Two very different copies of Greenwood’s Epitome can be found at the Templeman Library’s Special Collections. One was bound by local antiquary, a Mr Armitage, into four gilt-edged volumes. Besides Greenwood’s pages, the four volumes also contain other material illustrative of Kent’s topography and history. Interpolated throughout, this material reveals what important Kentish landmarks looked like throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in media ranging from woodcuts and lithographs to early photography. Armitage’s bricolage of Greenwood’s Epitome and other representations of Kent is a meticulous, unique, labour of love.

An epitome of county history: Vol 1, County of Kent, presented by Mrs P.M. Armitage (Q DA 1001)

Recently, Special Collections acquired another copy of Greenwood’s volume. This copy consists primarily of plates. Bound in boards, it isn’t as elaborate or personal as Armitage’s project, but it showcases the lithographs of Kentish houses that Greenwood wanted his elite subscribers to appreciate. In these lithographs, published eight years after the ‘Swing Riots’ broke out in the Elham Valley and then convulsed rural England, the Kentish countryside appears tranquil. Agricultural workers go about their business in the fields surrounding their landlords’ estates. Paging through this prints-only volume feels like touring a pastoral panorama of Kent.

The connection to Sweeney Todd is a detail of the plates. One of the Illustrators, “G. Rymer,” is apparently Gaven Rymer (c.1812-42), artist and engraver.^[4] Rymer is the only artist-engraver of that era with his initials, and the publications of “G. Rymer” appear to end with his premature death at the age of approximately thirty.

Rymer was from Clerkenwell: one of London’s poorest parishes, but also a vibrant artisanal community, the home of many engravers, with a rich radical history. It is not unusual that Rymer worked for Greenwood, who kept an office in Bloomsbury. However, while one of Greenwood’s other artists boasted in the Epitome of having drawn his illustrations ‘on stone, from nature’, Rymer almost certainly drew his in London, exemplifying resourceful Cockney transcendence of urban surroundings through art.

In one of Rymer’s three illustrations, ‘Chilham Castle, the Seat of Ja[me]s] B. Wildman, Esq.’ (fig. 3), he might have made a small political intervention in the commissioned composition. Most of the second volume’s prints depict the houses in relatively close perspective, showing off their architectural detail, while a few keep them in the background, showing the vastness of the attached lands. In ‘Chilham Castle’, however, the stately house is centred but small and far away. In the foreground, farmers load a wagon with hay. They face forward and their mise-en-scene fills the lower righthand corner, causing the reader’s eye to travel from the manor house to the workers and finally the overflowing cart and dray animal. Without the title ‘Chilham Castle’, this image would seem more a portrait of the harvesters than a celebration of Wildman’s manor house.

Engraving by Gaven Rymer of Chilham Castle, An epitome of county history wherein the most remarkable objects, persons and events are briefly treated of the seats, redidencies, etc. of the nobility, clergy and gentry … : each county illustrated by a map. V. 1, County of Kent (Q DA 1001)

Chilham Castle, 21st Century. Wikimedia Commons (379208.jpg)

As for the Sweeney Todd connection, Rymer’s brother James Malcolm Rymer (1814-84) was a prolific author of “penny dreadfuls”: cheap, imaginative illustrated fiction serials, some of which are represented in the Templeman’s collections. James Malcolm Rymer created Sweeney Todd in his 1846-7 fiction serial The String of Pearls, a Romance. While James Malcolm Rymer invented a fantasy geography in which monsters waylay unsuspecting visitors to central London, his artist brother brought Kentish idylls to visual life. Now, their creations share a home at the Templeman Library.

The string of pearls, or, The barber of Fleet street : a domestic romance. Source: Internet Archive.

^[1] J.B. Harley, Christopher Greenwood, County Map-maker, and his Worcestershire Map of 1822 (London: Ebenezer Baylis & Son, 1962), viii. Museum.

^[2] Harley, Christopher Greenwood, 25.

^[3] Harley, Christopher Greenwood, 27.

^[4] ‘Gaven Rymer’, 1841 UK Census. Class: HO107; Piece: 660; Book: 8; Civil Parish: St James Clerkenwell; County: Middlesex; Enumeration District: 15; Folio: 34; Page: 23; Line: 8; GSU roll: 438777. Ancestry.com mistranscribes Gaven’s name as ‘Gravers’, but the facsimile makes the spelling clear.

Written by Rebecca Nesvet, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin, nesvetr@uwgb.edu

Dan Thompson – zines and artist books collection

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Clair Waller

We’ve recently been very lucky to receive a fantastic collection of almost 300 zines and artist books from artist, maker and collector, Dan Thompson.

Dan lives in Ramsgate and runs a studio out of Marine Studios in Margate. He works nationwide on projects centred around people and places. Below is his story about this fantastic collection. You can browse the collection here: https://archive.kent.ac.uk

A photograph of 8 publications, their covers facing the viewer.

A selection of Dan’s publications in the collection, 997-2022 (DTC/ART/01)

“I’m a collector. I have collected since I was a child (my mum is a collector, too, with a love of the 1920s and 1930s – my dad had collections of stamps and of cigarette cards – and my uncle was an antique dealer). I have collections connected to the First and Second World Wars, to the printing industry, of studio pottery, of 7” soul singles.

But sometimes, collections creep up on you.

A photograph of 3 issues of Gay Christian zine, each photocopied on to pink paper.

Gay Christian zine, 1983-1984, found by Dan Thompson discarded at the British Juggling Convention, Ramsgate in 2022 (DTC/ZIN/02)

Back in the 1990s, I worked with a number of bands – and knew many more – who were on the fringes of Britpop.

Britpop retrospectives always feature two iconic magazine covers, Select with an image of Brett Anderson from Suede and Vanity Fair with a photo of Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit under a Union Jack duvet.

But the bands that originally made up the scene were better represented in Fantasy Y Fronts, a thick photocopied zine made by two fans, Mel and Sal. (There were lots of zines around back then, and the best ones were made by women.) Who remembers S*M*A*S*H, These Animal Men, Tiny Monroe, Thurman, Compulsion, Mantaray and co? I do, and they’re all in here.

I used to correspond with Fantasy Y Fronts, in the days when you had to write and post a letter. Finding the best bands, and being part of the scene, took time and commitment.

I kept a couple of copies of Fantasy Y Fronts as a souvenir of that time (I wish I’d kept the correspondence, too), and they’re the foundation this collection is built on.

Photographs of the covers of two issues of Fantasy Y-Fronts zine, balck and white photocopies with images of bands alongside text and logos.

Two copies of Fantasy Y-Fronts in the collection, 1994 (DTC/MUS/02)

Added to them are thirty years of things I never consciously collected.

It includes more music zines, including a small collection given to me a few years ago by the manager of Welsh band 60 Ft Dolls. There are political zines and pamphlets, including copies of Occupied Times from the Occupy movement that echo 1960s publications like International Times.

There are things made by artists I’ve known and worked with, like Charles Tolfree and Alice Angus. I’ve curated exhibitions and programmed events across England, so these come in geographical clusters: Brighton and Worthing, where I lived, then Margate, and Stoke-on-Trent where I have worked since 2014.

A photograph of 7 issues of Happy Hood zine, their covers facing the viewer.

Happy Hood zine by Laura Graham and Paige Taylor, 2017-2018 (DTC/PLA/04/01)

There are publications like Happy Hood, halfway between a zine and a local magazine, produced by my friend Laura Graham in Northampton.

There are all sorts of things, from all sorts of places, in all sorts of formats. There’s poetry and photography, and creative writing and cartoons.

A photograph of the cover of GirlFrenzy zinie, blue cover with a drawn image of a woman playing a guitar

GirlFrenzy zine, 1998 (DTC/MUS/11)

It’s a mismatched collection because I never set out to collect zines. These are souvenirs of projects, reminders of places I’ve been, gifts or exchanges with people I know – a collection of moments in time. They all originally belonged to other loose collections but a few years ago, I realised that if I took those collections apart (Britpop, or Things About London, or …) the constituent parts made a new collection, of what could be loosely termed artist’s books, zines, and small press publications.

A photograph of the cover of a zine, featuring a portrait of an older man.

Cummerbundery (Vol 1): The collected tweets of Brandon Cummerbund, 2010 (DTC/ART/08/06)

As an artist, I like this reshuffling of knowledge, this reframing of things in different ways. And that’s why I am pleased to be handing the collection, well over a hundred assorted items, to the University of Kent’s Special Collections, where it will be a cornerstone of their growing collection of zines and artist’s books. Because it’s a pack of cards that can be shuffled many ways, and I look forward to seeing who shuffles it and what they turn up.”

Cartooning Covid-19 – call for volunteer participants

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Clair Waller

About the project

‘Cartooning Covid-19’ will be a 10-week volunteering project which aims to make available cartoons published in national papers during the Covid 19 pandemic between March and December 2020. Through cataloguing these cartoons, we ensure that this important period in recent history is captured in the cartoon catalogue of the British Cartoon Archive for use in learning, teaching and research.

The British Cartoon Archive collects the cartoons published each week in national newspapers (The Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Independent). This encapsulates work by artists such as Bob Moran, Nicholas Newman, Peter Schrank, Morten Morland, Peter Brookes and more.

To participate in this project please email cartoons@kent.ac.uk.

Practicalities

The project will be carried out using a hybrid model of in-person group sessions and remote virtual cataloguing. However, this opportunity is open to all, so if you do not live locally to Canterbury, you are welcome to join as a fully remote participant. Similarly, if you would prefer to participate in person only, that’s ok too.

Volunteers will be provided with full training as part of the project, including sessions from the archive team about the BCA and the work they carry out to preserve it and make it available, and they will be given access to library resources where possible, such as newspaper archives and both physical and digital cartoon collections.

Volunteers will be given a set of cartoons published between March and December 2020, which they will be asked to catalogue by listing details about the cartoons into a spreadsheet with supervision from the Special Collections and Archives team. At the end of the project the resulting spreadsheets of data will be uploaded to the British Cartoon Archive catalogue alongside digital cartoon copies, making these resources available to the public.

Special Collections and Archives will provide refreshments at in-person events (lunch will not be provided).

Schedule

In-person sessions will be held fortnightly on Tuesdays from 3rd October through to 5th December 2023 (10 weeks). Sessions will run from 10:30-16:00 with an hour break for lunch. For online only participants, you would be invited to attend the welcome day sessions virtually on Tuesday October 3rd, after which you will be provided with digital copies to describe and catalogue.
Optional online drop-in sessions will be scheduled virtually (via Microsoft Teams) for one hour every other week from Thursday 12th October. These sessions will enable Special Collections and Archives to provide virtual support for volunteers between in-person sessions, while also providing an opportunity for socialising and peer support.
Volunteers are encouraged to participate remotely between in-person sessions. Resources will be made available online through Google Drive.

Requirements

There are no specific prerequisites for participating volunteers, however this project will likely suit those with an interest in political satire, art and graphic design, UK politics, or those wishing to learn more about archives.

Volunteers should be comfortable with using websites and online catalogues, and in using spreadsheets.

A laptop will be needed for participation during in-person sessions. These can be supplied by Special Collections and Archives on request, but numbers are very limited so please indicate in advance if this is required. Volunteers are encouraged to provide their own devices where available.

For remote participation, volunteers will need to have their own laptop or personal computer with internet connection, as well as access to a Google account.

To participate in this project please email cartoons@kent.ac.uk.

50 years of cartoons at the University of Kent, 2023-2025

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Clair Waller

In 1973 the first cartoons arrived at Kent, in the shape of a large deposit of 20,000 cartoons from the Daily Mail and Evening News. This paved the way for the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature (CSCC), which was formally inaugerated at the University of Kent in October 1975. Dr Graham Thomas, who worked at the university’s Politics Department, was instrumental in it’s founding and, along with colleagues such as Colin Seymour-Ure, built the CSCC into one of the largest and most significant collections of cartoons in the UK. Today we know these collections as the British Cartoon Archive.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the CSCC and the British Cartoon Archive, we’ll be hosting a variety of events and activities from Summer 2023 through to Winter 2025. Information about these events will be posted here.

The 50/50 Project: Celebrating 50 Years of the British Cartoon Archive (June-December 2023)

A photograph of the volunteers working at tables in our reading room. On top of the tables you can see various books and archival materials.

Our volunteers selecting and reviewing material in the Special Collections and Archives Reaing Room.

This is a volunteer-led project aiming to explore and select 50 cartoons from across the British Cartoon Archive collections to feature in an exhibition in the Templeman Gallery. The project took place on Mondays throughout June 2023. The exhibition will be on display from October 2023 to Febraury 2024.

After an initial tour of the collections the volunteer group got hands-on with cartoons, searching our catalogues, viewing material, and writing captions, before curating the exhibition.

The exhibition has now been installed and can be viewed in the Templeman Gallery space (first floor, A block) until early February 2024.

Cartooning Covid-19 (October-December 2023)

‘Cartooning Covid-19’ was a 10-week volunteering project which aimed to make available cartoons published in national papers during the Covid 19 pandemic between March and December 2020. Through the description and cataloguing of these cartoons, we will ensure that this important period in recent history is captured in the cartoon catalogue of the British Cartoon Archive for use in learning, teaching and research.

The project was carried out using a hybrid model of in-person group sessions and remote virtual cataloguing. Volunteers were provided with full training as part of the project, including sessions from the archive team about the BCA and the work they would carry out to preserve it and make it available, and they were given access to library resources such as newspaper archives and both physical and digital cartoon collections.

Morten Morland, The Times 27 April 2020

One of the project volunteers, Amy, had the following to say about the project:

“I have been volunteering with UKC for the past 3 months and I have found it to be a very rewarding time. Helping to curate the cartooning COVID collection has been eye opening experience on a personal level for me, as this is something which will be discussed in future History lessons but something we are also still trying to adapt to and learn to live with. The experience during this project has been enjoyable as well as challenging, from getting to know a little more about the artists behind the comics, to remembering Boris Johnson’s cabinet and the many reshuffles along the way including the many mixed messages, opinion and unprecedented challenges shared by those around him. Whilst doing this collection its has also pushed my own limits as modern-day politics is not within my normal comfort zone. The special collections and archives have a variety of different projects on going, so I will be looking forward to volunteering again in the new year.”

The project led to almost 400 cartoons being catalogued – search https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk now to find them!

The project will began in October 2023, see https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/specialcollections/2023/09/01/cartooning-covid-19-call-for-volunteer-participants/ for more information.

University of Kent Special Collections & Archives

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Author Archives: Clair Waller