We’ve done a stats round-up to mark the end of Trinity Term, and it turns out we’ve been quite busy…If you’re leaving us but coming back, have a lovely vacation, and we’ll see you in October. If you’re moving on to pastures new, we wish you well, and do remember you can apply for a reader card if you’d like to come back and visit!
The Bodleian Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library’s Haverfield Archive is perhaps best described as an assortment of archaeological paraphernalia. From coloured prints to illustrations of mosaic pavements, site plans and publications the archive has the potential to serve as a great source of information for researchers working on Roman Britain. In the final post of this series (posts I, II and III were published in 2020), I want to concentrate on why there is an archive in the first place. I believe that this is an important question we should be asking when considering all of these collected documents. When I first viewed the archive in 2019, it was unclear why the notable archaeologist and ancient historian Francis G. Haverfield (1860-1919) had decided to collect images of Roman floor mosaics as well as of related art works and other archaeological discoveries, assembling them within a very particular framework: Sometimes the images are organised according to chronology or geographic location, but also quite frequently their design or iconography is what makes them part of a specific group. The motivation behind the archive appeared to have been lost from social memory and the key players behind it are no longer here to give their reasons. Therefore, our only option is to piece together what clues have been left behind. Haverfield himself also left a text-based archive but this has never been catalogued and there is no finding aid to it; in any event, the Covid lockdown prevented prolonged access during my 12-month graduate library traineeship (September 2019-August 2020), the period when I was examining the collection. Working on archaeological sites, the only clues we have of people from the past are the objects that they have thrown away or accidentally lost. Since there may have been a reason why documents were grouped together in specific ways, I made sure that the Haverfield floor mosaic images were identified as belonging to the same assemblages in which I found them.
Throughout his life, Haverfield remained convinced that archaeology needed better funding. As mentioned in the first post, in his will he left his papers and books to the University of Oxford. After his death in 1919, Haverfield also left a substantial bequest, for which the University appointed a group of academics to serve as administrators. This group would develop policies for the use of its funds, with the intention of enhancing the study of Roman Britain. This included contributing towards the expense of collecting and preparing materials for publication. These planned projects included A Corpus of Roman Bronzes in Britain and A Corpus of Roman Glass. The prints of Roman floor mosaics in the Haverfield Archive could have been materials gathered for a similar project. It is possible that a group of scholars gathered together prints for an eventual publication, but that the project failed to materialise. With early antiquarian discoveries of mosaics, nobody from the field had really decided to create a nationwide inventory of Roman mosaics in Britain. Haverfield and his associates may have intended to produce this collected inventory.
So-called ‘Lion mosaic’ found at Aldborough (Inventory n. 2.13)
Haverfield already had connections to the archaeological sites where some of the mosaics originated. For example, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society began another excavation on the Roman remains at Aldborough (for description see blog post II), reportedly under Haverfield’s guidance.
It is possible that Haverfield was using his image collection, along with descriptions from previous sites, to inform his approach to the excavation at Aldborough. In archaeological reports, it is very typical for there to be a description of previous excavations at the same site. In fact, it could have been Haverfield’s intention to include illustrations of the mosaics previously found at Aldborough in a new publication in order to draw attention to Roman archaeology in Britain.
Further evidence of Haverfield’s intention to publish the documents in his visual archive is the presence of several prints of the same floor mosaic found at Stonesfield (see blog posts II and III). By 1713, two influential illustrations of the mosaic were widely available. One of these was the version produced by Thomas Hearne and Michael Burghers, which I discussed in the second blog post in this series. The other illustration was made by Edward Loving and was circulated more widely than Hearne and Burgher’s version. Similar to Hearne and Burgher’s version, Loving’s illustration was presented to the Royal Society in full colour. Loving proposed to the Society that the illustration should be engraved on copper plate. Presumably, the Society was won over by Loving’s persuasiveness and ordered a copy of the illustration to be framed. Reportedly, Hearne disliked Loving’s version of the mosaic as it allegedly had many inaccuracies.
Inventory n. 1.15
Loving’s version of the Stonesfield mosaic could well be Inventory n. 1.15, as there are handwritten notes on both sides of the print. These pencilled notes include ‘same in Piccino’, ‘For Venice’ and ‘Pitisco Lexicon antiq.’. As arbitrary as these notes seem, they do make sense when context is provided since Loving’s version was republished in later international editions. It was first included as a frontispiece in Samuel Pitiscus’ Lexicon Antiquitatum (Leeuwarden, 1713) and a smaller version of the illustration was made by Suor Piccino in Venice, 1719. Suor Piccino’s version was then copied for a compilation of antiquities by the French antiquary Benard de Montfaucon (1655-1741) for his Antiquity Explain’d (Paris, 1719). This version may be present in the archive since Inventory n. 2.2A also has handwritten notes including ‘From Montfaucon’. The print itself is very similar to Inventory n. 1.15. The evidence of the multiple print versions of the Stonesfield mosaic and how several prints were even annotated indicates that a plan was in place to compare all of these versions. Thus, it is very possible that this material was intended to form a section of work in an eventual publication.
A further indication that materials in this archive were intended to be published, is the way in which Haverfield grouped and presented the images. There are various examples in the archive of mosaic prints being combined onto one large cardboard sheet. Inventory n. 1.6 B is of interest as at the top of one such cardboard sheet where ‘Northamptonshire’ has been pencilled in. It is these examples of assembled images which make the archive unique, as the documents are more than just a collection of images taken from different publications. Similarly, Inventory n. 1.14 also has ‘Northamptonshire 1’ pencilled in the same handwriting. This may reveal some of Haverfield’s approaches to these illustrations. Haverfield may have decided to paste certain prints of mosaics onto the same sheet if they all came from the same county. Indeed, the mosaics featured in Inventory n. 1.6B and 1.14 all came from places in Northamptonshire. The layout of the document may indicate how Haverfield wanted the prints to be arranged for the plates of a future publication.
There are some further instances, where the illustrations have been pasted on both sides of a cardboard sheet. For example, Inventory n. 1.5 has one side featuring the ‘Orpheus’ mosaic from Littlecote Park (see post iii) and the other side is of a mosaic found in Rudge.
‘Orpheus’ mosaic discovered at Littlecote Park (Inventory n. 1.5A)
Both mosaics were discovered in Wiltshire, further showing how Haverfield continued to collate images in groups of different counties. Inventory n. 1.10 has two sides of beautifully coloured mosaic prints from Castor with ‘Northamptonshire 4’ and ‘Northamptonshire 5’ pencilled on each side. This also illustrates how important the Haverfield Archive is, as we can use it to follow the thought process behind Haverfield’s choices for publication.
Inventory n. 1.6 B
Inventory n. 1.14
There are several exceptions to the geographical approach, suggesting that the way in which Haverfield collated his images was at times completely different. On one side of Inventory n. 1.17 is a print featuring a series of Roman coins at the top, with an image of a mosaic below. It is unclear where exactly the mosaic and the coins are from. The print does provide a clue, with the Earl of Harborough attributed as the patron, as Harborough is a district located within Leicestershire. The print on the reverse shows fragments of painted wall plaster from Aldborough whose design resembles that of floor mosaic patterns. From the description, they appear to be an illustrated plate taken from Henry Ecroyd Smith’s Reliquiae Isurianae.
Inventory n. 1.17 A
Inventory n. 1.17 B
A contradictory example is Inventory n. 2.2. One side features Edward Loving’s version of the Stonesfield mosaic and the other features a small print of a mosaic from Carthage. Aside from some similarities in iconography, these prints appear to have little to no connection to each other. These are certainly not anomalies. In Folder 3, the first two sheets I indexed comprised both sides having prints pasted on them which also appeared to be unrelated, chronologically or geographically, to each other. It is possible that there were reasons behind each decision to attach a print on the reverse of another one, but such motivations are now lost (or require more in-depth study).
Finally, I wanted to discuss how Haverfield’s theory of Romanization applies to the archive. I introduced the concept of Romanization in the first post of this series. Haverfield sought to elucidate the incorporation of Britain into the Roman Empire, which he viewed as a cultural assimilation rather than enforced acceptance. Haverfield was the first British academic to systematically consider the cultural consequences of the 43 C.E. Roman invasion through archaeological evidence. For Haverfield, this evidence suggested that Britain fully participated in Roman culture. His theory challenged previous views — which reflected British early 20th century colonial values — that it was through invasion and colonisation that Britons became more ‘civilised’ and ‘Romanized’. For Haverfield, therefore, the term ‘Romanization’, therefore, indicated a more ongoing and active process. To him, Roman Britain was not a stage of British history, but rather one of several cumulative parts of the Roman Empire. It is no wonder that he may have developed an interest in Roman floor mosaics, especially if they mirrored similar designs in Imperial Rome.
‘Star’ mosaic (Inventory n. 2.5)
Inventory n. 3.1 1
Inventory n. 1.6 A.1
Haverfield once told an audience ‘It is no use to know about Roman Britain in particular unless you know about the Roman Empire in general’. Roman Britain was not a stand-alone entity but was rather one part of an all-encompassing, global Empire. In order to fully understand Roman Britain, one has also to study Imperial Rome. It is difficult to say whether Haverfield himself was affected by the superior philosophy developed by many affluent gentlemen during the peak of the British Empire. In the third post of this series I discussed how the antiquarians who created illustrations of mosaics which partly constitute the Haverfield Archive may have perceived floor mosaic remains as a tangible link between the British and the Roman Empires. Whilst historians should always seek to remain neutral when exploring the past, it is often impossible to not be influenced by the period of history one is living in.
Haverfield was once quoted as saying that with the Roman Empire:
‘‘Its imperial system, alike in its differences and similarities, lights up our own Empire, for example India, at every turn. The methods by which Rome incorporated and denationalised and assimilated more than half of its wide dominions, and the success of Rome, unintended but perhaps complete, in spreading its Graeco-Roman culture over more than a third of Europe and a part of Africa, concern in many ways our own aged Empire” (Journal of Roman studies, vol I, pg xviii-xix, quoted from Craster, 1920: 70).
To an extent, therefore, Haverfield was making direct comparisons between the Roman and British Empires. Like his contemporaries, Haverfield’s thinking may have been somewhat influenced by colonial attitudes. British imperial expansion combined with an education which sought to celebrate the accomplishments of classical civilisation may have informed his world view. Despite this, it is unclear in the above quote whether Haverfield is explicitly glorifying the British Empire or, rather, condemning it.
The ultimate purpose of Haverfield’s visual archive is not completely clear. Although evidence points towards how Haverfield may have gathered illustrations of archaeological discoveries for a planned publication, it is never explicitly stated that this was his intention. Throughout the process of indexing a small part of this visual archive I felt as if I was following a trail of bread crumbs. Each handwritten note, each new copy of the same print was another crumb of evidence. However, Haverfield’s decision to give his papers, books, and some of his wealth to the University of Oxford in order to enhance the study of archaeology is a clear intention. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, Haverfield was convinced that the discipline of archaeology needed better funding and research. It would not be surprising if he had wanted his life’s mission to continue long after his death. By passing on his knowledge and funds, he would guarantee the continuation of the study of the archaeology of Roman Britain. I hope that now the archive has been advertised through a digital medium, there will be a renewed interest in its contents for future research projects.
This is the final blog post in this series. I would like to thank the Sackler’s Librarian-in-Charge, Clare Hills-Nova, for inviting me to work on this project and providing support and advice throughout. I would also like to thank the Classics and Classical Archaeology Librarian, Charlotte Goodall, for her advice and guidance. Finally, a special thanks to Samuel Bolsover who proof-read all of my work.
Chloe Bolsover
Graduate Library Trainee (2019-2020)
Taylor Institution Library
Learning and Teaching Librarian Sheffield Hallam University
References
18th September 1903. Yorkshire Archaeological Society. British Architect. 216-217
Craster, HHE. 1920. Francis Haverfield. The English Historical Review, 63-70
Draper, J, Freshwater, T, Henig, M, and Hinds, S. 2000. From Stone to Textile: The Bacchus Mosaic at Stonesfield, Oxon, and the Stonesfield Embroidery. Journal of the British Archaeological Association. 153:1, 1-29.
Freeman, PWM. 2007. The Best Training-Ground for Archaeologists. Oxford: Oxbow Books
Hingley, Richard. The recovery of Roman Britain 1586-1906: a colony so fertile. 2008. Oxford. Oxford University Press
Levine, J. 1978. The Stonesfield Pavement: Archaeology in Augustan England. Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol 11, No. 3. 340-361
Todd, M. 2003. The Haverfield Bequest, 1921-2000 and the Study of Roman Britain. Britannia, Vol 34, 35-40
September next year will mark my twentieth anniversary as Classics Librarian for the Bodleian Library [and the Sackler Library] in the University of Oxford. My time overseeing the Classics collection at Oxford has coincided with a period of great change, both in librarianship and in the way scholarship in Classics is carried out.
I came into the job in the early days of electronic resources, when very few journals were available online, and the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae was still only available on CD-ROM, loaded onto specific computers and with a simple text based search interface. In the Bodleian, we operated a book-ordering system unchanged since the 1930s, consisting of hand-written slips, filled out in triplicate, inserted into zinc cases and sent down pneumatic tubes from the reading room to the bookstack. The concept of ordering books online via the library catalogue, accessible through the internet, was still very new.
The book tunnel connecting the Bodleian beneath Broad Street.
In Classics, we were quite advanced for a humanities subject already, as we had the TLG as well as the Packard Humanities Index CDs. These would allow basic searching of Classical Greek and Latin texts and some epigraphical works. By today’s standards, it was clunky, but at the time these resources were starting to revolutionise the way the subject was being approached, and to challenge the way Classics was served by the libraries and librarians who were the concierges of this new information landscape.
I arrived in Oxford as a graduate student in 1999, having completed my B.A. in Classics at University College Dublin. For me, Oxford was a jarring experience. Dublin had been a fabulous city to be a student; bustling, exciting, with a cosmopolitan nightlife and a feeling of modernity and fun. Oxford, on the other hand, felt provincial, dark and quiet. Everything shut at 6pm (apart from one shop at the top of Headington High Street that was open 24 hrs: students would take taxis there and back to buy cigarettes and cheap bottles of wine). Even the streetlamps were less bright. College dinners (formal hall every night, gowns required) were fun at first but the quality of the food was sometimes astonishingly awful (mutton stew, overboiled carrots, not enough potatoes to go around).
Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera of an evening.
Academically, I was extremely fortunate to have been taught by some of the finest Classical scholars of our time. I had papyrology classes from Peter Parsons; I got sent to a terrifying meeting with the philosopher Myles Burnyeat at All Souls (he was surprisingly kind). I went to Nigel Wilson’s palaeography seminars, and listened to Martin West’s lectures on Greek Metre. I spent most of my time in the libraries. The Bodleian Lower Reading Room had only one row of desks that were wired with sockets for laptops, and I would be waiting for the doors to open every morning to secure one of these precious spaces.
There was also the library of the Ashmolean Museum (the predecessor of the Sackler Library) which was located at the back of the museum, accessed through a door at the end of the Cast Gallery. The Ashmolean Library was tiny, with a precarious spiral staircase of filigree cast-iron that would take you up to the mezzanine floor (a warning to female readers not to wear skirts was part of the induction process!). There were anglepoise lamps on the desks, and a sense that this was where “serious scholarship” was taking place.
It had now become clear that this “serious scholarship” was probably not for me. I enjoyed my time as a graduate student, but realised that I didn’t want to be an academic. There were other things in my life that brought me joy, and I didn’t want to be tied to a lifestyle that demanded so much of me. So I got a part-time job with Oxfam as an archival assistant, which taught me some of the basics of information management, and helped me recognise that I wanted to work in an area that used my education. As someone who studied exclusively in these libraries as a student, I knew their collections intimately. I was also curious about how libraries were organised and managed. Timing worked in my favour, and when I was finally in a position to apply, the job of Classics Librarian happened to become vacant.
The Art, Archaeology, and Ancient World Library, Oxford.
My predecessor had been an old-fashioned Librarian, who ruled over the Bodleian Lower Reading Room with a stern eye and hand-catalogued every book on the shelves. My role was expanded to encompass the newly-opened Sackler Library, and I was to oversee the provision for Classics across two sites. The Sackler had absorbed the collections of the old Ashmolean Library, as well as the Art History, Archaeology, and Ancient Near East collections, and had also taken in the Classics Lending Library for undergraduates.
The building was a new-build neo-Classical rotunda, tucked in behind the museum; it had been designed as a traditional library, though at a time when libraries were changing quickly. It housed the lending collection for Classics, and would in time become one of the preeminent collections in the world for Classical Studies, Egyptology and Ancient Near East, Art History, and Classical Archaeology. For the first time in Oxford, Classics had a budget and an individual (me) whose job it was to oversee the purchase of material published across the world, in multiple languages, covering the entire scope of Classical studies. I was also trained in the traditions of cataloguing, and the archaic workings of the Bodleian, with its confusing collection of classification schemes and complicated procedures.
At the same time, the relatively novel concept of electronic provision was gaining momentum. Journals, especially from English speaking countries, were increasingly published online, although the subscriptions were often complex and expensive. Online publishing was in its infancy and publishers were struggling with figuring out how to adapt to the evolving requirements of their customers.
Some of the fifteen miles of shelves at the Bodleian Libraries’ Book Store, Swindon.
Increasingly, as we moved through the mid and late 2000s, libraries were at the forefront of pushing innovation and facilitating new approaches to scholarship. The TLG went fully online in 2008, rendering the CD-ROMs obsolete, and Brepols’ Library of Latin Texts had an online searchable interface for Latin that was superior to the old Packard Humanities Institute disks[1]. Perseus, which had existed since the 1980s, was showing how open-source, web-based resources could be developed, giving access to searchable lexica for the first time.[2] Big publishers such as Brill started to digitise some of their large works of scholarship (such as the Jacoby, the essential collection of fragmentary Greek historians which we first purchased online in 2007).[3] Digitisation became the buzzword of the time.
In the libraries, we had to help our readers and scholars access these new resources, and figure out how to host and service them. Google partnered with the Bodleian, creating digital scans of the Bodleian’s 19th century collections in 2009. This project was overly ambitious for the time, as the technology was not quite ready for it, and the scans were often of poor quality; also, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which automatically converts printed type into a digital document, was not available at the time. However, there was a clear appetite for digital texts, and the technology was catching up with the requirements of readers.
Title-page of Elmsley’s edition of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (Oxford, 1811), one of nearly a million 19th-century books scanned from the Bodleian Library for the Google Books project.
In Oxford, as the 2010s came around, issues of space and conservation were impossible to ignore. The opening of the Gladstone Link, which used the refurbished area of the old bookstack under the Radcliffe Camera and the tunnel that attached this to the Old Library, was the first big physical change to the fabric of the buildings since the 1930s.
It had become clear that instead of the old bookstack, a modern “book storage facility” was needed, and it proved impossible to build such a facility in Oxford. It ended up being constructed in Swindon, 30 miles away. The facility provides a modern, climate-controlled environment where the majority of our books are stored, to be fetched when required by readers. The old bookstack and the 1930s “New Bodleian” were refurbished as the beautiful Weston Library, which opened in 2015.
The Bodleian’s Weston Library (below), the recent refurbishment of the New Bodleian (pictured above in 2009).
It was always difficult to balance the different media of publication with the needs of our different readers. While so much was becoming available online, it was clear that in certain circumstances, reading print would always be preferred. However, it took the COVID-19 pandemic to fully break down some of the barriers and preconceptions around using electronic publications. As a library service, we had to pivot quickly to provide fully remote services, and we were able to introduce scanning on demand, and a hugely expanded library of electronic texts. Now our library buildings are as busy as ever, but our electronic provision continues to expand: we are, for instance, the largest user of the TLG in the world.
Open Access is our newest challenge. The academic publishing world has changed hugely in the last few years, and open-access journal publishing is now a requirement for all funding bodies in the UK and for the REF.[4] Open Access monograph publishing will be a requirement in the future. The cost of academic journal publishing and access has been outsourced to the libraries, and it is a challenge to manage this in a fair and understandable way. Classics still follows a relatively traditional publication model, but Open Access is here to stay, and deals between libraries and publishers increasingly dictate what journals are accessible to researchers.
A Venn diagram of “Open Access colours”.
As librarians we are required to understand often confusing, fast-changing rules and concepts, and to be able to communicate them to our readers. As libraries, we have been paying huge amounts of money to facilitate access to journals, for which our own academics often acted as editors. The future of library provision will involve negotiating and understanding the quickly evolving world of Open Access publishing, and helping our academics do the same.
Trends in scholarship come and go, and the books that are published every year reflect this. Each week, we librarians receive a spreadsheet of every academic book received by the Bodleian. I scan the lists, picking out the Classics books and deciding where they should go. It gives me a perspective on how some of these titles could have been published at any time in the past century – but the scholarship and technology used to produce them have changed beyond recognition. As libraries, we house and preserve the physical or digital books and retain their contents for posterity, but we also facilitate the infrastructure that allows the scholarship that produces these books to take place.
Duke Humfrey’s Library, the oldest reading room in the Bodleian. Humphrey of Lancaster (1390–1447), 1st Duke of Gloucester (and youngest son of Henry IV), bequeathed 281 manuscripts to the university.
I was given the responsibility of looking after the archive of the Sackler Library, which holds the papers of a number of prominent Classicists and Archaeologists from the twentieth century. Part of my work involves making these papers available to scholars who are interested in the history of Classical scholarship, and the history of excavation and the study of Roman Britain. It always strikes me that the generation of scholars who left behind these detailed written remains will, in some ways, be the last: so much of today’s ephemera is created digitally, and it is very unclear how such material will be preserved for posterity. A notebook or a photograph from 1923 is far more accessible and more easily conserved than, for example, something saved on a 3.5-inch diskette in 2003. This will also change the way we understand the development of our subject in years to come.
The decisions we make as scholars and librarians affect the way our subject is studied in the future. The way we document these decisions will inform future scholars and librarians and their own perspectives and interests. This is one of the things that continue to intrigue and excite me about my role and about the future path of Classical scholarship.
Charlotte Goodall
Subject Librarian for Classics & Classical Archaeology
Bodleian Libraries
Notes
[1] The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) was founded in 1987, and provided searchable digital texts of Classical Latin authors and epigraphical texts. In the 1990s and 2000s, these were issued on CD-ROM and had to be loaded onto individual computers, although they later became networkable. The PHI still exists as a web-based searchable database
[2] The Perseus Digital Library (formally the Perseus Project) is an open-access, open-source collection of Classical texts, translations, and other resources freely available online.
[3]Brill‘s New Jacoby is a digital edition of Felix Jacoby’s Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker (Fragments of the Greek Historians) Parts1–3 (published 1923–94).
[4] The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is an evaluation of British universities conducted by the national research funding bodies to assess the research carried out by these institutions and inform their future funding allocations.
Many readers have commented on our visually and intellectually stimulating New Books Displays. Updated on a weekly basis, hard copy materials continue to be essential research tools for Sackler readers and we, too, think it’s important to showcase all the new acquisitions we receive.
(Photo credit: Grace Brown, Sackler Library)
The New Books Display is one of the final stages in a monograph’s journey to the Sackler’s shelves. It begins with our four Subject Librarians, specialists in their fields, who decide which new books (and journals) should be acquired. They make these decisions informed by their knowledge of the subject, their familiarity with relevant courses offered within the university, their understanding of readers’ areas of research, study and teaching, and also based on information received via reader recommendations. Our Subject Librarians liaise with Acquisitions staff who place orders with appropriate book sellers (aka ‘vendors’) and create what is known as a ‘minimal bibliographic record’ for each title on SOLO. (Hence researchers can use SOLO to find out whether a publication is ‘On Order’.) When books arrive from vendors they are passed to Cataloguing staff who create the full bibliographic records you see on SOLO. The books are delivered to the Sackler Library, and Reader Services staff transfer them to the New Books Display. (There is a parallel process for journal issues.)
New Books Displays were suspended during the early stages of the Covid pandemic, when the Sackler Library, along with the other Bodleian Libraries, was closed. Once we reopened (August 2020) and books began arriving again, we were able to reinstate our Displays.
While our physical New Books Displays are a great resource our readers have long expressed their interest in another important tool: New Acquisitions Lists. Similarly suspended during the pandemic, these have taken longer to reinstate (largely owing to e-infrastructure changes affecting the Bodleian Libraries as a whole). We are very pleased to re-launch these lists, beginning with a monster group of ‘back-lists’.
(Photo credit: Izzie Salter, Sackler Library)
This post provides links to lists of all new print acquisitions (monographs and journal issues) received by the Sackler Library since 2020:
Sadly, for many of us, the last eighteen months have seen the cancellation, curtailment and delay of countless celebrations, including birthdays, holidays, anniversaries and achievements. At the very least, we’ve been forced to relocate those festivities online and connect with family and friends via laptops and phone screens in a kind of digital limbo.
Re-emerging into the real world from this pandemic-induced Purgatory, I recently returned to Oxford, a city that I’d previously called home for many years. My arrival overlapped with many of the restrictions of the last year and a half being (cautiously) rolled back. As the new Graduate Trainee at the Taylor Institution Library (known colloquially as the ‘Taylorian’), my first week saw the steady disappearance of one-way systems, sign-in slots and restricted access for readers to many of the library’s more intimate spaces.
Above: Taylor Institution Library, Aerial View (2008)
Like the Bodleian Libraries more broadly, many institutions and historical personages have also found their usual cycles of anniversaries and commemorations disrupted by lockdown measures and restrictions on large gatherings. Excitingly, the prospect of more freedom for staff and readers at the University of Oxford has coincided with another cause for celebration: the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), the great Italian poet and philosopher. As a result, the Taylor Institution Library, Weston Library and the Ashmolean Museum have prepared three exhibitions of works from among the libraries’ and museum’s many and varied holdings, which provide visions of, and insights into, the author’s most famous work, the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia). Works from the Taylorian’s collections are included in the Ashmolean and Weston displays. The Taylorian exhibition, ‘Illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy’, meanwhile, also draws upon the collections of the Sackler Library, Oxford’s principal research location for the study of visual culture. Alongside my regular duties at the library (with which I’m slowly familiarising myself), I’ve been fortunate enough to join Clare Hills-Nova (Librarian in Charge, Sackler Library, and Subject Librarian for Italian Literature and Language at the Taylorian) and Professor Gervase Rosser, curatorial lead on all three Oxford Dante exhibitions, in their preparations for the display of prints, manuscripts and illustrated books spanning the seven hundred years since Dante’s passing.
Above: Taylor Institution Library, University of Oxford (Architect C. R. Cockerell, 1841-45)
The photos provided here offer a window on the range of texts and images that were chosen for the Taylorian exhibition and the process that went into preparing them for public display. I came into that process after Clare and Gervase had agreed on the works to be included and their gathering from the Taylorian’s rare books and manuscript holdings and other library locations was complete. The exhibition handlist includes an introduction to the works on display as well as a list of works they considered for inclusion.
Together, Clare and I spent an afternoon preparing the exhibition space – among the already impressive holdings of the library’s Voltaire Room.
Above: Taylor Institution Library, Voltaire Room (ca. 2010)
A provisional placement of the exhibits according to the chronological layout agreed by Clare and Gervase gave us a sense of how the various prints, manuscripts and books would fit within the display cases.
Working with a number of old and rare editions – including some of the oldest books that I’ve had the opportunity to see first-hand during my time in Oxford – required careful handling and the use of foam rests and ‘snakes’ (long, cotton-wrapped metal ‘beads’ designed to hold open books). Clare has a background in conservation, so provided an experienced eye and guiding hand throughout the process.
Above: Preparing the display cases
After this initial test-run of the display cases, I was tasked with assisting in the preparation of a bibliography to provide visitors to the exhibition with a comprehensive list of texts on display, and those consulted during the curation process. This not only gave me an excellent opportunity to re-familiarise myself with the Bodleian Libraries’ SOLO (‘Search Oxford Libraries Online’) catalogue, but required some further detective work to collect the full details of some of the more obscure texts included in the exhibition.
Although I’m familiar with this kind of work from my time researching and writing Russian history, and searching for texts catalogued in various forms of transliterated Cyrillic, the preparations for this exhibition included consideration of works in Italian, French and German too. Exploiting the automatic citation tool provided on the SOLO also exposed the potential drawback of relying on technology alone. Each of these languages inevitably has its own bibliographic conventions for the formatting of references (authors, titles, publishing info, etc.), not all of which are captured by auto-generation of citations. Obviously, I still have plenty to learn on that front being based in one of Oxford’s key research centres for modern languages and linguistics!
Above: Testing the layout of the exhibits within the display case
The whole process also brought home how inconsistent and incomplete some of the catalogue descriptions are within the Bodleian Libraries’ older collections and more unique items. This is quite the mountain to climb for those librarians faced with such a vast (and ever expanding) number of books, journals, periodicals and other ephemera in every language under the sun.
One particular exhibit of note is shown below:
Above: A copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy dedicated to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna of Russia (daughter of Peter the Great). Published in Venice, Italy in 1757
It was wonderful to find such a striking connection between the history of Imperial Russia and Dante’s life and work!
The second set of photos below provides a view of the final layout for each display case. Supporting information to be included alongside the works was still being prepared at the time of taking, but a sense of the diversity of images and lasting influence of Dante’s work on artists, writers, print-makers and publishers across the world is evident already.
Students, faculty and staff from across the University are welcome to visit the Taylorian’s exhibition during library opening hours, from the beginning of Michaelmas term through December 2021. The parallel exhibitions marking Dante’s centenary celebrations are on display for a similar period: Ashmolean Museum (17 September 2021 – 9 January 2022) and Weston Library (8 September 2021 – 14 November 2021), which will give everyone interested in the life, history and influence of Dante the opportunity to explore the wider collections of the University.
Further Oxford Dante events, ranging from concerts to film screenings, to lectures and (of course!) at least one book launch celebrating the 700th anniversary are planned for autumn 2021.
Having now had an insight into the complexities involved in preparing, curating and displaying materials from our impressive Dante collections, the chance to come face-to-face with these exhibits sounds like Paradiso itself!
If you want to know more about Dante-related holdings in Oxford, please check out the Taylorian’s earlier blog posts in this regard (linked below):
In my previous post, I touched on some great discoveries in the Haverfield Archive. This collection consists of correspondence, coloured prints and drawings illustrating mosaic pavements, site plans and publication extracts – an assortment of archaeological paraphernalia, housed at the Sackler Library. I described the process of recording, illustrating and publishing the mosaics. This post considers the people who undertook these processes and how they approached Roman history.
Generally, the people who took an extraordinary interest in the classical past during the 18th and 19th centuries were called antiquarians. Antiquarians tended to be male, middle class or of the aristocracy, and well educated. Indeed, the discipline of archaeology in Britain started out as more or less the past-time of elite gentlemen who sought to build upon their collections of antiquities. For example, the 1st Marquess of Lansdowne (1737-1805) was an avid collector of works of art, including paintings and classical sculptures. Lansdowne employed the Adam Brothers, renowned architects, to redesign the principal rooms at Bowood House (a Grade I Georgian country house in Wiltshire), including a large drawing room. The Haverfield Archive holds two preparatory illustrations, by the architect Joseph Bonomi (1739-1808), of a carpet design for this room, dated 1785 (Inventory n. 1.1 and Inventory n. 1.2). In 1767, Bonomi was invited by the Adam Brothers to work as a draughtsman for them in their London Office. Bonomi left the Brothers’ employ in 1781 and established himself as an independent architect. He began to receive commissions from some of his patrons including Heneage Finch, fourth earl of Aylesford. Presumably, Bonomi was also commissioned to decorate the interior of Bowood House.
Joseph Bonomi. Carpet design for Bowood House (Inventory n. 1.1)
The design of the carpet is intriguing as it seems to be heavily influenced by Roman mosaic pavements. Bonomi was revered as a leader in the revival of Grecian architecture. The ‘Orpheus’ mosaic pavement found at Littlecote Park, Wiltshire (Inventory n. 1.5 A) is similar to Bonomi’s carpet design as both have a central panel for the eye to gravitate towards. Bonomi’s design features a centaur roundel (also detailed separately in Inventory n. 1.2), while the ‘Orpheus’ mosaic features its namesake with his lyre.
‘Orpheus’ mosaic discovered at Littlecote Park (Inventory n. 1.5 A)
Whilst Bonomi’s design certainly borrows stylistic aspects from Roman mosaics, it is ultimately neoclassical in approach and is simpler regarding its colour palette and detail. The design was undertaken with a rich connoisseur in mind such as the Marquess of Lansdowne. I have so far been unable to find a mention of this particular carpet in the literature, so it is unclear whether the design was ever realised. Eventually, the Marquess’s lavish spending on his properties caught up with him. With his estate declared bankrupt, it is possible that the carpet never physically existed.
Carpet derived from the Stonesfield mosaic. Early 18thC (Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock)
Sometimes, reproductions of mosaic floors were created in textile format. It is unclear what the motivations were behind this. It may have been that some antiquarians wanted to decorate their properties with a reproduction of the mosaic that was found on their land. Upon the discovery of the ‘Orpheus’ mosaic, William George, steward to the owner of Littlecote House and Park, made coloured drawings of it. George died not long afterwards and from the drawings he made, his widow made a complete needlework reproduction in full colour, and the tapestry was hung in Littlecote House. The ‘Bacchus’ mosaic discovered at Stonesfield in 1712 (discussed in my previous post) was also recreated in textile form — as a large (3m, approx.) early 18th century needlework carpet, as described by Herefordshire antiquary, scholar and linguist William Brome (1664-1745) (see Draper, J, Freshwater, T, Henig, M, and Hinds, S. 2000). This carpet exerted a considerable influence on contemporary tastes. Due to the popular fascination for collecting antiquities, neoclassical styles were fashionable and in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, mosaic-style carpets were the height of interior design fashion. A by-product of this fashion was that embroidered tapestry and carpet reconstructions of mosaic pavements often became the only surviving records after the destruction of the mosaics themselves.
The problem with relying on reproductions is that they can reveal little about the actual state, as discovered, of the original mosaics. Most prints in the Haverfield Archive depict fully intact mosaics with bright, vivid colours. The reality of finding such an example in this condition is very unlikely. Pigments fade and mosaics were/are often discovered in fragments. Some publications like Henry Ecroyd Smith’s Reliquiae Isurianae (1852) described the mosaics’ state of preservation when originally excavated. Two of the plates listed in this volume and showing the state of the originals, as found, are not of mosaics but of painted wall plaster (Inventory n. 1.7 and Inventory n. 1.17 B). Smith describes these as ‘fragments’ of plaster, with ‘some found still adhering’ to a building’s original structure. Some damage was inflicted due to ‘atmospheric influences, crumbled away after the lapse of a couple of winters’.
Wall painting fragments (Inventory n.1.17B)
Wall painting fragments (Inventory n. 1.7)
Presumably, the patron, Aldborough patron, Andrew Lawson, acted swiftly to preserve the existing fragments as they were brought into the museum established in the grounds of Aldborough Manor in 1863. Given the rich history underpinning Aldborough’s ‘Orpheus’ mosaic, questions have arisen regarding the accuracy of illustrations that were made. Original drawings of the mosaic have now been lost, while engravings made by George Vertue are thought to be somewhat inaccurate. A lack of a consistent discovery and preservation methodology at many sites – for example, Stonesfield – meant that records were not kept in a systematic order. As a result, errors in illustrations were inevitable. Although sites such Aldborough promoted a ‘drive’ among antiquarians to produce more detailed, archaeological records, prints of Roman mosaics were not intended to be scientifically accurate. Instead, they appeared to function as aesthetically pleasing ‘reproductions’ of Roman art.
Despite this, Sarah Scott (2013) has pointed out how the antiquarian and engraver Samuel Lysons (1763-1819) did not ‘repair’ flaws in his engravings of mosaics, clearly showing the state of the original. One example of Lysons’ work is the floor plan of an excavation site at Weldon, Northamptonshire (Inventory n. 1.3), and illustrates how Lysons decided to depict the mosaics in their fragmentary form.
Samuel Lysons. Excavation site plan, Weldon (Inventory 1.3)
This work was quite unusual for the time, as mosaics were typically drawn as complete, pristine works, the inferences made from partial remains. Amongst antiquarians there was a view that the accuracy of archaeological illustrations reflected the overall quality of the excavation. For example in 1916, J. Charles Cox compared the engravings of a mosaic found at Roxby, Lincolnshire. The earliest engraving was completed in 1799 by William Fowler (Inventory n. 2.15), followed much later by Cary Elwes in 1873. Focusing more on the archaeological properties of the engravings, Cox held that Elwes’s version was ‘more accurately engraved and coloured’ than Fowler’s. From a 21st century perspective, it can be safely said that the prints are definitely not scientific reconstructions. Yet it must be recognised that there were at least some efforts made by antiquarians to produce ‘accurate’ records.
William Fowler. Pavement mosaic, Roxby (Inventory n. 2.15)
Many of the excavations which took place in the 18th and 19th centuries can be viewed as methodologically crude by modern standards. Since that time, archaeological practices have changed in order to reduce the damage done when excavating. However, records which include prints of mosaics are vital as they are often all that remain from an antiquarian excavation. Rich discoveries stimulated further interest and subsequent research, thus helping to shape archaeology as the discipline we know today. The main reason for the growing interest in British archaeology was the Industrial Revolution, as infrastructural expansion revealed more archaeological discoveries. This helped fuel a desire to live up to European collecting and connoisseurship practices against the backdrop of a shared Classical heritage and growing nationalism. Excavations across Europe were busy, churning out discoveries at sites like Herculaneum and Pompeii, further intensifying national rivalries. At the foreground of the period was the European conflict, with the Napoleonic Wars resulting in restrictions on travel. In order to stay current and fashionable, the average Georgian gentleman had little choice but to focus his attention on British antiquities.
Members of the Society of Antiquaries had an interest in all things Roman Britain. They perceived Roman remains as a tangible link between the British and Roman Empires. In my previous post, I discussed how the Society was very much interested in mosaics, and at Cotterstock they commissioned George Vertue to produce an engraving based on William Bogdani’s drawing of it. This active interest demonstrated an acute attention to British archaeological discoveries when, in 1739, the Society made a decision to compile a list of all Roman mosaics discovered in Britain. Despite this enthusiasm, a collective approach to the study of archaeology was not yet fully realised. Britain did not pass any heritage protection legislation until the 1882 Ancient Monuments Protection Act. There was not even a gallery of national antiquities in the British Museum until the 1850s. Instead, antiquarians acted individually, developing the significance of their own sites, linking them to the glory of imperial Rome.
Antiquarians such as Andrew Lawson at Aldborough funded excavations and publications. In the Haverfield Archive, Lawson is cited as the patron on several prints of mosaics from Aldborough. Henry Ecroyd Smith’s Reliquiae Isurianae was dedicated to Lawson and he was credited with procuring most of the illustrations and keeping accurate records of recent discoveries. In an article in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (Nichols 1853), Lawson was considered to be in ‘high estimation among antiquaries’. It was reported by the magazine that when the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland held their annual meeting at York in 1846, they were ‘entertained by Mr Lawson’ at Aldborough. Lawson was not alone in such activities. In 1807, Colonel Leigh of Combe Hay ordered a Roman mosaic to be uncovered at Wellow, in Somerset, purely for the amusement of his friends and those interested in antiquities. What made Lawson different from Colonel Leigh, however, was that his motivation for uncovering the mosaics at Aldborough was to preserve them and to provide systematic documentation.
Whilst there were rich, well-meaning antiquarians such as Lawson, there were also enterprising engravers like William Fowler (1761-1832). The print of Roxby’s pavement mosaic (Inventory n. 2.15) mentions one ‘Jas. Barber’ as its creator; in fact, it was engraved by Fowler, who, in 1799, published his print for sale at half a guinea. He was very much a business man in terms of producing plates, quickly realising that if he was to make any money out of publishing, he had to sell prints at a high price. As a result of Fowler’s entrepreneurship, he acquired supporters who subscribed to standing orders for every print he published, including the libraries of two Oxford colleges. Because prints were produced individually and were not published as part of a single large volume, Fowler announced his new prints by means of printed prospectuses. The Haverfield Archive includes a few excerpts from a similar prospectus by Henry Ecroyd Smith. The page details illustrations one could order from H. Ecroyd Smith’s Lithographs of Romano-British Tessellated Pavements (Inventory n. 2.9). Acquiring prints from such publication lists appealed to antiquarians who wished to showcase their interests to their like-minded, erudite friends.
Volumes discussing excavations with detailed illustrations of archaeological discoveries were produced, but they were costly undertakings, affordable only to the elite. Indeed, one of the subscribers to Ecroyd Smith’s Reliquiae Isurianae was listed as ‘HRH Prince Albert’, indicating that excavations at Aldborough were dependant on subscribers and patronage. Support from those who could afford it was highly valued as the cost of producing lavishly illustrated volumes was high. Due to the huge expense involved in production, publishers were also highly selective as to the volumes that they chose to support. Subscribers were willing to pay up to several guineas for a publication whose textual content they were not necessarily interested in reading so long as it was well illustrated with engravings. Mosaic pavements were attractive to Georgian and Victorian gentlemen because they served as a link to a Roman era of wealth and grandeur. Despite this (and doubtless due to their cost), such publications were not necessarily widely circulated. Thomas Hearne recorded that his volume on the Stonesfield mosaic consisted of only 120 copies, with successive editions issued in similarly small numbers. As a result, information about and images of the mosaic were only accessible to a privileged few.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, archaeology was still in its infancy as a discipline. Whilst there were keen antiquarians who were motivated to provide what they viewed as systematic and accurate records of archaeological sites, methodologies were still being developed. Some antiquarians were influenced purely by the fashion for collecting antiquities and lavishly decorating their properties with them, less so by historical-archaeological documentation. Efforts regarding the preservation of archaeological discoveries were undertaken by individuals, not groups. Publications were not widely circulated and appeared to be available only to rich, erudite individuals. It is clear, however, that many of the prints preserved in the Haverfield Archive provided the only surviving documentation of original mosaics. Following their discovery, many mosaic pavements were readily destroyed or reburied, with their exact sites lost from social memory. Although the illustrations are often inaccurate or have been exaggerated it is important that they be preserved for future study and research.
Next time, in the final post of this series, I will be looking at the man responsible for the archive, Francis Haverfield himself. I will examine why he and his associates decided to collect prints of Roman mosaics, and consider his motivations and the future projects he may have had in mind.
Chloe Bolsover, Graduate Trainee, Taylor Institution Library
Challands, A, Hall, J, Jackson, R, Peacock, D, Upex, S and Wild, FC. 2011. The Praetorium of Edmund Artis: A Summary of Excavations and Surveys of the Palatial Roman Structure at Castor, Cambridgeshire 1828-2010. Britannia, Vol 42, 23-112.
Cox, CJ. 1916. Lincolnshire. London: Methuen
Draper, J, Freshwater, T, Henig, M, and Hinds, S. 2000. From Stone to Textile: The Bacchus Mosaic at Stonesfield, Oxon, and the Stonesfield Embroidery. Journal of the British Archaeological Association. 153:1, 1-29.
Fielden, K. 2016. Bowood Revisited. Chippenham: CPI Antony Rowe
Hingley, Richard. The recovery of Roman Britain 1586-1906: a colony so fertile. 2008. Oxford. Oxford University Press
Hoare, R. 1821. IV. An Account of a Stone Barrow, in the Parish of Wellow, at Stoney Littleton in the County of Somerset, which was opened and investigated in the Month of May 1816. Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity, 1770-1992. Society of Antiquarians of London. Vol 19, 43-55
Meadows, P. 2004. Bonomi Joseph [formerly Giuseppe] (1739-1808). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Millett, M. 2015. Roman Britain since Haverfield. In M. Millett, L. Revell and A. Moore (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Roman Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Mitford, J. 1846. Antiquarian Researches. Chatto & Windus
Nichols, J. 1853. Andrew Lawson Esq. The Gentleman’s Magazine: and historical review, July 1856-May 1868, Jun 1853. 657-658
Scott, S. 2014. Britain in the classical world: Samuel Lysons the art of Roman Britain 1780-1820. Classical Receptions Journal. Vol 6, No 2, 294-337
Scott, S. 2013. Samuel Lysons and His Circle: Art, Science and the Remains of Roman Britain. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 23 (2)
Smith, Henry Ecroyd. 1852. Reliquiae Isurianae: the remains of the Roman Isurium (now Aldboroug, near Boroughbridge, Yorkshire). London. Sold by Russell I Smith. Printed by William Hilton, 3, Upper Wellington Street, Strand.
Sweet, R. 2001. Antiquaries and Antiquities in Eighteenth-Century England. Eighteenth Century Studies. Vol 34, No 2, 181-206
Toynbee, JMC. 1981. Apollo, Beasts and Seasons: Some Thoughts on the Littlecote Mosaic. Britannia. Vol. 12 1-5
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and/or Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
Part 1 of this series of blog posts introduced the Haverfield Archive, held at the Sackler Library. This collection consists of correspondence, coloured prints and drawings illustrating mosaic pavements, site plans and publication extracts – an assortment of archaeological paraphernalia associated with Francis Haverfield (1860-1919), Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford and seen as the chief expert on Roman Britain at the start of the 20th century. The image collection comprises largely prints and a few hand-drawn sketches of Roman floor mosaics discovered during the 18th and 19th centuries. I decided to take on the task of creating the first index to this material so that its research potential would become clear. In November last year, I began indexing material. With each new document came a new discovery. As a former archaeologist, I found working with the archive a cleaner but just as incredible experience as uncovering forgotten objects through excavation. In total, I recorded around 50 images and associated documents, only a small fraction of the collection.
For Part 2 of this series of blog posts, I will focus on three archaeological sites: Aldborough, Cotterstock, and Stonesfield. The reason why I will discuss these sites in particular is because the majority of documents which I have recorded so far depict mosaics discovered there. (Continuation of the cataloguing part of the project was affected by the Covid-19 lockdown, as physical access to materials was no longer possible.)
Aldborough
The first site is the village of Aldborough (Isurium Brigantum), North Yorkshire. One of the first mosaics to be discovered at the site was the so-called ‘Lion mosaic’ (Inventory n. 2.13). In 1832, the landlord of the Aldborough Arms decided to bury a dead calf at the end of his garden. The rest – as they say – is history. News of the discovery appears to have spread nationwide and in 1849 the Illustrated London News (20 January 1849) published a report. In his 1852 publication, Reliquiae Isurianae, Henry Ecroyd Smith recorded mosaics from Aldborough, including this mosaic. In the below image, damage to the central panel is shown. It is strongly suspected that the culprits were enthusiastic souvenir hunters as the Reliquiae Isurianae describes how the mosaic had become a local attraction. In response, the Duke of Newcastle erected a stucture over the mosaic as an attempt to preserve it. What is most interesting about the print from the Haverfield Archive, is that the mosaic is surrounded by further sketches of the Roman remains.
‘Lion mosaic’ (Inventory n. 213)‘Star’ mosaic (Inventory n. 2.5)
Another mosaic, featuring a ‘star’ in the central panel, was discovered in 1846. This mosaic is deeply associated with Aldborough and its design is incorporated into the current Friends of Aldborough logo (have a look). Ecroyd Smith’s Reliquiae Isurianae attests that news of the discovery of the mosaic spread rapidly throughout the community, as volunteer excavators joined the efforts to remove the ‘mass of rubble’. Andrew Lawson, the local landowner, erected a covering structure for the mosaic. Despite this, the mosaic remained exposed to weathering and was damaged by mould growth from the cold and damp conditions. The print is depicted in full colour and in very good condition. The patron behind the print was landowner Lawson. Other funders may have included the amateur archaeologist, Charles Roach Smith (1807-1890) and the antiquarian Albert Way (1805-1874). Ecroyd Smith expresses his gratitude for the support of these three men in his preface to the Reliquiae Isurianae. Lawson himself spent much of his time preserving the remains of Roman Aldborough, as well as making the first systematic collection of local archaeological finds. Funding publications like the Reliquiae Insurianae was well within his range of interests.
Romulus and Remus mosaic (Inventory n. 1.4)
The final Aldborough mosaic that I’ll discuss here is the well-known ‘Romulus and Remus’ mosaic. It was discovered in 1834, and subsequently dug up by a local mason and removed to his cottage garden in Boroughbridge, where it became a central piece to the floor of a summerhouse. Fortunately, the Museum of the Philosophical and Literary Society of Leeds, subsequently incorporated into the Leeds City Museum, purchased the mosaic in 1863 where it remains preserved today. Due to its complicated provenance, there has been some discussion regarding the authenticity of the mosaic and some think that it was subjected to heavy Victorian restoration. Interestingly, the mosaic was not included in Ecroyd Smith’s Reliquiae Isurianae.
Geometric mosaic (Inventory n. 1.6 A 3)
Castor
Next, I draw your attention to a range of sites from across Northamptonshire. Several prints of mosaics discovered in the county appear to be from the same publication, The Durobrivae of Antoninus, published in 1828 by artist Edmund Artis (1789-1847). Artis carried out large-scale excavations in the county in the early 1820s. These included an investigation of the alleged Castor Praetorium, a monumental Roman building on the site of Castor’s parish church. Artis coined the term ‘Praetorium’ to suggest that the building not only had an administrative function but also implied a luxurious residence. Artis completed sketches of his finds and one of these is possibly Inventory n. 1.6 A 3, whose accompanying text describes its discovery on the north side of the churchyard.
Cotterstock
The Haverfield Archive also highlights similarities between a print (Inventory n. 1.6 A 1) from the Durobrivae of Antoninus and another (Inventory n. 3.1 1) from J. Nichols’s Vetusta Monumenta, a collection of images published under the Society of Antiquaries’ auspices. The two prints appear to be of the same mosaic but differ stylistically through radically different colour palettes and borders. The mosaic itself was discovered in a field in Cotterstock, in 1736, after being partially damaged by a plough. Locals from a nearby residence in Southwick, notably father and son, the George Lynns, as well as the artist William Bogdani (1699-1771), drew the mosaic. In 1737, Bogdani presented his drawing to the Society of Antiquaries. The Society commissioned George Vertue (1684-1756) to make an engraving from the drawing. Vertue was considered one of the best reproductive engravers in the country at that time. He had a strong reputation as an antiquary as well, and was appointed Engraver to the Society of Antiquaries in 1717. Vertue completed his engraving of the mosaic in 1737 and presented it to the Society. Edmund Artis used this print as a basis when he published the mosaic in his Durobrivae.
Inventory n. 1.6 A.1
Inventory n. 3.1 1
Inventory n. 1.9
As at Aldborough, preservation tactics such as covering up the Cotterstock mosaic did not deter souvenir hunters. The fourth Earl of Cardigan removed a large chunk of the mosaic and took it back to his residence at Deene Park. The Earl set the fragment into a centrepiece for the floor of a summerhouse. Whilst his intention was to preserve the mosaic, it did not survive.
Another, smaller mosaic was discovered at Cotterstock in 1798. The first engraving of it was made by William Fowler in 1802 (Inventory n. 1.9). In 1828, Edmund Artis also republished the mosaic in his Durobrivae.
Stonesfield
Finally, I will focus on prints which appear to depict the same mosaic found at Stonesfield, a village in Oxfordshire. While the mosaic was first discovered in 1711, in one account, by John Pointer in 1713, it is claimed that the mosaic was accidentally uncovered by a tenant farmer in a field called Chesthill Acres. News of the discovery soon reached Oxford, rousing the interest of local antiquarians. The tenant farmer, George Handes, proved himself to be a savvy businessman and began charging both an admission fee to view the mosaic and a further charge for drawing it. As always, souvenir hunters were eager to grab a keepsake. One fragment was given to the diarist and antiquarian Thomas Hearne (1744-1817), who worked in the library of St Edmund Hall and also at the Bodleian. Fragments, alongside images and written records, formed part of the supporting materials for lengthy discussions among groups such as the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society.
In his A discourse concerning to the Stunsfield tessellated pavement (1712) Thomas Hearne included an illustrated print of the Stonesfield mosaic. Hearne frequently visited the pavement; on his sixth visit he brought along the Dutch illustrator, Michael Burghers (1647-1727) who, from 1676, engraved the plates for the Almanacks of the University and whose objective was to draw the pavement accurately. In 1723, the Society of Antiquaries again commissioned George Vertue to produce an engraving. The finished product was very popular and was still on sale in 1757, 34 years after Vertue’s death. This print is essentially an enlargement of Burgher’s work and remains very faithful to its detail. In the Haverfield Archive, both Hearne and Vertue are credited with reproducing Inventory n. 1.12 and n. 1.16.
Inventory n. 1.12
Inventory n. 1.16
Hearne expressed his fears regarding the condition of the Stonesfield mosaic, as it was suffering from exposure to the elements. In 1716, there were rumours that the pavement had been destroyed. The mosaic had suffered badly from damage caused by souvenir hunters and poor preservation management. Over time, George Handes and his landlord increasingly argued over how profits gained from admission fees for viewing the mosaic were to be shared. In one incident, an argument between the pair allegedly ended with the tenant tearing the mosaic to pieces.
In 1779 digging in the area led to the mosaic’s accidental rediscovery. Although the extent of the damage inflicted by George Handes is unclear, the fact that the mosaic was still recognisable suggests that it had somewhat survived. The ensuing excavations received the patronage of the Duke of Marlborough, whose Blenheim estates lay nearby. A report was presented to the Society of Antiquaries in 1784, with a set of engravings of the mosaic by William Lewington. This is particularly interesting as the illustration in the Haverfield Archive is attributed not to Lewington, but to the self-taught engraver William Fowler (1761-1832). Just as George Vertue reproduced Michael Burgher’s earlier version of the mosaic, Fowler based his work directly on Lewington’s own engraving. In 1802, Fowler had the ground opened, finding part of the pavement in good condition. Eventually, however, in 1806, the Stonesfield mosaic was divided among three landowners, with the removal and destruction of the in situ mosaic recorded a year later.
My next post in this series will discuss the people who made these prints: The antiquarians. These rich, erudite and privileged individuals helped shape archaeology as the discipline that it is today.
Chloe Bolsover, Graduate Trainee, Taylor Institution Library
Challands, A, Hall, J, Jackson, R, Peacock, D, Upex, S and Wild, FC. 2011. The Praetorium of Edmund Artis: A Summary of Excavations and Surveys of the Palatial Roman Structure at Castor, Cambridgeshire 1828-2010. Britannia, Vol 42, 23-112.
Draper, J, Freshwater, T, Henig, M, and Hinds, S. 2000. From Stone to Textile: The Bacchus Mosaic at Stonesfield, Oxon, and the Stonesfield Embroidery. Journal of the British Archaeological Association. 153:1, 1-29.
Hearne, T. A discourse concerning to the Stunsfield tessellated pavement. With some new observations about the Roman inscription that relates to the Bath Fabrica, and an account of the custom of the mannor of Woodstock. July 11. 1712.
Hingley, Richard. The recovery of Roman Britain 1586-1906: a colony so fertile. 2008. Oxford. Oxford University Press
Levine, J. 1978. The Stonesfield Pavement: Archaeology in Augustan England. Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol 11, No. 3. 340-361
Nichols, J. 1747. Vetusta monumenta: quae ad rerum Britannicarum memoriam conservandam Societas Antiquariorum Londini sumptu suo edenda curavit. Volumen primum. [-septimum]. London: Society of Antiquaries
Smith, Henry Ecroyd. 1859. On a Romano-British Mosaic Pavement, representing Romulus and Remus, discovered at Aldborough (Isurium of the Romans). Proceedings of the Geological and Polytechnic Society of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 4, 593-604
Smith, Henry Ecroyd. 1852. Reliquiae Isurianae: the remains of the Roman Isurium (now Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, Yorkshire). London. Sold by Russell I Smith. Printed by William Hilton, 3, Upper Wellington Street, Strand
Upex, SG. 2001. The Roman Villa at Cotterstock, Northamptonshire. Britannia. Vol 32 57-91
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and/or Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
Cast your mind back to November 2019. Life seems relatively simple. The coronavirus is about to strike its first victim but it is Brexit that is on everyone’s minds. I was in my third month as a trainee at the Taylor Institution Library and was finishing my day at the Enquiry Desk. Clare Hills-Nova, Italian Literature and Language Librarian at the Taylorian and also Librarian-in-Charge at the Sackler Library, was beginning her evening desk duty and, in the last few minutes before I went home, we were having quite an interesting conversation. At one point in time, we had both worked in rescue archaeology and I was describing how my specialism while I was studying was Roman Britain. It was a lovely conversation as I adore talking about archaeology (to anyone who will listen) and, after wrapping it up, I did not think any more of it.
Setting the scene…(Enquiry Desk, Taylor Institution Library)
A few days later, I received an email from Clare about the possibility of doing my trainee project on the Haverfield Archive, housed at the Sackler Library. I responded saying that I was (of course!) interested and we arranged a meeting to view it.
For those of you who are not clued up on the archaeology of Roman Britain, you may have never heard of Francis Haverfield. Haverfield (1860-1919) was Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford and seen as the chief expert on Roman Britain at the start of the 20th century. He was instrumental in persuading the Society of Antiquaries to establish a research fund in support of research excavations focusing on Roman Britain. A pioneer in his field, Haverfield helped to establish archaeology as the discipline that it is today. Indeed, he championed the introduction of Archaeology as a degree subject at Oxford: he helped fund university training excavations; and aimed to improve the methodologies that were developed by antiquarian excavators.
In the world of archaeology, Haverfield has an enduring legacy with his theory of Romanization in Roman Britain. This theory was initially delivered as a lecture and then appeared as a small book in 1912 (Haverfield, F.1912. The Romanization of Roman Britain. Clarendon Press: Oxford). Haverfield sought to elucidate the incorporation of Britain into the Roman Empire, which he viewed as a cultural assimilation rather than enforced acceptance. In CE 43, the full, gradual conquest of Britain began under the Emperor Claudius, ending in CE 87. This certainly was not the first time that Britons had communicated with the Roman Empire, as Julius Caesar described his expeditions in Britain in his Gallic Wars between 55 and 54 BCE (Caesar, Gallic Wars. Translated by Peskett, AG. 2014. Digital Loeb Classical Library). Haverfield was the first English academic to systematically consider the cultural consequences of the CE 43 Roman invasion through archaeological evidence. To Haverfield, this evidence suggested that Britain fully participated in Roman culture. His Romanization theory challenged previous views — which reflected British early 20th century colonial values — that it was through invasion and colonisation that Britons became more ‘civilised’ and ‘Romanized’. The term ‘Romanization’, therefore, itself indicated a more ongoing and active process.
The Haverfield Archive consists of correspondence, coloured prints, and drawings illustrating mosaic pavements, site plans, publication extracts — an assortment of archaeological paraphernalia! The archive reportedly holds only a tiny fraction of Haverfield’s papers. Haverfield bequeathed his papers and library to the university, and these were housed at the Ashmolean Museum. In 2001, the Archive was transferred to the newly-built Sackler Library. When viewing the archive itself with Clare and the Classics and Classical Archaeology Librarian, Charlotte Goodall, I was astounded by the richness of its content and its potential for future research projects.
From the Archive.: The so-called ‘Romulus and Remus’ mosaic, Aldborough (Inventory n. 1.4)
From the Archive: Double spread from Henry Ecroyd Smith’s Lithographic Coloured Prints (inventory n. 2.9
The component of this archive of greatest interest to me is the collection of images illustrating mosaic pavements discovered (mostly) in Britain. Often grouped together and mounted on very large cardboard sheets, the collection is housed in approximately thirty extremely large, transparent hanging folders, each of which contains multiple mosaic pavement illustrations. Sifting through the folders, we were delighted with each new discovery of brilliantly coloured prints and drawings.
According to Clare and Charlotte, while readers occasionally consult Haverfield’s text-based papers the mosaic pavements collection had received little or no attention. The collection would be of great interest to researchers and students, but its sheer vastness and lack of organisational documentation — there is no catalogue detailing its contents — are serious impediments to in-depth research. Therefore, my task for the trainee year appeared to be relatively simple: create an index, recording each document in detail. So that, ultimately its research potential would become clear.
Our second task was highlighted by the large, tired looking, over-full and hence unwieldy hanging folders housing the collection. Some of the folders showed cracks and tears and there was also some concern regarding exposure to light. A new plan chest had been purchased, and it was decided that the sheets would be transferred to the drawers of the plan chest as they were catalogued. New archive-appropriate ‘Melinex’ folders, suitable for horizontal storage, would also be purchased to house each sheet individually. This improved storage solution would ensure the collection’s preservation for years to come!
This will be a series of blog posts. Next time, I will showcase some of the amazing mosaic prints that I came across when creating the index of the archive.
Chloe Bolsover, Graduate Trainee, Taylor Institution Library
References:
Craster, HHE. 1920. Francis Haverfield. The English Historical Review, 63-70
Freeman, PWM. 2007. The Best Training-Ground for Archaeologists. Oxford: Oxbow Books
Millett, M. 2015. Roman Britain since Haverfield. In M. Millett, L. Revell and A. Moore (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Roman Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and/or Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
One of the important ways of keeping up to date with developments in the fields of study that Bodleian Libraries subject librarians support is through international conference attendance, where they have the opportunity of finding out about current as well as new research beyond the ‘Oxford bubble’.
The 25th General Conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), an NGO with 44,600 members representing over 20,000 museums in c. 140 countries, took place 1-7 September 2019 in Kyoto, Japan. With 4,000+ participants, this was the best attended General Conference in the history of ICOM.
Entrance to the International Conference Center, Kyoto (Photo credit: Susanne Woodhouse)
Entitled “Museums as Cultural Hubs: the future of tradition”, the participants discussed the role of museums in the age of multiculturalism and disasters. In particular, four plenary sessions explored:
-How museums can support societies in their search for a sustainable future
-ICOM’s commission on a new definition of the word “Museum”
-Museum disaster management
-Asian art museums and collections
The main focus however was on the new museum definition which had sent ripples through the museum world prior to the conference for two reasons. Firstly it had been launched without consulting the organisation’s 119 National Committees; secondly its content and wording was deemed by members to be inappropriate or incorrect. The last day of the conference saw the decision of the General Assembly to postpone the vote on this new museum definition approved by 70.4% of the participants.
Main Hall of the International Conference Center: Plenary session on the definition of museums (Photo credit: Susanne Woodhouse)
ICOM’s 30 International Committees, representing specialisations across the museum sector, held their Annual Meetings throughout the week at the Conference Center and at satellite venues. As Subject Librarian for Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies I am a member of the Comité International pour l’Égyptologie (CIPEG). The Committee was in for a treat as our Japanese colleagues had arranged an extraordinary symposium about their conservation project in the Grand Egyptian Museum (Cairo). During the following three days CIPEG members presented 37 papers on all aspects of Ancient Egyptian and Sudanese collections world-wide.
My paper focused on the history of the former private library of the first Professor of Egyptology in Oxford, Francis Llewellyn Griffith (1862-1934), in its time the world’s most comprehensive private library for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (including Egyptology). Francis Griffith and his wife Nora left this library to the University of Oxford, together with a very considerable fortune, to build and endow a permanent centre for the teaching of and research in Ancient Near Eastern Studies (including Egyptology). The Griffith Institute opened in January 1939 and, as intended by F.L. Griffith, it was situated adjacent to the Ashmolean Museum. The Griffith Library formed part of the Griffith Institute, a Department with independent status by Statute within the Ashmolean Museum. In 1966 the Museum’s staffing structure underwent a review, resulting in the Brunt Report (named after the Chairman of the review committee, Professor P.A. Brunt) which amongst others highlighted the top-class libraries integral to the various Museum Departments. The recommended amalgamation of these departmental libraries under a principal librarian took place in 1969, resulting in the separately governed Ashmolean Library. The Ashmolean Library, from then on, administered the Griffith Institute Library, the collection of which continued to be housed in the Griffith Institute. With the Ashmolean Library and the Griffith Library bursting at their seams, however, a new accommodation had to be sought but it was not until 30 years later that their collections were finally transferred to their new home, the Sackler Library, which opened in 2001. The holdings of this library derive from a number of separately housed collections and are the embodiment of Griffith’s vision of a research tool promoting interdisciplinary research.
Some contemporary “witnesses” are irreplaceable and therefore housed in the Sackler’s Rare Books Room. They include as Griffith’s personal copy of the 1st edition of the Egyptian Grammar (1927), authored by his famous pupil Alan H Gardiner (1879–1963). This copy contains Gardiner’s little-known hieroglyphic dedication to his teacher, a testimony of “the humble servant’s” huge veneration for Griffith. The Griffith Institute agreed to include a facsimile of the dedication in this year’s reprint of Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar.
In between plenary sessions, lectures and workshops participants took the opportunity to explore the stalls of the c. 150 exhibitors which made up the Museums Fair and Expo Forum. Amongst others there was a “shaky van” in which one could experience an earthquake with and without seismic isolation; the virtual reality stall was always busy; producers of replicas and facsimiles displayed their work carried out for museums and temples alike; publishers of exquisite art books attracted visitors with their dazzling reproduction of colours; and the publisher Routledge/Taylor & Francis showcased its publishing partnership with ICOM.
Having been asked to touch the replica of the National Treasure “Wind and Thunder God Screens” by Tawaraya Sotatsu (17th c, Kenninji Temple, now Kyoto National Museum), I could feel the joints of the gold leaves and the texture of the paint (Photo credit: Susanne Woodhouse)
Every evening delegates attended social events, ranging from a superb opening party which closed with a magnificent fireworks display, to a reception at Nijo Castle, the palace of which is a National Treasure from the early Edo period, and at the Kyoto National Museum. The organisation of this international conference ran like clockwork and the stakes are high indeed for the 26th General Conference, which will take place in 2022 in Prague.
Reception at Kyoto National Museum: Diane Bergman (right) the previous Griffith Librarian at the Sackler Library, Dåg Bergman (Diane’s husband), and myself (Diane’s successor in the post) (Photo credit: Susanne Woodhouse)
As subject librarian for Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, part of my mandate is to support the curatorial research needs of Ashmolean Museum staff. This conference, therefore, enabled me to put my work into a wider context by providing information on current challenges in the museum world, on the latest trends such as the attempt to redefine what a museum should stand for in the 21st century, and on new technologies used to preserve or reproduce cultural heritage for future generations.
Attending the subject-specific CIPEG meeting was an opportunity to keep abreast with academic and publishing developments as well as to promote the Sackler Library (and the Bodleian Libraries) and its holdings to the international community. At the same time my presentation constituted a contribution to the international scholarly discourse of the history of collections within Egyptology.
I would like to thank the Bodleian Libraries for the generous support that enabled me to attend this hugely informative conference.
Susanne Woodhouse
Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies Librarian (Griffith Librarian)
Sackler Library
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
The Bodleian Libraries’ (and the Sackler Library’s) approach is to prioritise the safety of our staff and readers, whilst working hard to make it possible to ‘Keep the University reading’.
Library buildings All library sites and reading rooms are closed to readers until further notice.
Library services Our physical services are suspended, whilst we both continue and expand our digital services.
eResources. The Bodleian Libraries provide access to over 118k eJournals, and over 1.4m eBooks. Our priority is to maintain access to these, and to add to the eResources that we provide for the Oxford community. All accessible via SOLO. More details here.
****Don’t forget Sackler reader relevant e-books and e-resources available via other platforms:
The Getty Research Portal™ Multilingual and multicultural union catalogue providing FREE download capabilities for publications on art, architecture, archaeology, material culture, and related fields.
Currently at 143,954 (20/06/2020) digitised titles. The number of volumes on this site is growing on a near-daily basis.
Most publications on this site are copyright-free (and hence older), with more recent publications also included.
The National Art Library (at the V&A) has compiled a lengthy list of free art and design e-resources here.
Scan-and-deliver. This service provides scanned materials for readers from collections housed at the Book Storage Facility. Access via SOLO: free for all Bodleian Libraries library card holders.
A new service, ‘Scan-and-deliver+‘ (access here) provides scans of material in Oxford library locations. Please note: The Sackler Library is both short-staffed and also experiencing a high volume of such requests. We are doing our very best to deliver a good service ask for your patience and understanding during this rapidly-evolving situation.
Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO). The ORLO service provides students with online reading lists linked to library and open access resources and can be used in Canvas or through its own user interface. ORLO currently holds 1,000+ lists for the current academic year in support of 22+ departments from across the academic divisions. We are instigating a rapid roll-out to other courses. More details here.
Loans. All Bodleian Libraries books currently on loan are auto-renewed until 19 June 2020. Please hold on to books you have out; do not return them. Any fines will be waived.
Inter-Library-Loans (ILL). Electronic delivery will soon be available free of charge (access here). Physical ILL is suspended.
Oxford University Research Archive (ORA). The ORA service (access here) will continue in support of open access to Oxford research, and in support of REF 2021 [link: https://www.ref.ac.uk/].
eReference/enquiries. The expanded Live Chat service will be available 9am–7pm every day from Monday 23 March. Access routes here: website, LibGuides, SOLO. Remote assistance from expert library staff is available by emailing reader.services@bodleian.ox.ac.uk (staffed weekdays, 9am–5pm).
While we are working hard to ensure we can maintain our digital services, and expand them where possible, we will be able to do this only when it does not compromise the health and safety of our staff.
Note: Many digital services, like our catalogue SOLO or ORA are accessible to all, while some of the services and resources noted above are restricted to Bodleian Libraries card holders (Single Sign On required).
Navigating the Sackler Library — and Finding the Books You Need!
As any reader at the Sackler Library can attest, the library presents some navigational challenges. Thanks to the combination of a confusing circular layout and the large number of different shelfmark schemes in use, it can often be difficult to find the book you’re looking for without spending an eternity wandering in circles – even for staff!
Image credit: Chantal van den Berg
In response to these navigational challenges, I began work on an interactive floor plan website in November 2018, which built upon the foundation of our existing paper floorplans – the Sackler is a five-floor library. Through the combination of the existing (though much cleaned-up) SVG files for the paper floorplans, a hand-gathered file of shelf content information, and bit of JavaScript to weld the two together, version 1.0 was born. This early version, released for staff use in January 2019, allowed one to virtually browse the shelfmark ranges present on each shelf (and there was much rejoicing). However, as useful as this prototype was, it was clear from the very beginning that browsing alone was not enough: the floorplan had to be searchable.
This next part was rather more involved. To write a programme that could reliably identify SIX (!) different shelfmark schemes was one thing, but to account for every possible variation and error present in the library was quite another. After weeks of poring over spreadsheets of shelfmarks and endless tests of the pattern matching code, I created a system that could reliably identify any Sackler shelfmark entered and break it down into its constituent parts. This also allowed for the automatic identification of all the weird and incorrect shelfmarks hiding throughout the library, leading to hundreds of corrections. Bonus!
Now able to identify shelfmarks, the system needed to be able to locate them within the library. This actually took the most time to implement, firstly since every individual shelf had to have its shelfmark range recorded; and also because each shelfmark scheme needed to be handled differently (special prize for the shelfmarks that use Roman numerals). In summary: when a shelfmark is entered, it is broken down into elements (e.g. NA/680/.5/A45/PAL/2005), which are then compared against each shelfmark range (also broken down in the same way) recorded in the shelf content data file already created for version 1.0. When a matching range is found, the shelf associated with that range is highlighted on the map
Link here! floorplan.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/sackler
Link here! floorplan.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/sackler
Version 2.0 is very capable: the vast majority of Sackler Library material is searchable, including folios and pamphlets, allowing readers and staff to instantly find the exact location of any shelfmark within the library. After a period of internal use, the website was launched to readers back in Michaelmas term 2019: it can be found at floorplan.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/sacklerand can be used on mobile devices. There are still refinements planned, so all feedback and suggestions for improvements are welcome.
Ben Gable,
Library Assistant
Sackler Library
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
So the other night I was down at the library cataloguer bar (The Unauthorised Heading: you wouldn’t know it, it’s not in a part of town where nice people go) and because we hadn’t had a good scrap for yonks, I decided to mix things up by sounding off on sales documentation – meaning auction or sales catalogues – to get a rise out of some out-of-towners I didn’t like the look of.
I began in a loud voice, “Literally every art library in Britain holds a collection of sale catalogues, and…”
[A clamour of angry voices rose in disagreement: the mood became as fraught as that infamous night when the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access announced that its mission was no longer to create “AACR3,” but rather something entirely new… and I scarcely need to remind you how that kicked off.]
I stared down the room. “You heard me! Every. Single. Art. Library in…”
[whoosh!] The red-bound house copy of Library of Congress Subject Headings (25th ed., 2002), v. 5 (the thick one, and yes, I mean “S-Z”), flew within a few millimetres of my left ear and [smash!] shattered twenty two- litre bottles containing 140 proof grain alcohol and splattering the motley assembly with cheap hooch.
While many of the assembled ruffians rushed to lap up the flowing spirits, spitting out those shards of jagged glass too large even for a hardened technical services specialist to swallow, a few voices rose clearly in challenge. “Alright, then. Let’s see the bibliographic records!”
I straightened my cardigan, wrapped a weighted book snake around one fist while tightening my grasp on a 45cm ruler in the other – “bibs.? I don’t have to show you any stinking bibs.” – and leapt in swinging.
* * *
The multi-volume work Library of Congress Subject Headings (now also online)
Many historic sales catalogues record both the purchaser and the price realised for each lot
Detail of prices realised
Here’s the thing about sales documentation: while I admit that I cannot prove the truth of its postulated ubiquity, neither can I nor anyone else exactly disprove it. And this is because, while a very large number of historic libraries do in fact have extensive holdings of sales cats., very few of those libraries have ever committed the time and effort to catalogue them to the same standards as the rest of their textual resources. The library catalogues of many libraries show little or no meaningful presence of sales documentation.
It’s not difficult to explain this fact. Sales catalogues bring a whole lot of weirdness to the table.
For one thing, it’s the way that sales cats. enter library collections. Libraries have frequently acquired runs of sales catalogues on subscription or standing order, which gives the sense that they were essentially a periodical/serial/continuing resource, and that it’s a simple matter just to file each in the next space on the shelf and slowly back away. But while catalogues are issued in series, and obviously carry forward many fundamental details consistently from one to the next, it is the very differences between individual sales that are essential to record: What is the specific nature of the materials being sold? Whose collections were they? When and where does a sale occur?
Historic sales documentation, meanwhile, often reaches libraries through consolidation of collections within a larger organisation (as with sales catalogues that entered the Sackler from the Ashmolean, for example), or through donation. Gifts from donors interested in the arts or material culture frequently include sales catalogues among the rest of the resources. Such catalogues are often the last resources to receive a cataloguer’s attention, being as they are frequently very slight, or sometimes bundled, or even bound, together with other catalogues (or pamphlets or offprints or ephemera…). Sales catalogues are essential resources in the study of provenance, and yet their own provenance is frequently murky.
Detail of identity of purchasers
Catalogue titles can be detailed and convoluted
And yet sales frequently become known by brief titles…
In addition, the titles of sales catalogues can simultaneously be very long, very convoluted, and very samey, one to another, and offer a test to the patience. Anyone for “Sale of a Collection of the choicest Engravings after the Masters of European Schools, as Flemish, French, Spanish, the cities of Italy, & c., assembled by a Known Dilettante in his Seat in Somersetshire, and now offered for sale by Messrs. Christie, Manson and Woods, at their Premises in St James’s?” How about twelve sales all titled: “Modern British pictures?” Without a conscious effort by the library cataloguer to be explicit – and to remain awake – a library catalogue record sometimes fails to make transparently evident the essential nature of the resource – a listing of material objects changing ownership, changing physical location – that it describes.
In general, then, suffice it to say that almost no cataloguer thinks, “Great! An auction catalogue!” when working their way through a stack of resources. To address sales catalogues individually can be labour-intensive.
Hence, obstacles to access to the national distributed collection of sales documentation are considerable because its management has not been, and continues not to be, a priority either for the auction houses themselves, or for individual libraries. Books are exciting! Books are substantial! Books are durable! Books are big enough that they reveal visible progress as they shift through the workflow! Books books books. It’s all about books. As a consequence of under-documentation, in contrast, the extent, scope and security of sales documentation is indeterminate, relative to other published materials, and potential risk of loss to significant intellectual content exists.
This has long concerned the library community. (You’re welcome.) A project initiated c. 2002 and based at the Courtauld Institute [‘HOGARTH’] encouraged retrospective cataloguing projects, but failed to address the issue significantly, and the HOGARTH portal has now disappeared. The most useful attempt by the profession to improve (international) bibliographic control of sales documentation has been the SCIPIO project.
Each small section of the volume is a discrete auction catalogue
A single collection might be split between numerous sales, conducted by numerous auction houses
Lots might feature well known artists and works…
… or others that are less well known
SCIPIO (originally “Sales Catalog Index Project Input Online,” which seems a bit forced but maybe HANNIBAL was already taken) encourages and standardises library cataloguing, delineating an input standard that addresses the idiosyncrasies of the form. And one advantage of the continuity between sales catalogues is that they lend themselves to systematic cataloguing using templates incorporating SCIPIO.
I quite like cataloguing sales documentation. Would I want to do it all day, every day? Umm… well… that is certainly an interesting question (is the Boss listening?). But do I think it is important that sales catalogues be catalogued individually, in records that consistently record the same data in a consistent manner, and that both local and union catalogues need to become more reliable? Absolutely. At their most basic, sales catalogues offer a unique insight into material culture. And many historic sales catalogues display significant intellectual intervention from previous owners, for example in the recording the identity of buyers, prices realized, or both, often comprehensively. They are highly valuable resources.
Auction catalogues offer valuable information for research in material culture and social history
I began this blog post because the Sackler holds a small collection of approximately 700 under-catalogued historic sales catalogues in its Rare Book Room. We briefly examined a sample of these during my project looking at resources held in the RBR, and found that only about 6% were catalogued individually in Solo, while more than a third appeared to be unrecorded in Scipio or WorldCat. (I used the word “appeared” because the SCIPIO database includes many unenhanced and frankly obsolete records, with the result that the SCIPIO standard is not applied consistently even within the SCIPIO file, and duplicate records evidently abound.) But what I didn’t realize at first is that this collection represents only a tiny proportion of sales documentation present in the Sackler and wider Bodleian collections. I found more and more records in Solo, some very good indeed. But it remains difficult to get a clear picture of what is held, and where it is.
And so I repeat: “Every art library in Britain holds a collection of sales catalogues. You have a problem with that?” Well, you’d be justified. The problem is trying to determine how much is recorded, and how much more is not?
To learn more about sales documentation held in the Bodleian Libraries (and especially the Sackler Library) and for highly useful guidance on locating the resources you need, please see the Art & Architecture Research Guide’s pages on Sales Catalogues: https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/art-architecture/auctions-sales
Joseph Ripp Special Collections Cataloguing Consultant, Sackler Library
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
The Trials and Tribulations of Assessing a Catalogue Record
Since November 2017 I have been working on a project at the Sackler Library to assess the quality of existing library cataloguing for different subsets of materials held in the library’s Special Collections. With the goal, ultimately, to inform the decision on whether bibliographic access to materials held in closed stacks is satisfactory, we have examined a sample of resources from the Rare Book Room and the Wind Room and asked: Are these resources recorded in bibliographic records (or ‘bibs. in cataloguing parlance’) in SOLO, and are these bibs.[i] sufficiently ‘good’ to enable readers to complete the user tasks[ii] necessary for their research and study? While only a very small number (four out of the initial sample of 312 resources) turned out to be omitted entirely from the catalogue, we have become aware of a wide range of issues that adversely affect retrieval. Hence, the short answer on whether appropriate bibliographic access to Sackler Special Collections materials exists, is … usually.
A number of underlying factors might contribute to this qualification: the period during which a resource was first catalogued (professional standards have varied and evolved over time, and the earliest bibs., transcribed from early printed catalogue entries, are very basic indeed), the expertise of the cataloguer, whether she or he had sufficient time to catalogue a resource adequately, and – not to put too fine a point on it – how engaged the cataloguer was on the day.[iii]
But sometimes the specific nature of the resource in hand is intrinsically problematic: some ‘books’ are much better behaved than others; sometimes ‘books’ aren’t ‘books’ at all. And sometimes the sheer mass of resources held in the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford’s constituent college libraries obscures collocation, duplication, relationships.
For this post, I’ve taken for a starting point a bib. [(UkOxU)013068990 — type the number in SOLO’s Search box and you will find the record] that’s not ‘up to snuff’.
The work is catalogued under the title:
22 photographs from the Oxford loan collection of historical portraits exhibited in 1906.
Sounds simple enough? As catalogued, the resource is comprised of two small portfolios of black-&-white photographic reproductions of painted portraits exhibited in Oxford in 1905 and 1906. Speaking frankly, this is the sort of thing that was probably passed over on the to-do trolley for some time[iv] before someone sufficiently brave – or foolhardy – decided that the Time Had Come. Everything about these materials is problematic, from their format, to the inconsistent way in which they are titled, to their relationship to one another and to other resources. Clearly, the two portfolios are related. But are they, in bibliographical terms, two instances of the ‘same’ resource?
Here is what is revealed with a little bit of digging. Early in the twentieth century, three loan exhibitions of portraits of English sitters were held in Oxford’s Examination Schools:
In 1904, the exhibition focused on sitters who had died before 1625.
In 1905, the exhibition focused on sitters who had died between 1625 and 1714.
In 1906, the exhibition focused on sitters who had died between 1714 and 1837.
(Images: Chantal van den Berg, Sackler Library)
Printed catalogues were published for each exhibition, in both a large, illustrated issue, and in a smaller issue illustrated only with a frontispiece. (It is difficult to determine, without consulting the various copies around Oxford, but it appears that the smaller issue was presented as a second edition of the larger). In addition, a number of the portraits were photographed during the second and third exhibitions, and small portfolios of these photographs were sold as ‘unofficial supplements’ to the printed catalogues; see some examples, below. (The Sackler Library holds copies of all three illustrated catalogues, the unillustrated 1904 catalogue, and both of the photographic supplements).
Richard Napier (1559-1634), Astrologer.
(Images: Chantal van den Berg, Sackler Library)
William Heather (1563-1627), Founder of the Professorship of Music
William Lawes (d. 1645), Composer
Robert Wright (1560-1643), Warden of Wadham, Bishop of Bristol and Lichfield
So the most straightforward possibility is that eight publications (large-format illustrated issue catalogues for each of three exhibitions, small-format unillustrated issue catalogue for each of three exhibitions, portfolios of photographic reproductions for the latter two exhibitions) exist. SOLO, however, lists sixteen different bibs. (including the last, the bibliographic record which initiated this blog post):
Represents the illustrated catalogues from all three exhibitions on a single record (eight holding libraries within Oxford, including Sackler)
Represents the illustrated catalogue from 1904 only (ten holding libraries)
Represents the small-format catalogue from 1904 only (two holding libraries, including Sackler)
Appears to duplicate no. 3 above, evidently unenhanced from an original printed catalogue record (Bodleian holding only)
Represents the illustrated catalogue from 1905 only (seven holdings libraries)
Appears to duplicate no. 5 above, evidently unenhanced from an original printed catalogue record (Bodleian holding only)
Represents the small-format catalogue – described in the bib. as the ‘second, revised edition’ – from 1905 only (six holding libraries)
Appears to duplicate no. 7 above, evidently unenhanced from an original printed catalogue record (Bodleian holding only)
Represents the illustrated catalogue from 1906 only (seven holding libraries)
Represents the small-format catalogue from 1906 only (four holdings libraries)
Appears to duplicate no. 10 above, evidently unenhanced from an original printed catalogue record (Bodleian holding only)
Appears to duplicate no. 10 above, evidently unenhanced from an original printed catalogue record (Bodleian holding only)
A bit of a puzzle: the title suggests that it duplicates no. 10 above, while its stated size suggests that it duplicates no. 9 above (Bodleian holding only)
Represents the photographic supplement to the 1905 exhibition (three holding libraries)
Another puzzle: Represents either both photographic supplements, or only the 1906 exhibition (Bodleian holding only)
Attempts to represent the photographic supplement to both the 1905 and 1906 exhibitions, but under the cover title for the later supplement (three holdings, including Sackler)
Are you still with us? The broad point is that the sheer weight of duplication, coupled with the ambiguity engendered by inadequate records derived from early printed catalogues (such as the Bodleian’s), actively hinders the researcher seeking to locate and access a specific catalogue.
(Images: Chantal van den Berg, Sackler Library)
But the Sackler Library is our immediate concern. Record 1. is a solid overall record, but it does have problems. First, nowhere in the bib. is the exact title of any of the three catalogues transcribed verbatim, even though the MARC (‘Machine Readable Cataloging’) standard allows the opportunity to do so. Second, while collecting multiple physical pieces under a cursory ‘3 v.’ (as done here) was common practice until quite recently, it does obscure the textual and illustrative extent of each piece. And third, some aspects of its ‘subject analysis’, the parts of the bib. that describe the intellectual content of a resource, rather than its physical form, are either incorrect, or unduly vague.
More alarming, however, is record 16, which first brought the situation to our attention. The cataloguer began with a bib. for the later supplement, borrowed from the library at the Getty Research Institute.[v] But s/he then attempted to accommodate both of Sackler’s photographic supplements on this single record, an attempt that, without fundamental revision, was doomed (doomed!) from the outset. (To base a record for a ‘continuing resource’ — or series — on a later issue rather than on the earlier is, in technical cataloguing parlance, ‘naughty’). And in any case, should the two supplements in fact be considered as two instances of a single resource? Are they more closely related to each other, than to the exhibition catalogue that each ‘supplements’? In intellectual terms, the decision to combine both on a single bib. is dubious; in practical terms, it effectively obscures that Sackler holds the earlier supplement from any researcher not aware of its title (although the bib. does provide this, redundantly, three times). There are additional problems with the record, including another occurrence of an unhelpfully vague statement of physical extent (‘2 portfolios’); subject analysis inherited from Getty that is sufficiently far from correct practice to inhibit collocation with other similar resources; errors in coding variant title information; a simple typo, stating that the earlier portfolio contains thirty, rather than thirty-nine individual photographs…
(Images: Chantal van den Berg, Sackler Library)
This record ticks a lot of wrong boxes.
So what should have happened?
In the first instance, the two supplements should have been catalogued separately. They do not form a series (a ‘continuing resource’ in current Cataloguerspeak).
Cataloguing rules afford good ways to collocate related resources. It is possible to establish each exhibition as a distinct entity (MARC X11) and to use these entities to connect all works related to that exhibition. Further, standards allow us to point between the catalogues and their photographic supplements (MARC 740).
Subject cataloguing will always be inconsistent, at least until Skynet takes over. But context is important. A cataloguer cannot help but be influenced by the records s/he has recently worked on; by the same token, it’s worth quickly checking for usage already present in the catalogue as a whole, in order to improve consistency within the bibliographic file and to avoid introducing new errors.
Ideally, a cataloguer would have noticed the proliferation of bibs. and contacted the Bodleian’s Database Maintenance team. They’re very helpful, and very good at sorting these things out: we’re all in this together, comrades!
Now, this is an isolated record, and we don’t know the circumstances that led to its errors. And, to be fair, it was not a simple knot to unpick. In contrast, most records in the sample are about adequate for retrieval. The concern is that even when bibs. abstain from any single mortal sin, unforgivably odious in the eyes of the Cataloguing Gods, many nevertheless evince accretions of minor peccadilloes that, collectively, place them in a parlous state.
So, next time SOLO reveals the exact resource that you sought, remember that it was the combined knowledge and judgement exercised by library cataloguers that thwarted the powers of entropy and enabled this discovery.
Joseph Ripp Special Collections Cataloguing Consultant, Sackler Library
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
Notes:
[i] Want to be effortlessly cool like a library cataloguer? Refer to a catalogue bibliographic record as a “bib.”
[ii] For readers whose FRBR2a is rusty, the catalogue should enable the reader to: “Find > Identify > Select > Obtain” resources.
2a “Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records”: do please try to keep up…
[iii] As measurable by the international standard of T minus coffee/T minus quitting time/T minus holiday/T minus the gentle slide into a well-earned and indefinite rest in the Home for Former Cataloguers and Otherwise Punchdrunk Precisians.
[iv] Not entirely speculative: the less-than-ideal state of conservation of these portfolios suggests that they might have lingered in a corner or beneath an ever-replenishing pile of books for some time until fished out, catalogued and hastily stuffed into an ill-fitting box “to get them out of our lives forever.” (They are now somewhat more adequately housed.)
[v] The existence of tools that facilitate sharing bibs. is one of the great strengths of the international library community.
“At 12:00 noon on 14 January 2018, the beginning of Hilary Term, the Sackler Library opened on a Sunday for the first time. Planned as a soft launch, and despite minimal advertising, by the time the Library closed at 18:00 the reader count had reached fifty-five and the Sackler [which had already established itself as the University library with the longest year-round, staffed opening hours, had increased this number to 78 hours per week]”:
M-F 09:00-22:00 Sat 11:00-18:00 Sun 12:00-18:00
This is how Sackler Operations Manager Frank Egerton opened last year’s blog post about the new Sunday opening hours at the Sackler Library. It was clear that both Saturdays and Sundays are very popular with readers. Over the last year, we have continued to gather reader counts for Saturdays and Sundays both via gate entry data and at set times during weekend shifts. We also still receive positive feedback from readers about our year round, 7 day a week opening hours.
Here are some fun facts about our Saturday and Sunday opening hours. We looked at our weekend reader numbers for Hilary Term 2018 and compared them with those for the same period in 2019. As you can see, the number of weekend readers has gone up in Hilary Term 2019.
Sunday opening is still a success after one year! Sunday opening was initially presented to readers as a two-year trial. Given its continuing success, it seems very unlikely that these extended hours will be discontinued after the trial period ends.
Chantal van den Berg
Library Assistant
and
Frank Egerton
Operations Manager
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
The Sackler is a busy lending library for several disciplines, and many books are borrowed and returned each day. Our dedicated shelving team and other Reader Services staff members do an invaluable job at keeping on top of the stacks of books needing to be shelved every day.
During academic year 2017-2018, Sackler staff shelved over 175,000 books — more than half of the total number of books in the whole library. This is a really impressive effort, and shows just how important shelving is to the successful operation of the library. Moreover, art/architecture/archaeology books are heavy. Shelving 175,000 Sackler Library books entails a great deal of strenuous lifting. Who needs a workout?
The pie chart (below) breaks down those 175,000 books. Most books needing to be shelved were on the ground floor and 1st floor, followed by the lower ground floor, then the 2nd and 3rd floors. The ground and 1st floors house monographs and journals on Classics and Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Egyptology. The 2nd and 3rd Floors house the Western and Eastern Art collections, supporting the research, study and teaching needs of a more wide-ranging readership, but fewer in numbers — hence the lower shelving figures.
As expected, we do more shelving during term time than during the vacation, and shelving has been more or less the same each term, with a slight reduction for Trinity term, when exams are held (and fewer books are needed for essay preparation, etc.).
Image created by Grace Brown
We asked Library Assistant Heidi Macaulay to comment on the past year’s changes in the Sackler Library’s shelving procedures:
“The past academic year at Sackler saw much restructuring, part of which resulted in an improvement in the library’s shelving situation. New weekend opening hours resulted in more Library Assistants joining the Reader Services staff team, and most Library Assistants now have daily shelving responsibilities. The net effect is that there are many more hours spent shelving each week.
Procedurally, shelving is now standardised across all floors as a system. Book-trolleys for shelving, labelled with shelf marks, have also been standardised and on every floor they are located on the south side of each reading room. (The exception is the ground floor, where they remain located near their respective stacks and keep exit routes clear in case of fire.) This standardisation makes it much easier for readers and staff to locate items which have been consulted in-house and are waiting to be shelved.
Such changes also make it much easier to determine where exactly any given Reading Room book is located: On the correct shelf; waiting to be loaned to a borrower; held at a reservation point; forming part of the daily morning desk sweep for each floor (these books transfer immediately to the appropriate re-shelving book-trolleys for each floor); or on the book returns trolleys near the ground floor Help & Circulation Desk.
Having additional Reader Services staff engaged in shelving also enables us to carry out more consistent work on book conservation/cleaning, missing book searches and shelf tidying and locating any missing books. (If a book remains missing, its status on SOLO will be updated to reflect this.)
As further added value, these changes bring an increased presence of Library Assistants to the Reading Rooms. While there, they can help with readers’ queries (eg, finding books!) at point of need and also help ensure that the reading rooms remain calm working environments. All the while shelving methodically on all floors throughout the day.
All of these changes combine to further enhance readers’ experience in effectively locating and using the books they need.”
So the next time you wonder…
Chantal van den Berg, Grace Brown and Heidi Macaulay, Members of the Sackler Library’s Reader Services staff team
We welcome suggestions for future blog contributions from our readers. Please contact Clare Hills-Nova (clare.hills-nova@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and Chantal van den Berg (chantal.vandenberg@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) if you would like propose a topic.
If you’re leaving us but coming back, have a lovely vacation, and we’ll see you in October. If you’re moving on to pastures new, we wish you well, and do remember you can apply for a reader card if you’d like to come back and visit!
Title-page of Elmsley’s edition of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus (Oxford, 1811), one of nearly a million 19th-century books scanned from the Bodleian Library for the 
