Discoveries and Rediscoveries – Page 2

Unearthing a Hidden Melody

The secrets of engraved printing plates brought to light by innovative imaging

Chiara Betti, Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD student at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Bodleian Libraries

William Child. Choise Musick to the Psalmes of David for Three Voices with a Continuall Base either for the Organ Or Theorbo / Composed by William Child. London: 1656. Psalm 9.

How do we see the past? Are there new ways to look at library objects? The display ‘Prints, Plates & Pixels’ which I had the pleasure to curate, open at the Weston Library from the 18^th of May until the 18^th of August 2024, shows the advancements made possible by the use of innovative imaging techniques and the collaboration of humanities and sciences to look at heritage objects. I began work in 2020 to examine the history and future of several hundred printing plates bequeathed by Richard Rawlinson in 1755 and held at the Bodleian Library. These objects were used to print images, often for book illustrations. While the printed image shows us the end result, the printing plates are the only living proof of the engraver’s work, showing us how deeply they engraved the lines and even when they changed their mind and made corrections!

Printing plates have shallow engraved or etched lines that only show their true detail when impressed in ink on paper. Inevitably, those shallow lines were flattened by repeated use and corrosion. My initial approach to studying the plates’ manufacture adopted traditional methods of viewing artworks in closeup, like digital photography, raking light and a magnifying glass. But the plates’ deterioration hampered my efforts.

However, I did not let that defeat me, and when in 2022, the ARCHiOx Project at the Bodleian Library was launched, I grabbed with both hands the chance to get involved. The project aimed to digitise Bodleian artefacts using prototype photographic and 3D scanning systems. The collaboration between Bodleian academics and Factum Foundation experts facilitated the exploration of the physical properties of Bodleian materials like Sanskrit manuscripts and the Gough Map of Britain, revealing previously unnoticed details and techniques. The opportunity to image some of the Rawlinson copper plates was transformative for my research on this collection of copper plates and led to new discoveries.

The most astounding was the identification of the engraved music on the reverse of a small portrait plate depicting Cardinal Julio Mazarin, included in the ‘Prints, Plates & Pixels’ display. I had noticed the notation during my initial survey, but only my collaboration with John Barret, Senior Photographer at the Bodleian, and Peter Ward Jones, former Curator at the Library, brought the music back to light.

Frontispiece of Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, The History of the Managements of Cardinal Julio Mazarine (London: 1671). The British Library.

Thanks to the ARCHiOx rendering, it emerged that the reverse of the copper plate is a fragment of Psalm 9 from the Cantus Primus part of William Child’s The First Set of Psalmes of III Voyces published in London by James Reave in 1639 and reissued by John Playford (1623–86) from the original plates in 1650 and 1656 as Choise Musick.

Two views of the reverse of Rawl. Copperplates g.184. ARCHiOx albedo (colour) and annotated version.

I was not expecting the formal portrait of the Cardinal to hide such treasure on its reverse. The discovery was truly momentous, but we must briefly consider the history of music printing in England to appreciate that. As I realised, the use of copper plates for music engraving was comparatively short-lived. Music engraved on copper first appeared in the country around 1612–13, but by the early 18^th century, copper plates were replaced with softer pewter plates, which allowed faster production and had the considerable advantage of being cheaper than copper. This re-purposed item is now possibly the earliest surviving copper music plate in the world. In fact, many engraved plates were indeed sold for scrap metal once their commercial value was exhausted. Furthermore, during the World Wars of the 20^th century, the need for scrap metal led to numerous publishers donating their stock of plates to support the war effort. Therefore, the preservation of pre-1900 music plates is absolutely remarkable.

This blog and my display, ‘Prints, Plates & Pixels’, offer a small glimpse into the exploration of historical printing plates through the lens of innovative imaging techniques and interdisciplinary collaboration. Through projects like ARCHiOx, the fusion of humanities and sciences enables profound discoveries, showing us even more from the rare survivals carefully kept in libraries and museums. Cutting-edge imaging technology can open new pathways for studying cultural heritage objects. Above all, innovative digitisation methods enhance accessibility and facilitate deeper exploration of artefacts.

About Richard Rawlinson:

The antiquary Richard Rawlinson (1690–1755) had a passion for preserving Britain’s heritage and the wealth to collect books, manuscripts, charters, prints, paintings, coins, and many other artworks that filled his London house to the brim. He left most of his collections to the University of Oxford, where they are preserved and studied today, constantly revealing more about their origins, use and significance. Among his collections were several manuscripts of Chaucer’s works, a medieval Anglo-Jewish bowl (now at the Ashmolean Museum) and one of the earliest manuscript copies of Magna Carta [MS. Rawlinson C 641, fols. 21v-29 https://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.uk/read/magna_carta_copies/Magna_Carta_1215]. Rawlinson didn’t limit his collections to precious and unique artefacts. He also gathered scrap paper from cheesemongers and chandlers and used objects that were not prized by art connoisseurs. The 752 printing plates, dating from the early 17th to mid-18th centuries, are typical of this impulse since two-thirds of them are second-hand. They perfectly match Rawlinson’s interests: pictures of places, objects, and people that told the story of British history as he saw it. Rawlinson also created a sort of picture archive, commissioning engravers to depict unique objects in his own vast antiquarian collections either for book illustrations or to circulate privately among other antiquaries and collectors.

The display in the Weston Library opens 19 May 2024

Further reading about ARCHiOX and copper plates in The Conveyor:

John Barrett, ARCHiOx: research and development in imaging.

Chiara Betti, Chiara Betti brings to light the Rawlinson copper plates at the Bodleian Library

Chiara Betti and Alexandra Franklin, Copper plates in the Bodleian Libraries

Chiara Betti, Researching and Digitising Copper Printing Plates at the Bodleian Library

Chiara Betti is a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD student at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and the Bodleian Libraries. Readers with an interest in Chiara’s research are encouraged to contact her at chiara.betti[at]postgrad.sas.ac.uk. The research is funded by the AHRC through the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership. See: Early modern copper plates at the Bodleian Libraries

‘I dare say will please you when you see them’ – more ‘new’ wood-blocks of an old grotesque alphabet.

Andrew Honey (Bodleian and English Faculty, Oxford)

An earlier blogpost introduced a newly acquired wood-block, a 19^th-century copy made of the letter K from a woodcut alphabet – the original ‘K’ being one of 23 letters from a Netherlandish woodcut grotesque alphabet of 1464 that is now at the British Museum. The facsimile copy was used in 1839 to print Treatise on Wood-engraving. In the last post we saw that the popularity of the original grotesque alphabet resulted in 15^th and 16^th century printed and manuscript copies, and we also saw that the facsimile was printed in 1839 using brown ink to convey the materiality of its water-based printing ink. This relates the interest in this alphabet to the curiosity about the printing of blockbooks, a lasting subject of fascination for historians of printing.

Figure 5: Bodleian Library, MS. Hearne’s Diaries 50, pp. 18-19.

This desire to convey the materiality of early water-based printing inks was shared a century earlier by Thomas Hearne (1678-1735). In his 1714 essay on early printing ink the Oxford antiquarian and sub-librarian at the Bodleian Library discussed the colour and texture of the ink used for some blockbooks and early woodcuts, while discussing their place in the history of printing.

“any one that will give himself the trouble of considering the first Specimens of Printing that we have in the Bodlejan Library, being two thin folio Books containing odd Pictures (from wooden cuts) […] will afford to a curious observer many Speculations. But because those Books cannot be conveyed out of the Library […] to give him a better Idea of the nature of them I shall here subjoyn the Speciment of a Fragment of another Book […] that was communicated to me by Mr. Bagford.”

To illustrate his point he pasted a fragment of a German blockbook Biblia pauperum c.1462-8 (Bod-Inc BB-5) into his diary, a fragment given to him by John Bagford (1650-1716) the antiquary and bookseller.

The Treatise tells us more about the interest shown in the 15^th century grotesque alphabet when it was rediscovered. On the 27 May 1819 the antiquary Samuel Lysons (1763-1819) wrote to Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827), the then owner of the grotesque alphabet:

“I return herewith your curious volume of ancient cuts. I showed it yesterday to Mr. Douce, who agrees with me that it is a great curiosity. He thinks the blocks were executed at Harlem, and are some of the earliest productions of that place. He has in his possession most of the letters executed in copper, but very inferior to the original cuts.”

Francis Douce (1757-1834), an antiquarian and collector, had been a Keeper of the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum between 1807-11. The ‘letters executed in copper’ are probably the early copy of the grotesque alphabet by the Master of the Banderoles. Douce would visit the Bodleian in July 1830 where he studied the three complete blockbooks then in the Bodleian’s collection. In 1834 he bequeathed his enormous collection to the Bodleian which included two blockbooks and three wood-blocks.

Woodcut of letters X and Y — Figure 6: Bodleian Library, Douce woodblocks f.1

Woodcut of letter Z — Figure 7: Bodleian Library, Douce woodblocks f.2

These two blocks shown above are facsimiles of the letters X, Y & Z from the same grotesque alphabet. Their existence in the Douce collection was first mentioned in 1897 by the incunabulist Robert Proctor who demonstrated that they had been made for John Bagford in the early eighteenth century for a projected history of printing. Recent work by Whitney Trettien and Edward Potten has linked our two blocks with a block for the letters K & L at the British Museum. These three alphabet blocks and our third Douce block join two others, one at the John Rylands Library and one at the British Library, to form a group of six surviving blocks for Bagford’s history of printing.

Impressions of woodcuts of letters X, Y, Z formed from grotesque figures — Figure 8: Impressions of wood-blocks for John Bagford’s projected History of Printing given to Thomas Hearne. Bodleian Library, MS. Rawl. D. 384, fol. 38r.

We also have prints of A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, X, Y & Z from the Bagford blocks in Hearne’s collection (now part of MS. Rawl. D. 384). A note on the back of X, Y & Z states “These are figures of odd letters wch I had from Mr Bagford. I have an Account of them from his own mouth in one of my Diary Books”.

In a letter to Hearne from Bagford dated 6 February 1708 we learn that:

“Mr Wanley hath lately hapined on some very ould Alphibets antiqe of yt Sorte of printing, cut on wood which I shall exhebite in my Booke, as sone as I have got them cut I shall send you a specement of them, and I dare say will please you when you se them.”

Later that year on 8 October Hearne gives a fuller account, presumably after he received the prints.

“Mr. Bagford has had a German printed Book of the Alphabet drawn exactly. It contains nothing more yn the Alphabet, only here and there a sentence in German inserted in ye Letters. They are all of a very large size for ye use of ye Illuminators, & are made up of several figures, as heads of Men, &c. The Z is made [backward z], […] He has another Alphabet, the letters of a stranger form. They are made up in Knotts with scroles of parchment.”

Just like our newly-acquired 19^th-century facsimile wood-block linked Douce, Lysons and Beaumont, these prints of Bagford’s earlier facsimile blocks link these 18th-century printing historians to a specific copy of the 15^th-century grotesque alphabet. This copy was owned by the antiquarian and librarian Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726), and is the second surviving copy, given to the British Museum in 1947.

Further reading

C.E. Doble, (ed.), ‘Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne: Vol. II (20 March 1707–22 March 1710)’, Oxford Historical Society 13 (Oxford, 1889).

Campbell Dodgson, ‘Two woodcut alphabets of the fifteenth century’, Burlington Magazine 17:90 (September 1910), pp. 362-5.

Edward Potten, ‘Dating the Rylands Apocalypse wood-block: John Bagford and the earliest facsimiles of blockbooks’, Journal of the Printing Historical Society TS 3 (2022), pp, 14-46.

Robert Proctor, ‘On two plates in Sotheby’s ‘Principia Typographica’’, Bibliographica 3 (1897) pp. 192-6.

Whitney Trettien, Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the history of bookwork (Minneapolis, 2021).

Early donors to the Bodleian Library: Katherine Sandys and colonialism

by Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull

One rich example of the Bodleian’s acquisition of books produced outside of Europe is provided by the donation of £20 (nearly £3000 today) in 1607 from Katherine Sandys née Bulkeley. Katherine was a shrewd businesswoman and the fourth wife of Edwin Sandys: a prominent MP, religious writer, and coloniser.

-The Bodleian’s copy of Fang Gung’s, Dan shi shin fa (Thoughts on Dan Shi) (1522). The vellum cover is annotated in latin with an inscription recording Sandys’ donation Sinica 32/6. Image taken by Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull in 2023. — The Bodleian’s copy of Fang Gung’s, Dan shi shin fa (Thoughts on Dan Shi) (1522). The parchment cover is annotated in Latin with an inscription recording Sandys’ donation. Sinica 32/6. Image taken by Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull in 2023.

In his letters, Bodley complained about donors being allowed to choose the items purchased with their donations. But in the case of this donation, the choice of books made by Bodley and librarian Thomas James may have reflected the Sandys family’s involvement in early colonial activities such as those of the Virginia Company.

Such works included important travelogues containing finely engraved maps. These depicted parts of the world where at this point in history England was a weaker colonising force, such as the Middle East (Arthus Gotthard and Johann Bry’s The Seventh Part of the East Indies (1606)), and Asia (Cornelius Wytfliet’s Universal History of the Indies (1605)). Much like Matal’s atlas, these texts helped to expand Western readers’ understanding of these newly navigated areas. But like Lodge’s manuscript catechism, their subject matter also shone light on the ongoing efforts of European colonists to convert indigenous people to Christianity; making these books fitting acquisitions for a library founded by Bodley as a seat of Protestant learning.

Sandys’ donation also included works acquired from these areas in non-European languages unreadable to Western scholars. This included eight medical texts in Chinese, such as Gong Ting Chien’s Van Bin Hoiye Chun (Cure for all Illnesses) (1573) and Fang Gung’s, Dan shi shin fa (Thoughts on Dan Shi) (1522). Like the Bodleian’s other early Chinese works acquired from 1604 onwards, Sandys’ books are cheaply printed.

Book with Chinese printed characters, Gong Ting Chien’s Van Bin Hoiye Chun (Cure for all Illnesses) (1573) — The Bodleian’s copy of Gong Ting Chien’s Van Bin Hoiye Chun (Cure for all Illnesses) (1573). Sinica 19/2. Image taken by Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull in 2023.

Some are unique survivals of sixteenth-century editions produced in the Fujin province on the southeastern coast of China during the Ming Dynasty. Too cheap to adorn the library of any serious Chinese scholar, they were probably sold by entrepreneurial local booksellers to Dutch merchants, and then exported to Europe by Dutch merchants engaged in the lucrative transcontinental spice trade in the employ of the newly formed Dutch East India Company. Bought in Amsterdam at auction by Bodley’s literary agent, when they arrived at the Bodleian they were simply recorded in the Benefactors’ Register under the catch-all heading ‘volumes in Chinese’. It was not until 1687, when the Chinese scholar and Catholic convert, Shen Fu-Tsung 沈福宗 (Michael Alphonsus), was paid by the Bodleian’s librarian Thomas Hyde to transliterate their titles that their contents became known in England. This enabled the creation of the first catalogue of Chinese Books for the Bodleian, and ultimately paved the way for future scholars to explore the library’s rich East Asian collections.

The books purchased with Sandys’ donation exemplify the complex relationship of the Bodleian’s early collections to colonialism and its legacy. Bodley’s acquisition of Chinese books is part of an explicitly colonial narrative. Likely acquired directly from the emergent oppressive power of the Dutch East India Company, these books were brought to Europe by a chartered company who would come to dominate East Asian trade routes across the Indian Ocean through the forced migration and killing of indigenous people. These books and their acquisition by a Western seat of learning promoted and glorified colonial projects of conquest, trade, and conversion to readers. Bodley did, albeit unintentionally, enable Fu-Tsung and Hyde’s later intellectual endeavours, paving the way for the first known direct Anglo-Chinese scholarly collaboration. The acquisition of these books also ensured the preservation of unique texts of international import and facilitated further study that continues at the library today. But as we continue to unlock their rich histories, we need to consciously centralise, and make accessible, the often-hidden colonial narratives that led to the arrival of items like these volumes at the Bodleian. However problematic and uncomfortable these may be, they are vital to furthering our understanding of the role colonialism played in developing the library’s collection.

My thanks go to Mamtimyn Sunuodula, Curator of Chinese Collections at the Bodleian, for translating the titles of Sinica 19/2 and 32/6.

Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull is a research associate on the AHRC-funded project ‘Shaping Scholarship: Early Donations to the Bodleian Library’. He is also a final year DPhil student, Clarendon, and Graduate Development Scholar in English at the University of Oxford. His doctoral research focuses on the materiality of women’s texts between 1580 and 1760, and related work has appeared in The Review of English Studies. You can contact Ben via email at b.wilkinson-turnbull@ucl.ac.uk. He can also be found on X (Twitter) @Ben_WT.

Further reading

Cornelius Wytfliet, Histoire universelle des Indes, orientales et occidentales (Douai, 1605)

Arthus, Gotthard and Johann Theodor de Bry, Indiae Orientalis Pars Septima : Navigationes duas, Primam, trium Annorum, a Georgio Spilbergio, trium navium praefecto, Ann. 1601. ex Selandia in Indiam Orientalem susceptam (Frankfurt, 1606)

Gong Ting Chien,Van Bin Hoiye Chun (Cure for all Illnesses) (Fujin, 1573)

Fang Gung, Dan shi shin fa (Thoughts on Dan Shi) (Fujin, 1522)

David Helliwell, ‘Our Earliest Chinese Accession’, https://serica.blog/2012/11/29/our-earliest-chinese-accession/

William Poole, ‘The Letters of Shen Fuzong to Thomas Hyde, 1687-88’, British Library Journal (2015), article 9. (https://bl.iro.bl.uk/concern/articles/1227de6b-c20f-48fb-8411-b1f811ffa957).

Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company. (Cambridge, 2009).

Collage Comparison: A Case Study of Comparison and Juxtaposition in Archives

Collage Comparison poster, detail. Collage Comparison Symposium and Julia Utreras

by Devika

Methods of reading and understanding archives are constantly evolving. The question of ‘whose voices?’ are heard in archival materials has encouraged attention to gaps and silences. With the project ‘We Are Our History,’ the Bodleian Libraries have found guidance from researchers inside and outside academia on new approaches to archives. The symposium ‘Collage Comparison,’ (September 29-30, 2023, St Anne’s College Oxford and Bodleian Libraries) was devised by the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Research Centre, using collage as a method of bringing archival materials into dialogue with each other. The two-day symposium brought together artists, practitioners, and scholars from a range of disciplines within Oxford and beyond—from English, Modern Languages, and History of Art to Ethnomusicology, Visual Anthropology, and Curatorial Studies.

Organisers Dr Joseph Hankinson, Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Dr Georgia Nasseh explored how collage, conceptually and practically, can provide a new and decolonised rhetoric for understanding translation and archival work.

Understanding Archives Differently with Collage

On the first day, the group was guided in creative collage-making by artist Sofia Yalla. The session led by Yalla explored how professional archives relate to personal archives, with participants being given either a ‘construction’ or a ‘deconstruction’ kit, having to connect and collaborate in these two processes of selecting and building an archive.

The choice of collage as the focal point for exploration was deeply rooted in its historical ties to the African continent and its diaspora. With its delicate balance of appropriation and expropriation, fragmentation, and juxtaposition, collage played a pivotal role in the artistic expressions of writers like Kojo Laing and M. NourbeSe Philip. From the start, the symposium used the potential of collage as a model, with participants’ self-introductions woven into a conversation ‘performed’ by all the participants, rather than standing as separate, individual statements.

On the second day, the symposium worked with an archive held in the Bodleian, the archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. In this workshop hosted by Dr Mushakavanahu, it was fascinating to observe the different creations by individuals interacting with the same document. Participants sitting side-by-side and creating collage (from photographs of the archival materials) became a true example of diversity: difference, similarity, and juxtaposition of perspectives in the archives. The need to understand how one set of texts could mean something entirely different for different communities–multiple understandings of the same texts–is an advantage, not a limitation.

Digital Collage and Future Accessibility

Discussion during the symposium explored how academic work informed the aesthetics of collage and considered future accessibility to the created material. The Zine created by attendees as part of their final morning in the Symposium will be available on the Collage Comparison website. The Zine exemplifies many of the ideas discussed above; most importantly, the potential collage holds as a technique towards interacting with archives – digitally or in person.

See Collage Comparison for description of the symposium aims and images of the workshop in progress.

For the Bodleian Libraries, Collage Comparison provided a model of collaborative working and showed the alchemy in archives placed in a new relationship with researchers. See the ‘We Are Our History’ project website. https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/libraries/our-work/we-are-our-history

Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu will lecture on ‘Cut/Copy/Paste: Collage as a form of reading and writing the archive’, on Tuesday 24 January at 1 pm, in the Weston Library, Broad Street, Oxford. Registration required: https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/waoh-conversations

Rediscovery of a 17th-century miscellany of Asian scripts

guest post by Dr Katja Triplett (Marburg/Leipzig)

Original Manchu and Tibetan manuscripts, the models for two engraved plates in Thomas Hyde’s celebrated History of Religion of the Old Persians (1700), have been rediscovered in the Bodleian Library.

Sample of handwriting MS. Or. Polygl. c. 1, fol. 5r. — Sample of handwriting in Manchu (MS. Or. Polygl. c. 1, fol. 5r.). This is the original manuscript on which table XV in Hyde’s monograph is based.

The Bodleian Library is home to some of the earliest books printed with a European letter press on Japanese soil. Bodley’s Librarian and Laudian Professor of Arabic Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) added a provenance note to one of these books, a Japanese translation of the “Imitation of Christ”, printed at a secret location near Nagasaki in 1596 (Arch. B e.42). The note states that the book was “the gift of a Reverend man lately brought back from India, Mr. John Evans, 1695”. Researching the provenance of the Bodleian copy, one of only three extant, I took a closer look at Anglican minister John Evans (c. 1652–1724), later bishop of Bangor, and his collaboration with Thomas Hyde. How did Evans get hold of this translation created by the Jesuit mission press in Japan and why did he donate it to the Library?

A first trace led to two additional gifts bestowed to the Library by Evans in 1695. One was a scroll with a birthday calculator in Bengali (now deemed lost); the other (MS. Or. Polyg. c. 1) [see a summary record for the Or. Polyglot manuscripts], which was brought to my attention by Dr Alessandro Bianchi, is a most significant miscellany with specimens of Asian scripts and official correspondence. The newly rediscovered miscellany provides an unexpected opportunity to explore transnational networks involving Asia and Europe.

The miscellany contains samples of scripts from China, Bhutan, from the Manchu people and from continental Southeast Asia, in addition to a Bengali syllabary. The letters appear to be copies. The samples also contain dates (some not conforming to official dynastic chronology), place names and personal names and titles. My analysis of the watermarks suggests that the miscellany was assembled not much before or in 1693, the year Evans returned to England from Bengal.

The nature of Evans’s miscellany and its possible uses in South Asia clearly points to its trade connection. It contains, for example, a sample of a Japanese letter and the cover of a Chinese letter issued by the “Chief Surveillance Bureau”.

Most exciting was the discovery that a Manchu text sample and a Tibetan safe-travel document (lam-yig) issued in 1688 to an Armenian merchant are the originals of two engraved plates in Thomas Hyde’s 1700 pioneering study on the history of Persian religion. The work includes comparisons of various Asian languages as well, illustrated with plates of Asian scripts engraved by Michael Burghers (c. 1647/8–1727). Until the discovery of the miscellany, Hyde’s plate with the Tibetan passport counted as one of the earliest witnesses of Tibetan writing in the West.

The sources on John Evans suggest that his office in India as well as his clandestine trade business took him to different places in Bengal and the Coromandel Coast where the Portuguese had been present from the 1530s onward. Evans may have got hold of a Jesuit mission press book from Japan at one of the Portuguese settlements in India. Since his friend Thomas Hyde seemed to have been keen on studying Asian languages, a field of study in its infancy, Evans gifted the three items from his Bengal days to the Library.

*Because of the polyglot nature of the miscellany, various specialists were consulted, notably Alessandro Bianchi, Ryūji Hiraoka, Ana Carolina Hosne, Jana Igunma, Nicholas Kontovas, Peter Kornicki, Charles Manson, Sven Osterkamp, Johannes Reckel, and Dagmar Schwerk. A more thorough investigation which is currently being undertaken will be published in the near future.

Dr Katja Triplett is Affiliate Professor of the Study of Religions, Marburg University, and senior research fellow at Leipzig University with a project on religion and translation in the Early Modern period, funded by the German Research Council (DFG).

Colonial Connections of the Early Bodleian Library

Book open at a map of the world — Jean Matal’s atlas from 1600: America, sive Novus orbis, tabulis æneis delineatus. I. Matalius. Shelfmark: H 7.2(3) Art.

by Dr Anna-Lujz Gilbert

When Thomas Bodley re-founded Oxford University’s library in 1598, he knew he would need the help of a “great store of honourable friends” for the project to be a success. He asked people he knew to donate to the Library and, as an encouragement, he had the names of donors written into an ornate Register of Benefactors. ‘Shaping Scholarship’ is an AHRC-funded project at UCL, in collaboration with the Bodleian, which uses that Benefactors’ Register to examine cultures of library donation in early seventeenth-century England, and their impact on the Bodleian’s book collections. The early Bodleian Library had many colonial connections, and the public database of the early donations to the Library (c. 1600–1620) which we are producing for this project will help further research in this area.

Page of the Benefactor's Book of the Bodleian Library — Bodleian Library Records b. 903, Registrum Donatorum, the Benefactors’ Register

The Bodleian Library was established at a time when England was striving to become an imperial power. Many of the Library’s donors were statesmen, civil servants, soldiers, and courtiers—the kinds of people who were likely to be involved in overseas affairs of different kinds. Some donors were directly involved in colonial activities, such as Sir Walter Raleigh (1554?-1618), who led expeditions to the Americas, and who gifted the library £50 in 1603 (worth over £8,000 today). Others were involved in these activities from afar. Donor Sir Walter Cope (1553?–1614), for example, invested in and energetically raised funds for new merchant companies set up to promote international trade through colonising practices. Companies like the Virginia Company, which established England’s first North American colonies, made substantial losses. To raise money for these colonial ventures, they presented investment as a public-spirited act for the good of the nation. This context can inform how we understand donation to the early Bodleian Library as a similarly public-spirited act.

Overseas conquest, as well as trade and embassy, facilitated the movement of books into the Library. In the 1610s, for example, the Bodleian acquired a manuscript catechism which had been produced by Jesuits in Brazil to help convert indigenous people. It was written in Tupi, a now extinct indigenous language. [See an online edition of this manuscript at the link here.] It was gifted to the Bodleian by English author Thomas Lodge, who had taken it from a Jesuit library during an English raid on a Portuguese settlement in Brazil. [see footnote 1] (Lodge’s gift was, however, considered to be too small to be included in the Benefactors’ Register).

Exploration and colonisation helped to expand Western knowledge, and this was reflected in the content of some of the books purchased by the Bodleian. The 1603 gift of Henry Brooke, Baron Cobham, for instance, paid for the acquisition of Jean Matal’s [Johannes Matalius] atlas of the world with its new maps of America.

The Bodleian collected books in non-European languages in the hope that these too would be used to advance Western knowledge, even if, for some of these languages, there was no-one in England who could read them at the time.

By looking at who was donating to the early Bodleian Library and what books were acquired, we can ask how this seventeenth-century project to encompass knowledge was aligned with English and wider European activities to compass the globe itself. Lines of enquiry include examining the colonial activities of donors, the acquisition of books produced outside of Europe, and the kinds of knowledge represented in the books acquired.

footnote 1: See: Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá and Caroline Egan, ‘Translation and prolepsis: the Jesuit origins of a Tupi Christian doctrine,’ in Cultural Worlds of the Jesuits in Colonial Latin America, edited by Linda A. Newson (London: University of London Press, 2020), 189–206.

Anna-Lujz Gilbert is a postdoctoral research fellow on the ‘Shaping Scholarship’ project at UCL. For this project, she is leading the construction of a database of donations made to the Bodleian Library in its first twenty years, c. 1600–1620, which will be published as a free online resource. Her wider research interests are in the movement to establish semi-public libraries in early modern England.

For more information about the Shaping Scholarship project, see the project website at: http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/projects/shaping-scholarship

This blogpost is one of a series exploring the Bodleian’s colonial and imperial connections, as part of the ‘We Are Our History’ project in 2022-24.

Safavid Persian Qur’an: the Bodleian and Tipu Sultan’s library

Inscription in MS. Bodl. Or. 793, from the librarian of the East India Company Library to the Bodleian Library — Inscription in MS. Bodl. Or. 793, from the librarian of the East India House Library to the Bodleian Library, 1806

by Devika

‘Tipu’s Tiger,’ the striking Indian automaton of a tiger mauling a red-coated European man, is now held in the V&A Museum. It was taken from the palace of the ruler of Mysore during the East India Company’s capture of Seringapatam on 4 May 1799. Equally remarkable and valuable was Tipu Sultan’s library, seized in the same battle, during which Tipu was killed. Even in the history of this raid the Bodleian Library was invoked to set the standard based on which Tipu’s own library was assessed.

Captain David Price, prize agent for the Bombay Army, was one of the individuals tasked with making a selection of the texts to be presented by the army to the court of directors of the East India Company. :

The library and depôt of manuscripts, was a dark room, in the S.E. angle of the upper virandah of the interior quadrangle of the palace. Instead of being beautifully arranged, as in the Bodleian, the books were heaped together in hampers, covered with leather; to consult which, it was necessary to discharge the whole contents on the floor. The selection, which we completed, with all the care and discrimination in our care to bestow, extended, in the whole, to the number of 300, and something over, all of them manuscripts of the choicest description; whether for matter, beauty of penmanship, or richness of decoration … We did not take any account of the remainder, or bulk, of this princely library. But I should conceive that it must have contained, altogether, from 3 to 4,000 volumes, or about ten times the number of our selection. (Price, Memoirs, pp. 445-6)

Looking back on the event as he wrote his memoirs, Price chose the Bodleian Library, in which books were stored on shelves, as a contrast to the arrangement of books in Tipu’s library, from which, according to his perception and his narrative, books could be plundered. The reference reflects the Bodleian’s position within British imperial thought. Price poses the Bodleian as the ideal library as opposed to the preservation practices of Seringapatam, although another officer has written about the excellent condition of the records and the system Tipu Sultan had in place for the management of the library (“Curious Particulars”, p. 266)

It seems there was something more than monetary value that made Captain Price and other officers select items from Tipu’s collections. Joshua Ehrlich argues that Tipu Sultan’s library is key to understanding the power aspirations of both British soldiers and the Sultan himself. Tipu amassed a library of great value, some of which he acquired through plunder. This brings us to the collection item bestowed upon the University of Oxford, after the plunder of the Seringapatam library by Company soldiers.

Manuscripts from the raided library in Seringapatam (Srirangapatna, Karnataka, India today) would come to enrich the collections of libraries in Britain, including the Bodleian, in part as gifts from the Company.

An inscription (pictured) inside this Safavid Persian Qur’an (MS. Bodl. Or. 793) states that it was presented by the East India Company directors as a gift to the University of Oxford in 1805. Other Qur’ans from Tipu’s library were also given as gifts to Cambridge University, St. Andrews University and the Crown. The choice of institutions of national importance to receive these significant books was done ‘evidently hoping to garner goodwill,’ [Ehrlich, p. 490]

A digital facsimile of this Quran can be seen in Digital Bodleian, where it is described as ‘From the library of Tipu Sultan, Fath ʻAli, Nawab of Mysore, r. 1753-1799.’
Link to digital item

However, this brief statement and the earlier language of ‘gifting’ in the East India Company’s inscription within the book provide provenance descriptions that gloss over the Company’s forcible seizure of Tipu’s library. These neutral statements ignore the episodes of violence in the book’s history, which go back even farther: Tipu’s own plunder of other libraries. It is the power aspirations of those who seized the books which historian Joshua Ehrlich recounts in his history of Tipu’s library. (See: The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, 2023)

Below is a comment on the Qur’an from Professor Sadiah Qureshi, Sassoon Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries in 2023:
‘Muslims regard the Qur’an as the revealed word of God requiring ritual ablution and many special acts of respect when handling and reading. Seeing the Qur’an reduced to an object, especially plundered loot, within any collection is deeply distressing, and should be a thing of the past.’

This case study prompts us to ask the following questions:
– Who has the right to present an item as a gift? Is it a gift if it is a spoil of war or violence? How do the means of acquisition complicate the provenance of an object?
– How are an institution’s handling and display practices informed by the historical provenance and religious and cultural significance of the item? What idea does the presence or lack of said practices convey about the institution?

References:
Sims-Williams, Ursula. “Collections Within Collections: An Analysis of Tipu Sultan’s Library.” Iran : Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 59.2 (2021): 287-307.
Price, David. Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer, on the Retired List of the Indian Army. England: W. H. Allen, 1839. Digital copy available from the Bodleian Libraries
Ehrlich, Joshua. “Plunder and Prestige: Tipu Sultan’s Library and the Making of British India.” South Asia 43.3 (2020): 478-92.
“Curious Particulars Relative to the Capture of Seringapatam.” The Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany, 1785-1803 (vol. 15, January 1800): 260-66. Digital copy available from the Bodleian Libraries

ARCHiOx, part 4: ‘Let him make a statue of a horse with its rider’

Camera photographing an ancient letter-seal — The Lucida uses a projected laser line and two tiny cameras to record the form of each surface of the seal. Bodleian Library, Sigill. Aram. V.

An essay by John Barrett, Senior Photographer, Bodleian Libraries, about discoveries from the ARCHiOx imaging project, which has been funded by the generous support of the Helen Hamlyn Trust. See also: ARCHiOx: research and development in imaging – The Conveyor

By far the earliest collection of originals to be recorded for the ARCHiOx project originate from the Achaemenid Empire, and date to between 500 and 400BC. The following image shows a clay seal, or letter-bulla, bearing the impression of the seal of Aršāma, a Persian prince and regional governor. It is one of eight seals, which would have accompanied letters sent to the steward of Aršāma’s estates in Egypt. The impression made on this example, and six other bullae from the collection were made using the same cylindrical seal. Lost to time, this incredibly intricately carved tool would have been rolled over the surface of each of these tiny clay seals, which measure little more than four centimetres. The clay which forms these seals is unfired and consequently these small originals are incredibly fragile. In some cases, the seals are held together by the string which would have attached them to the letters they accompanied. Recording such vulnerable originals is of great importance to ensure their preservation.

A one-hundred-megapixel medium format digital camera has been used to photograph the four source images. In place of the custom flash modules, each seal has been illuminated using a studio flash unit. The flash unit is moved to an equidistant position to the original at 90 degrees from the previous location, and the process repeated.

Recording the seals in this way has made it possible to capture them at over six and a half million pixels per square inch, but at this resolution the depth of field is extremely shallow. Focus stacking is a technique whereby multiple images are photographed from a static position with an incremental adjustment made to the focus between exposures. The resulting stacks of images are then combined in software. In this way the depth-of-field is extended and the recording appears absolutely sharp from top to bottom. Perfect alignment of the four focus-stacked source images to enable photometric stereo processing is the most challenging element within the process.

An impression of the seal of Aršāma from Sigill. Aram. V.

The final recordings are incredibly impressive. Every tiny detail of the impression, historic repair and even the fingerprints of the maker are clearly visible. These features can be explored using a 3D viewer within GIS software. Moving over the surface of the recording is similar to flying over the surface of a desert landscape, where each granular element becomes a geographical feature. This new method of recording represents an important advance in imaging for the purposes of preservation. The recordings of the seals will allow researchers to study originals in a way that has never before been possible.

In the left-hand example below, the shaded representation of the recorded surface has been generated by positioning a virtual light source at 60 degrees from the surface on which the original rests. In addition, other shaders can be applied, as shown in the right-hand example, which uses a spectrum of colour to represent height.

A different perspective. Two renders of the surface of Sigill. Aram. VIII made with data recorded with from the Selene. Left: a greyscale shaded render. Right: a heat map, using a spectrum of colour to represent variations in height.

Combining focus-stacking and photometric stereo. Though the thickness of the seal is a mere 7.5mm, limited depth-of-field due to recording at such a high magnification only allows for acceptably sharp capture of the top 2mm. The benefits of focus stacking are particularly notable at the edges of the seal as they taper down. Left: single exposure. Right: focus-stacked image. Sigill. Aram. V.

Every tiny detail of the impression, historic repair and even the fingerprints of the maker are clearly visible. These features can be explored using a 3D viewer within GIS software. Moving over the surface of the recording is similar to flying over the surface of a desert landscape, where each granular element becomes a geographical feature. This new method of recording represents an important advance in imaging for the purposes of preservation. The recordings of the seals will allow researchers to study originals in a way that has never before been possible.

3D views of the reverse of Sigill. Aram. VIII. The wonderfully preserved string from this letter bulla still holds a fragment of parchment from one of the letters to which it was originally attached.

The image below shows one of the fourteen parchment letters from the Aršāma collection. The Aramaic text is reasonably well preserved, and has been almost fully transcribed. The letter suggests that Aršāma valued not only horses, two of which feature on his seal, but also three-dimensional artworks. Addressed to Nakhthor, the steward of his estates in Egypt, Aršāma commissions the production of statues to be made by a sculptor believed to be Hinzani.

Ancient Persian letter (fragmented). Bodleian Library Pell. Aram. III. — A letter addressed by Aršāma, Persian Satrap of Egypt to Nakhthor the steward of his estates in Egypt. An excerpt of the text is translated as follows. …‘And let him make statues (on) which there shall be horsemen (?), and let him make a statue of a horse with its rider, just as previously he made before me, and other statues. And send (them), and let them bring (them) to me at once, with haste’… Pell. Aram. III.

So it seems fitting that we should carry out Aršāma’s request, albeit two and a half millennia later. Producing a scaled-up three-dimensional facsimile of the fifth seal using the data recorded with ARCHiOx technology. Firstly, the Lucida scanner was used to record the general shape of the seal from each orientation. This volumetric data provided a base, over which the higher resolution, higher frequency data recorded with the Selene could be overlaid.

With the photometric stereo and laser recordings combined, elevated printing was then used to construct the facsimiles at four times the original size. Several variations were made in order to assess which might be most useful for the purposes of study. Firstly, an uncoloured version was made, showing only the volume of the seal. Two coloured versions followed, the first printed with a shaded render in order to enhance the debossed design, and the second printed with the albedo (colour) image recorded from the original seal.

Left: Two, scaled-up, 3D printed facsimiles of Sigill. Aram. V, made in the print rooms at Factum Arte, Madrid. Right: The two tiny facsimiles in the centre of the group are printed at actual size. Variations of enlarged facsimiles were produced, either uncoloured or with renders printed on their surface.

A far greater challenge would be to create a facsimile of the lost cylindrical seal which was used to make the impressions in the seven bullae. Though the fifth, seventh and eighth seals provide much of the design, some elements are clearly incomplete. A collated line drawing from Christopher J. Tuplin and John Ma’s book, Aršāma and his World: The Bodleian Letters in Context reveals two important missing elements from the design. In the drawing, the horse to the left of the soldier holding a spear appears complete. Crucially so too does the inscription above the horse. With the assistance of Professor Tuplin, these additional details were explained. Another seal bearing a partial impression, made using the same cylinder is held in the collections of the Persepolis Fortification Archive in Chicago. A photograph of this seal was used by Eduardo Lopez from Factum Arte in order to incorporate the missing elements into the digital reconstruction.

The lost cylindrical seal, remade. The design from the collated recordings 3D printed onto flexible plastic before being glued to a cylindrical base. An impression in plasticine demonstrates that the facsimile is capable of creating incredibly similar designs to those found on the original bullae.

Prior to producing the facsimile, the 3D recording was inverted so that the embossed design would be capable of creating an impression similar to those from the original bullae. Though limited by the resolution of the 3D printer, the facsimile cylindrical seal is indeed a usable tool and capable of making impressions which look very similar to those which were ordered to be made by Prince Aršāma, two and a half thousand years ago.

Download the full essay by John Barrett, Senior Photographer and ARCHiOx Technical Lead (Bodleian Libraries)

ARCHiOx, part 3: Patterns and paintings in a 17th-century Ragamala album

An essay by John Barrett, Senior Photographer, Bodleian Libraries, about discoveries from the ARCHiOx imaging project, which has been funded by the generous support of the Helen Hamlyn Trust. See also: ARCHiOx: research and development in imaging – The Conveyor

An album of Ragamala paintings at the Bodleian Library (Bodleian MS. Laud Or. 149) is a beautifully painted manuscript, dating from the early 17^th century. Not long after it was produced, the volume was donated to the Bodleian by Archbishop William Laud, at some point between 1635-41.

It has been proposed that that three recently discovered paper pouncing patterns may have been used in the production of paintings in the manuscript. The patterns, which have subsequently been loaned to the Bodleian, are skilfully made. Tiny pin-pricks form the outline of illustrations which are clearly comparable with three of the paintings from the Ragamala Album.

Left: a paper pouncing pattern, photographed conventionally. Centre: an edited version of the previous image showing the position of the tiny pinholes. Right: A detail from fol. 8 of the Laud Ragamala Album. MS. Laud Or. 149.

Pouncing is a less obvious method of copying than pricking. Charcoal dust would have been transferred though the holes, duplicating the form of a design from pattern to page. Whether or not the three pouncing patterns were indeed the source of the paintings from the Bodleian’s 17^th century volume remains somewhat of a mystery. In order to examine how closely the two align, the ARCHiOx team generated a set of renders from 3D recordings of the pouncing patterns and overlaid these with the colour images from the manuscript.

A layered image comprising of: Left: a painted page from the Laud Ragamala Album. Right: a mirrored heat-map render of the verso of the corresponding pouncing pattern. Centre: a composite of the left and right images. MS. Laud Or. 149.

Though some elements within the designs differ, there is a clear and extremely close correlation between the patterns and paintings. 3D imaging of the paintings themselves show no evidence of holes or depressions due to tracing, only the layers of pigment which have been applied to the paper. Though the 3D recordings have not provided a definitive answer as to whether the patterns may be the origin of the paintings, it is hoped that they may serve as a template for similar analysis.

Download the full essay by John Barrett, Senior Photographer and ARCHiOx Technical Lead (Bodleian Libraries)

ARCHiOx, part 2: Digital imaging within a tradition of facsimile-making

ARCHiOx is by no means the first technology to create facsimiles of ancient texts or images. The process of copying using pinholes is evident on the largest original which has so far been captured for the ARCHiOx project. Dating to the 14^th century, the Gough Map is one of the earliest maps to show Great Britain in a geographically recognisable form and served as a blueprint for maps of Britain for over 150 years.

Oblique images of the sign marking the location of Hull, East Yorkshire. Left: albedo. Right: shaded render showing the micro topography of this area of the map, in the absence of the original’s colour. Tiny indentations marking the form of the sign provide evidence that the map was copied from a precursor map. MS. Gough Gen. Top. 16.

Bequeathed to the Bodleian Library by Richard Gough (1735-1809), the map is covered in over two-thousand tiny indentations which transferred the position and form of geographical features from a precursor map. Through studying these pinholes, researchers may be able to determine which features would have been present on the precursor map and in doing so, estimate when it may have been made.

This historic map has been recorded numerous times since its creation. It therefore serves as wonderful case-study in the development of copying and imaging techniques. A copper printing plate was engraved in 1780, prints from which are held in the Bodleian’s collections. Using a novel reproduction method developed at the Ordnance Survey, a photozincography recording was made in 1871. In 1958, a run of collotype prints of the Gough Map were made at Oxford University Press. The map was recorded digitally for the first time in 2006. Hyperspectral and 3D laser recordings followed nine years later, in 2015. These initial 3D recordings were conducted by the Factum Foundation’s Head of 3D scanning, Carlos Bayod.

“The recording carried out in 2015 applied the Lucida 3D Scanner to capture for the first time the topographical characteristics of this unique map. One of the first collaborations between the Bodleian Libraries and Factum Foundation, this survey allowed us to see and measure the shape and surface of the map without the colour layer, making it much easier to allocate the distribution of the pinholes, among other marks present on the relief. The information captured by the Lucida systems offers the possibility of visualizing the map’s surface on-screen as a shaded render, an image format onto which it is possible to register other layers of information such as the colour photographs. Additionally, it creates a greyscale depth map that can be used for re-materializing the data as an accurate physical reconstruction, becoming the base for creating an exact facsimile”. Carlos Bayod Lucini, Head of 3D Scanning, Factum Foundation

The new photometric stereo recording of the Gough Map captured with the Selene, was captured in June, 2022. MS. Gough Gen. Top. 16.

The photometric stereo captures made for ARCHiOx are the highest resolution recordings of the Gough Map to date. Both the front and reverse of the map were recorded at over 700,000 pixels per square inch. In order to record the map at this resolution, 85 image tiles were captured, processed and stitched together to form a single image. Prominent pinholes and scoring marks are clearly visible from the recordings. These have been analysed, using geographical information system software by Damien Bove, Researcher for The Gough Map Project and Picture Editor of Imago Mundi: International Journal for the History of Cartography

“The pricking on the Gough Map is key to its creation, marking the location and form of place signs copied through from a precursor map. Where the tool has been pressed through the skin, it has left holes. Most of these can be seen on high resolution photos and on the earlier Lucida scan. Where the tool was pressed with less force, however, it has left only small depressions. The ARCHiOx scan has allowed us to identify and measure these for the first time, giving us a fuller understanding of the earlier map.” Damien Bove, Researcher for The Gough Map Project and Picture Editor of Imago Mundi: International Journal for the History of Cartography.

Visitors examine a three-dimensional facsimile of the Gough Map, made by Factum Arte, following a presentation given by the Bodleian’s Map Curator, Nick Millea.

But the ARCHiOx recording has not only allowed for on-screen analysis. The data has also been used to create a remarkably accurate three-dimensional facsimile of the map. Currently installed in the Bodleian’s Map Room, the facsimile provides an opportunity for close examination, ensuring that the original map need not be as frequently transported or removed from its protective casing.

“Facsimiles allow us to have a more natural connection with valuable cultural objects. Thanks to the possibility of reproducing the surface relief and colour in high resolution, a facsimile can serve a triple function contributing to the preservation, study, and dissemination of the original, for the benefit of both experts and amateurs alike”. Carlos Bayod Lucini, Head of 3D Scanning, Factum Foundation

— An essay by John Barrett, Senior Photographer, Bodleian Libraries, about discoveries from the ARCHiOx imaging project, which has been funded by the generous support of the Helen Hamlyn Trust. See also: ARCHiOx: research and development in imaging – The Conveyor

Download the full essay by John Barrett, Senior Photographer and ARCHiOx Technical Lead (Bodleian Libraries)