Month 17 (November 2012)
This month I have been mostly... Imagining myself elsewhere
We had a creative start to November, with more than 50 children and parents coming to the Old Library for our half-term Imaginary Lands workshops, inspired by Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. Everyone had a chance to see some weird and wonderful maps and illustrations from our special collections, and then the children set about designing their own strange countries, complete with monsters and microclimates. I’d prepared some old-looking paper in advance (thanks to the Library staff for consuming all the tea required to make this possible!) and by the end of each session there were some very convincing historic maps rolled up ready to take home.
Imaginary Lands, in the Rare Books Reading Room
Looking forward to our next event, I’ve spent some time researching and selecting the exhibits for Adventures in Italy, which is taking place on Saturday 12th January. I’ve enjoyed reading more about Butler’s own research into the Sicilian origins of the Odyssey, and looking at the photographs he took while attempting to trace and document the actual settings for the poem. Lots of the photographs from the Butler Collection will be used to illustrate the talks at the event in January – and you can already view more than 100 of them on our Historypin channel, where I’ve recently created a ‘collection’ of images relating to Alps and Sanctuaries, showing some of the places that feature in the book and elsewhere in Butler’s paintings and drawings.
Island of Favignana, August 1893 (Album 3/21/3)
I was thrilled to see the results of the conservation work on Butler’s family photograph album (X/1), which we’d sent for treatment back in July. The conservators removed all the photographs from the acidic, crumbling paper mounts in the original album, and cleaned and remounted them on made-to-measure, archival-friendly boards. They then housed these new boards in Melinex sleeves and sewed them into a brand new binding. This work has enabled us to view some inscriptions on the backs of the photographs for the first time – and has even uncovered a couple of photographs we didn’t know were there because they had slipped behind others in the original mounts. I’ve since re-catalogued the album to include this new information. Unfortunately we haven’t managed to identify the mug shot on the right, so he remains ‘[slightly scary] man with polka-dot tie’ until further evidence comes to light.
Unidentified - suggestions on a postcard please! (X/1/14.2)