A wonderful afternoon at Whitworth Art Gallery seeing the Turner: In Light and Shade exhibition. I still have a thousand things to learn about prints and engravings for my PhD, but this was a fantastic exploration of print as an art form in dialogue with Turner's paintings
Forgot you can only post 4 pics. Sorry Bluesky, it's been a while. HERE is the Palladian bridge. Worth scrolling down for I think
The Palladian bridge (final pic) was designed by the 'architect earl' who married Mary Fitzwilliam and brought the families together.
PhDing and conferencing in and around Bath this week, starting with a visit to the fab Wilton House.
Richard Fitzwilliam, whose collections are the subject of my PhD, was cousin to the Earls of Pembroke and this was (and still is) their family seat.
Photo of a lovely orange sunset that has cast itself through the clouds. In the window reflection you can see train seats and my laptop on my lap
A lovely sunset from the hottest train in the world while attempting to write an abstract for a conference
In case you missed it, earlier this week Robin Eagles of the Georgian Lords posted on the career of Henry Benedict, Cardinal York, Bonnie Prince Charlie's more diplomatic younger brother...
#HistParl #skystorians
historyofparliament.com/2025/03/06/h...
Image taken from a book on the Revolutions of Portugal of an engraving of the royal family tree. The figure of Emanuel is dressed in royal regalia and laid down with his head coquettishly propped in his hand. The rest of the family tree, drawn as a tree with branches emerges from the middle of his robes in an unsubtle and very phallic way
Goodness Emanuel, what a very large... family tree you have 😳
Photo of a selection of 18th century books on a table with a red cloth. In the top left are some that are unbound and in the original blue paper covers. Most are bound in light brown mottled calfskin.
Front cover of a book with a green cover, a gilt copy of Louis XVIII's coat of arms (3 fleur de lys in the centre, with a crown above), and gilt edges
A close up of marbled paper. The centre of the marbling is beige, with purple, blue and yellow around it
A picture of a small wooden box with fresh bay leaves in, sat on a garden wall and with a sign in saying 'help yourself to bay leaves'
Having a wonderful week properly immersed in the Fitzwilliam Museum collection at the heart of my PhD. And as an [adopted] Manc, the idea that I could pick up free bay leaves from someone's garden wall and they would actually be bay leaves is just lovely.
#18thc
Photo of my laptop on a pub table with a large glass of red wine next to it. The laptop screen shows the time as 17.26, the weather in Cambridge as 13 degrees, and the picture is of some 18th century committee meeting minutes, with 'Adjourned' written in a beautiful hand.
PhD life really does seem to be sitting in a variety of venues with a variety of beverages and a laptop.
(Back in Cambridge, pretty pictures of books coming soon)
We've created a new Starter Pack of #History institutes and research centres in the UK & Ireland bit.ly/3F3Eo2M
Please do share. There will be gaps and recommendations are welcome.
We hope this pack helps you keep in touch with work by and for historians in the UK & Ireland #Skystorians.
Black and white image of my wedding dress, which had a fitted bodice with lace detailing, full tuile sleeves ending in cuffs tied with small white buttons, and a full a-line tuile skirt with a layer of glitter tuile
Quote on black and white background, reading "If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me? Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnets from the Portugese 35"
16.02.25 💚
Photo of my set up in a coffee shop, with a half drunk cup of loose leaf tea, notebooks and pink headphones, and my silver laptop. On the laptop is the website Gallica with the funerary oration for Queen Marie-Joséphine of France
A eulogy with a brew, who could ask for more
Image of a book published in 1800. The page shown is an alphabetical list of coffee houses in London and their location. One line says "Nandoes, fleet-street"
Lovely day of research at @britishlibrary.bsky.social which has turned up the wonderful news that in 1800 Fleet Street had a Nandos
Cropped photo of an 18th century letter in French
Dear hive mind, does anyone know what the word underlined in black might be?
Context of the sentence: follows a request to dedicate work to the King ('Elle' referring to 'sa Majesté'), and is broadly saying I hope he will have the goodness to hear a request from me, a stranger devoted to his cause
Screengrab from my Duolingo 2024 in review. The cartoon green owl has sparkles in its eyes and looks angelic as it leaps from a blue and pastel background. Underneath the text says "Yes! You're a top 3% learner this year. You're safe from Duo. For now. One misstep and you'll be sorry." I'm sorry, what?
I thought threatening women you don't know on the internet was frowned upon
Also trying to work out how on earth I can get to the Musée Carnavalet before February. It closes on my wedding day... pre-mini-moon??! www.carnavalet.paris.fr/expositions/...
Such a bumper crop of ancien régime exhibitions in London in the next year 😍 www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/v...
Photo of two copies of Émile Zola's "La Terre" ("Earth"), one in French, one in English. The books are laid on my pale blue oodie with cartoon penguins on. The French version is older, and the cover has block colour sections of bright yellow, red, orange and green and a black and white image of a historic French village with a Christian cross visible sticking up from the ground, a cart piled with hay, villagers at work and stone houses. The English version is an Oxford World Classics edition, and the cover has a single white colour block 3/4 of the way down with the title details. The main image is detail from 'The Sower' by Van Gogh (1888) showing the sun on the horizon, and a wheat field with wheat growing in the background and in the foreground a man sowing seeds against a field of blues, whites and oranges.
After a week of something that felt a lot like covid, my brain feels capable of getting back into my French reading practice
It will be fascinating to see if anything more can be uncovered about how these got to England. Nothing is known between 1789 and 1844... 'rescued' by an émigré from the Revolution? Sold to a British collector as plenty of Revolutionary loot was?
www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...
Photo of me holding a copy of Mrs Beeton's Houseld Management in a Hay-on-Wye bookshop. In the background are full bookshelves and a terracotta red patterned carpet. The book is leather quarterbound and we're looking at the spine, the width of which is at least the distance between the tip of a thumb and little finger if your palm was fully spread.
Photo of the frontispiece of Mrs Beeton's Household Management. The background is the same. On the left hand page is an illustrated image of 8 dishes from the book on a pale yellow background, none of them looking very appetising. On the right hand page is the frontispiece, advertising among other things that the book has 32 plates in colour and nearly 700 illustrations
Photo of a random double page spread in Mrs Beeton's Household Management. Again the background is the same. The recipes listed are all for different versions of cooking eel, including 'Eels, fried', 'Eels, fried, à la tartare', and 'Eels, stewed'
Some lovely copies of Mrs Beeton floating around Hay. If nothing else it would be a great weight for a workout, that girl is CHUNKY
Oh no no no. That's embarrassing just to think about, I'm sorry you had to experience it!
I don't blame him. Fanny Burney's description of her mastectomy is one of the most vivid and horrifying things I've ever read
Hard yes to this. I used to work on a heritage site when I was maybe 25 and older volunteers would often tell me I looked like I was on work experience. Well I'm duty manager and in charge of the site today so....
View from the top of Hay castle looking out across the town of Hay-on-Wye and green fields beyond. The sky is blue with very few clouds and the sun is shining down on the creamy houses, trees and fields
Oh Hay there!
Birthday book weekend is off to a very sunny start in Hay-On-Wye
Not yet. I imagine very conscious self-fashioning and perhaps a sense of their own importance come into it, but until I've spent more time with Fitz (and Cicero) I shall keep an open mind!
Photo of my notebook with pencil-written notes which were neat several pages earlier but here are a bit more scrawly. The only full sentence visible reads 'Abbé Vinson - RF's BFF - called each other Cicero and Atticus'
Spending some of this evening typing up scattered notes from my first visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum and into the world of the Viscount.
Love this tidbit of the nerdy nicknames Fitzwilliam and Abbé Vinson gave each other. 18th century rich boy [middle-aged man] geekery.
Photo of a 1930s oak cabinet with doors. The doors have glass panes and small gold coloured handles. The back of the cabinet is mirrored. It's looking a little grubby in this picture as we'd just bought it.
The cleaned up cabinet standing on our beige carpeted living room floor and against one of our cream coloured walls. The cabinet now has a selection of science fiction paperbacks and books from the 'Penguin Essentials' series, along with a small purple ceramic sheep on the top shelf and a small globe on the bottom shelf
Yummy little bit of Sunday antiquing to bring home this 1930s cabinet. A perfect house for some* of our overflowing books
*many books remain overflowing
The project is looking at Viscount Fitzwilliam's collecting habits during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic years and his networks with French émigrés and counter-revolutionary circles in London.
The photo is of the gorgeous Founder's Library at the Fitz, aka PhD base-camp.
Photo of the shelves in the Founder's Library at the Fitztwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Wooden shelving runs from floor to ceiling, each shelf filled with books in eighteenth and nineteenth century bindings (often calf-skin) in shades of brown, black, red, green and gold.
Hey Bluesky! I've been dormant on here for a little while so by way of re-introduction...
I'm an 18th-century historian and have just started a part-time AHRC funded PhD working with The Courtauld Institute of Art and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge...
Picture of my University of Sheffield staff card
First week complete as Knowledge Exchange Manager at Sheffield Uni. I can tell you, giving this little nerd responsibility for the History, English and Music departments is the route to an unreasonable level of enthusiasm on my part.
Sheffield-folk, come chat!