The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

Conservation Scientist Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli looks at lacquered bookbindings made by Persian artisans in the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian artisans are known for their contributions to the field of bookbinding, with the lacquered bookbinding technique being one of their notable breakthroughs. This intricate technique involves multiple layers, each with their own materials, methods, and motifs that have been used from the Safavid to Qajar periods.

Professor Barkeshli delves into the details of each layer and explores the various treatments used during manufacture, as well as providing insight into the environmental enemies of the lacquered bookbinding.

Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli is Head of Research and Post Graduate Studies of De’ Institute of Creative Arts and Design UCSI University in Malaysia and Principle Fellow at University of Melbourne. Her current research project is titled, 'Paper Dyes Used in Persian Medieval Manuscripts: Creating a Materials Construction Digital Database'.

An introduction to the analysis of painted Byzantine and Japanese manuscripts by the Bodleian Libraries' new Heritage Scientist. The post of Heritage Scientist at the Bodleian Libraries was re-instated at the beginning of 2023, enabling the analysis of manuscripts in the library’s collection. The focus so far has been on Byzantine manuscripts from the 10th to 13th centuries, and Japanese scrolls from the 17th century which contain painted pictures.

Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. A photographer, documentarian and digital storyteller. He returns to the Bodleian library to muse on his life and archive and the power of photography. Photographer Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. A photographer, documentarian and digital storyteller, he has spent his life recording British society, challenging the status quo by working in a collaborative way to capture extraordinary aspects of ordinary life through pictures, audio recordings and short movies.

 

Fifty years ago, photographer Daniel Meadows set out in The Free Photographic Omnibus, a Leyland Titan double-decker remodelled as his mobile home, darkroom and gallery. He drove it around towns and villages and offered free portraits to the people he met on his travels. The photographs became a vast and beautiful archive, now safely deposited in the Bodleian Library.

In this talk, Daniel Meadows triumphantly returns to muse on his life and work and the power of photography. He shows examples of his archive and reflects on a lifetime of creative work.

 

The Bodleian Library acquired the full Daniel Meadows Archive in 2018.

What is queer bibliography? How does it intersect with other critical bibliographies, (feminist, Black and liberation bibliography)? How does it relate to traditional bibliographic practice? What opportunities might queer methods and approaches provide? Following the inaugural symposium Queer Bibliography: Tools, Methods, Practices and Approaches in early February 2023 at the Institute of English Studies, hear Sarah Pyke and JD Sargan discuss this emerging subfield with Adam Smyth.

Organised by Oxford Bibliographical Society. Speakers, Sarah Pyke (Institute of English Studies, London), and JD Sargan (University of Limerick). Chaired by Adam Smyth (Oxford University).

In this lecture, Matthew Kirschenbaum considers textual stability, a concern of publishers and readers since before the advent of printing, in the post-digital era. Books are not dead as was once feared. But they are not the same either. With digital processes and workflows now thoroughly integrated into the art and industry of publishing and printing them, books are altered by the post-digital moment in which we have arrived. Matthew Kirschenbaum’s lecture will pay particular attention to questions of textual stability, a concern of publishers and readers since before the advent of printing. How stable are texts when the book is now manifest as a collection of digital assets, a network which only might, at times, assume the physical and tangible form of the familiar codex?

Social documentary photographer Jim Mortram and photographer and publisher Craig Atkinson ponder why should we care about photography? Why take photographs? Why preserve them. Why should we care about photography? Why take photographs? Why preserve them?

Social documentary photographer Jim Mortram and photographer and publisher Craig Atkinson ponder these questions and more, using their own work as guides towards a photography that is humane and politically-engaged.

Jim Mortram is an award-winning social documentary photographer and the creator of Small Town Inertia.

Craig Atkinson is an award-winning publisher, artist and lecturer. He runs Café Royal Books, an independent publisher of photography photobooks or zines based in Southport, England.

Thomas Gravemaker explores the history of wood type printing as well as his own recent manufacture using digital design and a CNC router. Wood type has a history as long as printing itself. Thomas Gravemaker, Printer in Residence at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press during March 2023, tells the story of the materials, manufacture and use of wood type since the nineteenth century and brings this up to date with an account of his own recent manufacture using digital design and a CNC router.

Geoffrey Batchen explores the first fifty years of photography in Britain. The announcement of photography’s invention in January 1839, first in Paris and then in London, introduced a new power into British life. This new power—derived from photography’s capacity to automatically capture the images created in a camera—was soon being used for every conceivable purpose. The two exhibitions curated by Geoffrey Batchen for the Bodleian Libraries focus on those uses by tracing the development and dissemination of photographic images within Britain during the medium’s first fifty years. By identifying the key themes addressed in the exhibitions, Batchen shows how photography intersected with all aspects of a nascent modernity, helping to make Britain the society it is today.

A research collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries and the Factum Foundation The Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation is a not-for-profit organisation, founded by Adam Lowe in 2009 in Madrid. The Foundation was established to demonstrate the importance of documenting, monitoring, studying, recreating and disseminating the world’s cultural heritage through the rigorous development of high-resolution recording and re-materialisation techniques.

Using technology conceived and developed at Factum Arte, the ARCHiOx Project will use both a prototype photographic system (Selene Stereo Photometric Scanner, developed by Jorge Cano) and 3D scanning (Lucida 3D Scanner, developed by artist-engineer Manuel Franquelo and the team at Factum) to bring to life relief surfaces of some of the Bodleian’s most celebrated artefacts. This relatively unexplored path to mapping and digitisation should in turn present fascinating new avenues of exploration and research, as it reveals aspects of the item hitherto unrealised or recorded.

ARCHiOx will provide a free exchange of knowledge and approaches between the academic and technical team at the Bodleian and Factum Foundation’s experts, as we explore and demonstrate the potential of applying non-contact digital technologies to the study of materials held by the Bodleian Libraries.

This session demonstrates how the technology is used and the benefits it brings to researchers of manuscripts

Drawing on a detailed survey of shareholders of the Marconi in 1897 and 1900, this lecture will trace an overall profile of the diverse categories of investors who dared to back this venture through it's experimental phase to becoming commercially viable. What were the economics of radio’s invention? How did wireless communication manage to get through the costly experimental phase and develop into a commercially viable technology? How did the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company not only survive, but also raise the stakes by attempting to establish a transatlantic connection?

Drawing on a detailed survey of the shareholders of the company in 1897 and 1900, Dr Anna Guagnini will trace an overall profile of the diverse categories of investors who dared to partake in this adventure. This lecture will throw new light on how financial backing was obtained in the face new challenges and divergent perspectives and expectations about the commercial future of the company.

Dr. Anna Guagnini is a Byrne Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, and a former Research Fellow at Linacre College and at the University of Bologna.

The lecture is organised jointly by the Centre for the Study of the Book and the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.