BRITISH PRINTED IMAGES TO 1700
Victoria & Albert Museum
Fri 12 – Sat 13 September 2008

Printed images were widely circulated in early modern Britain and they
provide vivid and revealing evidence about many aspects of the culture
of the period. Yet only recently have historians begun to give them
proper attention, and this conference will be one of the first to draw
out their significance. Themes will include the importance of
printed images for the history of the Reformation and post-Civil War
politics, the emergence of new genres like topographical engraving and
mezzotint, and the place of prints in the developing consumer market.

Ancillary events include a session for ‘new researchers’ and a display
of material from the National Art Library, and there will also be a
presentation about the database of British Printed Images to 1700 which
is currently being constructed with funding from the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC)*. The database will make available in fully
searchable form a comprehensive corpus of printed images from early
modern Britain, mostly from the British Museum but including selected
material from the V&A and other collections.

In association with Birkbeck College, University of London
Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Programme

Friday 12 September
British Printed Images to 1700
International Conference
Auditorium, Sackler Centre

10.30–18.15

10.00 Registration

10.30 Antony Griffiths British Museum
The Print in Stuart Britain after Ten Years

10.50 Margaret Aston
Symbols of Conversion: Proprieties of the Page in Reformation England

11.30 John King Ohio State
Word and Image in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs

12.10 Special display of books from the National Art Library in the
Print Room Education Study Room

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Gill Saunders V&A
‘Paper Tapistry’ and ‘Wooden Pictures’: Printed Decoration in the
Domestic Interior before 1700

14.40 Ben Thomas Kent
Noble or Commercial? The Early History of Mezzotint in Britain

15.20 Tea

16.00 Angela McShane V&A and Clare Backhouse Courtauld,
Top Knots and Lower Sorts: Print and Promiscuous Consumption in the
1690s

17.00 New Researchers’ Session
David Davis Exeter
Divine Visions or Idolatrous Sights? Images of God in Protestant prints
1558–1603

Adam Morton York
Living the Life of Antichrist: Representing the Invisible Nemesis in
Early Modern England

Rhian Wyn-Williams Liverpool
The Visual Language of Kingship, 1640–53

Stephen Brogan Birkbeck
The Sovereign Remedy: Images of the Royal Touch in Restoration England

Rosemary Dixon Queen Mary
Portrait Engravings and the Material Book: Representing Archbishop
Tillotson in Text and Image

Programme

Saturday 13 September
British Printed Images to 1700
International Conference
Auditorium, Sackler Centre

10.30–17.00

10.00 Registration

10.30 Lori Anne Ferrell Claremont, Ca.
The Art in Techne: Diagrammatic Illustrations in Early Modern ‘How-to’
Books

11.10 Alex Walsham Exeter
“Like Fragments of a Shipwreck”: Printed Images and Religious
Antiquarianism in Early Modern England

11.50 Michael Hunter, Katherine Hunt, John Bradley
and Paul Vetch Birkbeck, CCH, and bpi 1700
Demonstration of database for the British Printed Images to 1700 website

12.30 Lunch

13.30 Malcolm Jones Sheffield
The Common Weales Canker Wormes

14.10 Kevin Sharpe Queen Mary
Images of Oliver Cromwell

14.50 Tea

15.20 Justin Champion Royal Holloway
Decoding the Leviathan: Doing the History of Ideas Through Images
1651–1700

15.50 Round table discussion led by
Mark Knights Warwick, and others

Costs
£110 for 2 days, £55 for 1 day, concessions available

Booking
Booking available online at www.vam.ac.uk/tickets or call 020 7942 2211

* The partners are Birkbeck (University of London), the Centre for
Computing in the Humanities (King’s College London), the British Museum
and the Victoria and Albert Museum.