British printed images to 1700
Project leader: Sheila
O’Connell
Department: Prints and
Drawings
Project start: April
2006
End date: July
2009
Other British Museum
staff: Antony Griffiths, Peter Main, Deborah
Tydings
Other departments:
Information Systems
External partners:
Professor Michael Hunter, Birkbeck, University
of London
Dr Stephen Pigney, Birkbeck, University of London
Dr John Bradley, King’s College, London
Project funded by: Arts and
Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Description:
The project - organised jointly by the British
Museum, Birkbeck, University of London and King’s College, London -
will create an online library of over 10,000 printed images from
early modern Britain. Most of the images will come from the
Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, but images
from the Victoria and Albert Museum and other collections will also
be included.
Online cataloguing and digitising of images
for the project began in May 2006 at the British Museum. At the
same time work on the website and indexes was initiated at Birkbeck
and King’s College. A first group of about 1400 records from the
British Museum’s Merlin database was transferred to the project
immediately, and by the beginning of 2007 nearly 3,000 further
prints were catalogued and digitised.
The website was launched in August 2006 with
information about the project, a “print of the month” with
extensive catalogue information, contact details, information about
forthcoming events, and a list of links to major collections of
British printed images of the period.
Objectives:
The website will provide a resource for a wide
range of users from historians of every sort, to genealogists,
teachers and school-children researching subjects from the Spanish
Armada to the Gunpowder Plot, the English Civil War and the
Glorious Revolution.
Contemporary images, fully catalogued, will be
available free of charge. They will be searchable by the names of
the subjects depicted, the names of those involved in the
production of the images - engravers, designers, publishers, print
dealers - and by event, theme and date. There will be a glossary of
terms and a directory of those involved in the print trade.
More information:
www.bpi1700.org.uk/
News:
A small display of 16th- and 17th-century prints celebrating the
forthcoming completion of the project is on show in Room 90 at
the British Museum.
Images (from top):
- William Faithorne after a drawing by Francis Barlow, The
Embleme of Englands distractions, engraving, 562 x 462 mm,
1658 (PD 1848,0911.242). Oliver Cromwell is shown at the height of
his powers having successfully piloted the ship of states through
difficulties to achieve peace and prosperity for the nation. The
copperplate was reprinted in 1690 with Cromwell’s head replaced by
that of William III.
- Thomas Cecil, A New Year’s Gift for Shrews, engraving,
189 x 206 mm., about 1625 (PD 1850,1109.10) A typically
misogynist image of early modern Britain showing a man beating his
wife and sending her to the devil so that he can “eat his meat in
peace on the Sunday”.
Supported by
