Displays of friendship

Recent viewing of early German prints in the Prints and Drawings Department of the British Museum has enabled the identification of a print in the Marion and David Adams Collection which was gifted to the Library in 2011. The artist who can now be identified as Nuremberg designer Erhard Schön (1491 c. – 1542) is well-known for his satirical anticlerical allegories used by the Protestant reformers, and these were so controversial, that they were left unsigned.[1]

 

Erhard Schön, The Lament of True Friendship, (1530-35), woodcut, Gift of Marion and David Adams, 2011, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.
Erhard Schön, The Lament of True Friendship, (1530-35), woodcut, Gift of Marion and David Adams, 2011, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

The Lament of True Friendship in the Baillieu Library Print Collection is an image from a Protestant Reformation poster allegorising the animosity between Catholics and Protestants. The interpretation of the unusual imagery of a woman speeding away in a boat drawn by chained swans while a hunter – with an imposingly large gun – looks on, had previously left everyone guessing. The woman in the boat is actually a personification of Friendship, exiting a setting where once Christians had been harmonious. The broadside is missing the poem beneath the image by the prolific writer Hans Sachs (1494 – 1576) who became an adherent to the teachings of Martin Luther.

Utagawa Kunisada I, Right panel from triptych "The second month," (1829-42), colour woodblock, Gift of Marion and David Adams, 2015, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne
Utagawa Kunisada I, Right panel from triptych “The second month,” (1829-42), colour woodblock, Gift of Marion and David Adams, 2015, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

In 2015 further works were generously donated to the Marion and David Adams Collection. The couple were both great friends to the University. The late Professor Marion Adams, a specialist in the field of German literature, was dean of arts from 1988 to 1993. Her husband, David Adams, graduated from the university as an engineer and later pursued his interest in ancient civilisations through an arts degree.

 

This recent donation includes several Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, such as a section from the triptych, Events through the Year of Young Murasaki, a story from the famous The Tale of Genji. The artist, Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1864), published 76 bound booklets of his own reinvention of the 11th century tale which he titled A Rustic Genji (1829-42) which repopularised the story for an 18th century audience.

David Adams also assisted the Library to purchase a landscape drawing by the French artist Ignace Duvivier (1758-1832). The Marion and David Adams Collection offers many rich views into relationships across time and the globe, and presents further opportunities for research.

Ignace Duvivier, Castel Nuovo, pencil, watercolour, Purchased with the assistance of David Adams, 2015, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.
Ignace Duvivier, Castel Nuovo, pencil, watercolour, Purchased with the assistance of David Adams, 2015, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

 

Kerrianne Stone (Curator, Prints)

 

[1] See the poster in the British Museum, Erhard Schön, Clagred der waren Freundschafft, woodcut, letterpress, hand coloured, 1530-1535, Bequeathed by Campbell Dodgson, 1949, reg. no. 1949,0411.4061, the British Museum.

[2] See Genji’s world in Japanese woodblock prints by Andreas Marks with contributions by Bruce A. Coats … [et al.]., Leiden, 2012.

Australian Flora – Eucalypts in focus

On the 26th of January each year, new Australian citizens are given native saplings during Citizenship ceremonies around the country. Many of these saplings will be from the Eucalyptus genus.

With over 700 species mostly native to Australia, Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. ‘Eucalyptus’ is a combination of Greek words meaning ‘well covered’, in reference to the cap which initially covers the flower. The name was first published in 1788, the year of English colonisation, although eucalypts had been used for centuries by Indigenous Australians in the making of tools, weapons, musical instruments, canoes, and for medicinal purposes.

In 2009 UMA received a donation of 138 glass plate negatives of eucalyptus specimens which were used, in colourised form, in Wilfrid Grimwade’s 1920 publication An Anthography of the Eucalypts.

Eucalyptus Dives, 1919, University of Melbourne Archives, Sir Wilfrid Russell Grimwade Collection, 2009.0030, GPNC216
Eucalyptus Dives, 1919, University of Melbourne Archives, Sir Wilfrid Russell Grimwade Collection, 2009.0030, GPNC216

Graduating in Science from the University of Melbourne in 1901, Wilfrid Russell Grimwade entered the family chemical firm Felton Grimwade & Co. as director of the new research laboratory.  An innovator, he pioneered large scale oxygen production in Australia and experimented with the extraction of oils and compounds from indigenous plants.

Working in a range of business ventures Grimwade also travelled the country extensively, also working on the development of a significant garden at his property ‘Miegunyah’. Publishing An Anthography of the Eucalypts, a survey illustrated with his own photographs, was the continuance of a life-long passion for plants, and signalled his commitment to the conservation of forests in Australia.  Roles as office-bearer of the Australian Forest League and contributor to its journal Gum Nut, as well as support of the Australian Forestry School and the forest products division of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, cemented Grimwade as a key figure in the conservation movement in Australia.

To celebrate the landscape this Australia Day, UMA spotlights a sample of Grimwade’s glass plate negatives. A larger selection of the colour tinted images used in  An Anthography of the Eucalypts can be viewed via the Digitised Items Catalogue (http://gallery.its.unimelb.edu.au/umblumaic/imu.php?request=search) using the search term “euc”.

Two of the colour tinted images from this collection are featured in the recently published book Miegunyah, the Bequests of Russell and Mab Grimwade by John Poynter and Benjamin Thomas, Miegunyah Press, 2015.  The publication encompasses numerous images and sources from the Sir Wilfred Russell Grimwade Collection at UMA along with many more of the University’s Cultural Collections bequeathed by the Grimwades’.

 

Mrs Pankhurst, her daughter and the Prime Minister: the suffragettes and the Great War

The recently released movie Suffragette has introduced a new audience to the extraordinary history of the movement for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular its militant wing represented by Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The movie ends before the declaration of the First World War, but the war was to split the movement and its famous protagonists, in particular the Pankhurst family.

The depth of this rift is revealed in a recently discovered telegram from Emmeline Pankhurst to Australia’s Prime Minister Billy Hughes, dated 8 March 1917. In this telegram, Emmeline Pankhurst denounces her famous daughter Adela for her opposition to the war and her activities in the anti-conscription campaigns in Australia. 

Emmeline Pankhurst to Billy Hughes
Telegram from Emmeline Pankhurst to Billy Hughes, 8 March 1917. Percival Deane collection 1976.0074 file 1/4/6, University of Melbourne Archives

Continue reading “Mrs Pankhurst, her daughter and the Prime Minister: the suffragettes and the Great War” →

Audiovisual collections at University of Melbourne Archives

Emma Hyde

Steenbeck
16mm Steenbeck Machine (ST1901).

Emma Hyde began working at the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) in 2012 as the Audiovisual Archivist in a project supported by the Miegunyah Fund to appraise UMA’s vast and uncatalogued audiovisual material. As the project is nearing completion, Emma is also heading off on maternity leave and we want to take the opportunity to wish her the best of luck and thank her for her work. Her knowledge of audiovisual archiving, her enthusiasm for the collection and fortitude in the face of a seemingly ever-expanding project scope has been of enormous benefit to UMA and her colleagues.

 

 

University of Melbourne Archives audiovisual collection is a rich resource spanning over 50 years of collecting and represents many of UMA’s core collecting strengths. The collection, amounting to over 11,000 physical items, contains both professional and amateur content, produced on over 30 AV formats (film, magnetic, acoustic and optical media). UMA’s holdings are testament to rapidly changing audiovisual technologies across the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Highlights of the collection include the 35mm film fragments ‘Horseshoeing’ (1893) & ‘Eugen Sandow’ (1894) belonging to Thomas Edison’s assistant, W. K. Laurie Dickson, which is almost certainly the earliest examples of moving image technology known to exist in Australia. Other treasures are an early zinc-coated ‘Echo Disc’ voice recording of Alfred P. Derham (c.1916), home movie footage from Jimmy Watson and Sir Laurence Hartnett (1920s–40s); 16mm release prints and outtakes from the Repco Ltd & CRA Ltd (Rio Tinto) collections (1950s–80s); and U-matic video recordings of staff training from Fletcher Jones & Staff Pty Ltd. (1970–80s). UMA also holds many items from the University’s own film & video production unit, first known as the Audiovisual Aids Department in the late 1940s to its current incarnation as the Video & Media Production Unit with Learning Environments.

 

A major strength of UMA’s audiovisual collection is audio material, with close to 7,000 items produced on cassette tape, 1/4” Reel to Reel and a smaller number of acoustic disc recordings. Many of these items are unique and represent university life and activities, such as a series of interviews with prominent university staff from the History of the University Unit and the University Assembly recordings of elected staff and students at meetings and workshops spanning 15 years of campus life. Other notable areas of the collection represent feminist and peace movement activities (Alma Morton, Sam Goldbloom and Peace Movement Workshop collections) and many oral history collections which record the experiences of individuals, their social and working lives (Papua New Guinea Patrol Officers interviews, Thirty Seven Women oral history project; and employees of the Shell Company of Australia, Repco LTD and Rio Tinto subsidiaries). The collection continues to grow, with recent acquisitions in the Germaine Greer collection (which includes audiovisual material: audio travel diaries and home movie footage produced by Greer; and recordings of Greer’s TV & radio appearances) and a set of audio tapes produced by journalist Paul Ormonde for his research into the life of Labor politician Jim Cairns.

 

Recording

Zinc ‘Echo Disc’ Voice Recording, showing evidence of zinc corrosion, probably early 1920s
Alfred Plumley Derham collection, 1963.0024

Project work on the audiovisual collections- from auditing to digital access

The above findings were aided with the generous support of the Miegunyah Fund to assist with a long overdue assessment and appraisal of UMA’s audiovisual collection by an Audiovisual Archivist. Project work on the audiovisual material began in 2012 with an audit to assess the size, condition and research significance of the collection. The major objectives of the project were identified as: determining audiovisual materials most at risk, either from fragility or the risk of obsolescence from playback equipment; and conducting preservation work on items or improving storage. During the early stages of the audit it became evident the size and scale of collection and the range of formats held at UMA was greater than first thought. Lack of documentation for AV items and the limited availability of serviced in-house playback equipment to evaluate significance of items made assessments in many cases inconclusive, with further research needed. Initial estimates of between 1500 to 6000 AV items quickly rose to over 11,000, as AV items were discovered in the repository, along with the acquisition of more AV collections during the audit.

 

An extensive AV database was developed to capture metadata documenting location, provenance, titles/descriptions, technical details and condition reporting of AV at item level. A standard terminology (based on National Film & Sound Archive and National Archives of Australia descriptions) was developed for the identification and technical descriptions of the material. The AV database expanded to become an essential tool for scoping a preservation and digitisation schedule for the collection.

 

UMA’s audit revealed a comprehensive picture of its audiovisual collection and findings identified where high priority AV collections exist in terms of research value, uniqueness and fragility/obsolescence. On a broader level this project work highlighted the immediate need to secure appropriate environmental controls to ensure the long term preservation of physical AV material. Running in tandem with analogue preservation is UMA’s development of digitisation projects to salvage valuable content from formats at risk of obsolescence and through digital preservation provide access to researchers in the future. The information collected during the AV audit has given UMA a good working foundation to build digital preservation strategies for its AV collection and taking small, if not significant steps, to ensure future access to unique material. The current focus of the project has now shifted from auditing the collection to writing guidelines and processes for AV appraisal, handling, long term preservation requirements and digital preservation workflows. Over the past year project work has involved working with external vendors on a series of small pilot projects to digitise AV collections and help promote interest in UMA’s AV collection. UMA’s small collection of 9.5mm films of Jimmy Watson’s home movies were digitised by Deluxe Film labs in South Melbourne and a larger project to digitise over 70 U-matic video tape recordings from the Fletcher Jones collection was carried out by DAMSmart in Canberra using their SAMMA Solo video migration system. The AV project is a timely response to the many challenges facing the future of audiovisual preservation and access in the digital age.

 

Fllm
‘Burton Holmes Snap Shots of Travel: The Grand Canyon of Arizona No.10’- A Burton Holmes Travel Picture (16mm Print, Tinted, Silent, c.1927)
William Glanville Lau Cook collection, 1984.0077

Over the last number of years it has become increasingly apparent that audiovisual material is as equally significant, complementary and integral to UMA as its wider paper collections. UMA is in the process of cementing audiovisual archiving principles and terminology into the everyday work of the archive, by integrating metadata in UMA’s collection management system and incorporating AV digitisation workflows within the university’s wider Digital Preservation Strategy.  With continued work on the AV project UMA is securing the long term preservation of its physical AV collection and conducting essential digital preservation work, ensuring these fascinating audiovisual recordings are made accessible to researchers in the years ahead.

“Sugar and spice and all things nice…”

Dr Sebastian Gurciullo, Assistant Archivist

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails
And puppy-dogs’ tails
That’s what little boys are made of

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And all things nice
That’s what little girls are made of

So goes one variant of the popular nursery rhyme, dating back to the nineteenth century. The rhyme succinctly expresses a view about essential gender differences. There continues to be scientific and scholarly debate about the evidence for such essential differences and whether they can be traced back to specific biological or genetic determinants. Alongside that debate are another set of social and political questions about whether such differences could or should be used as a basis for determining choices about everything from the selection of a child’s toys to shaping their expectations for undertaking particular social roles in their adult lives.

Poster of two children, a boy knitting and a girl playing with a truck, with the caption "boys or girls, what does it matter all children should have the chance to find out what really interests them and what they really enjoy doing"
Sugar and Snails Press poster, 1974, University of Melbourne Archives, Women’s Movement Children’s Literature Co-operative Ltd 2015.0072

These concerns informed the work of the Women’s Movement Children’s Literature Co-operative Ltd, which consisted mainly of mothers who wanted to provide their children with non-sexist literature that did not reinforce gender stereotypes about girls and boys. They began publishing their own books for primary school age children and obtained funding support from the School’s Commission. Better known as Sugar and Snails Press (1974-1991), the group successfully produced, published and distributed more than fifty titles of non-sexist children’s books and posters. The poster above, taken from a page of their first publication under their own imprint in 1974 The witch of Grange Grove (story by Judy Bathie, illustrated by Isabel Wicca), captures the spirit of their undertaking.

This poster has recently been accessioned into the University of Melbourne Archives collection (2015.0072 Posters) and joins a sizeable collection of records associated with the activities of the Sugar and Snails Press.

 

Sources:

Chapter 4 ‘Women’s Liberation Groups. She Concert’, in Zelda D’Aprano, Zelda, Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, 1995.

Lyn Yates, ‘Counter-sexist strategies in Australian schools’, in Sandra Acker et. al. (eds) World Yearbook of Education 1984: Women and Education, Routledge, 2013

Small Press Publishing in Australia: The Late 1970s to the Mid to Late 1980s, p. 95, quoted in AustLitWomen’s Movement Children’s Literature Cooperative, available at http://www.austlit.edu.au.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/austlit/page/A104914, accessed 9 September 2015.

Sugar and Snails Press, entry on AustLit, available at http://www.austlit.edu.au.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/austlit/page/A87940, accessed 9 September 2015.

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