Tag: history
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Berger Prize Longlist 2025
This week I was really delighted to learn that Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550 (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) has been longlisted for the Berger Prize. This came in the same week as I learned that it was to be presented to the mayor of Aubigny-sur-Nère at the opening…
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Working With Historic Pigment
‘Paintings were valued because of the materials that they contained. But they were also valued because of the mysterious ways craftsmen could convert raw materials into something with fateful power.’ (Bucklow, 2009). The Pigments Pigments are made from inorganic (metals and some minerals) or organic raw materials (plants & animals) and are transformed into paint…
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Oak Gall Ink
As part of a series of experiential learning projects, I will be preparing and using a variety of historic materials. The objective here is less about perfecting these historic methods (in terms of strict historical accuracy – although accuracy is still important) and more about what we can learn by doing rather than by using…
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Manuscript Encounters V: CCI, Paris!
This is a brief record of a research trip to Paris in December 2024. More detailed work on this will be forthcoming, but for now, this is just a record of those few days as an important research experience (archived from Bluesky). 🧵In 2024 I have had to squeeze in a good number of research…
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Manuscript Encounters IV: James Graye & a Scotichronicon
Repository National Records of Scotland Reference GD45/26/48 Title Manuscript of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon, written by Magnus Makculloch and ‘illuminated’ by James Graye Dates [Late 15th century] This is a brief record of a trip to The National Records of Scotland archives at Thomas Thomson House on Wednesday 2 October. The primary reason for this trip…
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Manuscript Encounters III: British Library & Weston Library
For ‘Scotland on Parchment’ I received generous funding from the Paul Mellon Centre for a series of MS research trips to be undertaken this year. I originally wrote this up as a Twitter thread, but since leaving the site, I thought that I would log it here instead. I hope to include a number of…
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Experiential Learning & Close Looking: Illuminating the Zodiac Man
Experiential learning is a philosophy of learning built around the idea of learning by doing and then reflecting on the experience. This current project aims to do just that. Learning about manuscript illumination as a process by trying to recreate the objects of my studies using (as far a possible) historically appropriate materials, methods and…
Bryony Coombs 