Archives Hub feature for August 2016

Browse collections on the Archives Hub relating to Tibet.

In December 1811, Thomas Manning entered Lhasa, Tibet, with his Chinese servant.  On the 17^th, December, Manning was allowed into the presence of the 9^th Dalai Lama – the six-year-old Lungtok Gyatso. Manning drew sketches of the child and wrote:

“[He] had the simple and unaffected manners of a well-educated princely child. His face was, I thought, poetically affecting and beautiful. He was of a gay and cheerful disposition… I was extremely affected… I could have wept with the strangeness of sensation.”

No other Englishman would enter Lhasa until the Younghusband expedition to Tibet at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many might think that Manning’s visit would mark a pinnacle in his career, but for Thomas Manning reaching Lhasa, and not being able to proceed further, was a source of great disappointment. Manning’s passion was China and the sole reason he travelled to Lhasa was in an attempt to reach Peking and other parts of inland China.

When Manning first became interested in China is uncertain. Indeed much about Manning, until this point, has been little known. His trip to Lhasa was published posthumously in 1876 in Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa, edited by Clements R. Markham. It was also known that Manning was an influential friend of the essayist, Charles Lamb. Their letters are in the public domain, held in archives in the USA.

In 2014, a cache of Manning’s papers were discovered which were acquired, in 2015, by the Royal Asiatic Society with funding from The National Heritage Memorial Fund, Arts Council England / Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, Friends of National Libraries, and private donations. The Thomas Manning Papers, which include correspondence with his family and friends, notebooks, an early manuscript account of the journey to Lhasa, and official passports and documents, are now catalogued on the Archives Hub.

Thomas Manning was born in 1772, the second son of William Manning, rector of Diss. He was educated locally in Norfolk and went to Cambridge in 1790 to study mathematics at Gonville and Caius College. He was an astute mathematician but did not graduate because he wouldn’t subscribe to Church of England doctrines, necessary for matriculation at that time. However, he stayed on in Cambridge preparing students for mathematical examinations and writing textbooks. For Manning mathematics was a lifelong passion: some of the workings within the mathematical archives date from the years shortly before he died.

Cambridge life also encouraged another passion – writing poetry and riddles. Amongst the many drafts of poems and  riddles contained in the archives are a series of epigrams about the state of the toilets at Caius College– as you might guess, they are not complimentary!

At Cambridge, Manning also developed his obsession to learn about China and the Chinese. Manning hoped to discover: “a moral view of China; its manners; the actual degree of happiness the people enjoy; their sentiments and opinions, so far as they influence life; their literature; their history…”

At this time, in England, interest in China was negligible. He therefore travelled to France to learn more, departing from Dover in January 1802. The archive contains the George III passport for his passage. Manning’s correspondence includes details of meeting Thomas Paine and Maria Cosway; of being inspired by Napoleon; of a hushed-up assassination attempt; and of learning from Joseph Hagar, “the Conservator of the Oriental manuscripts…The Dr and I shall probably become intimate, as I am learning the Chinese tongue, & so curious a language is a greater bond of union among men than even Free-masonry”.

Manning’s stay became extended by the outbreak of conflict between England and France. However Manning was well treated, being able to continue his studies in Paris or reside with the de Serrant family at their chateau in the Loire.

After consistent appeals to Napoleon, explaining his desire to travel to China, Manning was allowed to return to England. He then studied for 6 months at Westminster Hospital, gaining medical knowledge he hoped to be of benefit during his travels. He considered journeying overland to China via Russia but decided instead to apply, via Sir Joseph Banks, to the East India Company to sail on one of their vessels to Canton.

The Company agreed. Manning sailed from Portsmouth, aboard the Thames, in May 1806, reaching Canton in January 1807. Here he lived in the Company factory, set about learning the Chinese language, and undertook medical and translation work.

Manning’s letters have details of life in Canton including a riot that led to the death of a Chinese man and precipitated the diplomatic incident over the crew of the Neptune. Manning appears to have observed the events first-hand. He wrote an eyewitness account, as well as comments on the ensuing trial: “…The court is opened in a very striking manner – 1^st Solemn & lofty words by a herald – then a lengthened resounding cry of hou… then a sonorous & aweful clangor of Gongs … Each man asked to say that he is guilty… Each man refuses… To hear those ragamuffins speak they were all as gentle as Lambs that day…”

He desperately wanted to get beyond Canton. In late 1807 Manning offered his services as a physician and astronomer to the Emperor, but wasn’t accepted .Then in early 1808 Manning tried to enter China through Vietnam. This project failed also.  Despite these frustrations he continued to make progress with Chinese: “I have discovered the nature of the tones. I can speak. I can read. I am sure of being able to pursue the study of Chinese books in Europe.”

In 1810 Manning decided on a new plan – to attempt to enter China via Tibet. He travelled to Bengal and arrived in Calcutta in early 1810. He wrote to his father of dealings with European “missionaries in Calcutta who claim to know something of the Chinese language but they have it wrong… their translations of Confucius are a map of mistakes”. There are eight letters from Joshua Marshman, Serampore missionary, in the archive thanking Manning for his help with Chinese translation. In Bengal Manning waited for permission to travel to China via Bhutan and Tibet. Permission came for the first stage of the journey, and Manning kept going until he reached Lhasa.

But that was the end of his trip. From Lhasa he was sent back, unsuccessful in his bid to discover more about inland China. He returned to Canton to continue studying until another opportunity arose to see more of China with the mission of the Amherst Embassy, which departed for Peking in 1816.

Manning was enrolled with the Embassy as an interpreter. Amherst objected to Manning’s beard and Chinese dress but George Staunton intervened to secure him a place. The presence of Manning, Staunton and Robert Morrison as the interpreters gives us a cameo of those interested in Chinese at that time – Staunton the East India man/diplomat, Morrison the missionary and Manning the independent scholar.

The Embassy ended in failure due to perceived slights to the Emperor by Amherst. The Embassy remained in Peking for just a few hours.  Possibly this was the final straw for Manning – he chose to return to England with the Embassy – a passage that involved shipwreck, and a stopover at St Helena to speak with the exiled Napoleon. The archive contains notes from Manning’s conversations with Napoleon and Hudson Lowe, Governor of St. Helena.

Back in England, Manning was still interested in China and Chinese. He had brought with him two Chinese men which he hoped the East India Company would employ to help prepare Company men for service in China. But Manning found they were not interested in employing or in helping defray the costs of bringing the men to England.

Manning continued his Chinese studies and revived old friendships with the likes of Lamb and George Leman Tuthill, an eminent physician. He became honorary Chinese librarian to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1824, and was active in helping Stanislas Julien, the French sinologist, find Chinese material. He was still keen to learn new things and lived in Italy between 1827 and 1829 to improve his spoken Italian. He settled near Dartford, Kent, where he had the finest Chinese library in Europe. This library was bequeathed to the Royal Asiatic Society and is now part of the Brotherton Library’s Chinese Collection (Leeds University), having been donated by the Society in 1963.

Manning did not publish his Chinese discoveries and therefore has often been overlooked amongst those studying early Sinology and Orientalism. The Royal Asiatic Society hope that the acquisition and cataloguing of this archive, might aid towards a greater understanding of these topics, and of the life of Thomas Manning: not only the first Englishman to reach Lhasa, but also, possibly, the first independent English scholar of China and the Chinese, a gifted mathematician, a lover of riddles and a loyal friend.

Nancy Charley
Archivist
Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland

Related:

Papers of Thomas Manning, Chinese Scholar, First English visitor to Lhasa, Tibet on the Archives Hub: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb891-tm

Browse the Royal Asiatic Society’s Collections on the Archives Hub.

All images copyright the Royal Asiatic Society and reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder.

 

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Archives Hub feature for June 2016

29^th June 2016 sees the 50^th anniversary of the official launch of Barclaycard, the first all-purpose credit card in Europe.

Origins and Idea

The idea of Barclaycard is credited to general manager Derek Wilde, later a vice-chairman of Barclays, and James Dale, who became Barclaycard’s first departmental manager. Their idea was backed by Barclays’ chairman John Thomson, who recognised the need to ‘beat the others to it’. The immediate inspiration came from a visit to the United States in 1965 by Wilde, Dale and computer expert Alan Duncan, specifically to look at Bank of America’s BankAmericard.

Barclays had, since the mid-1950s, begun to innovate and modernise in areas such as technology and advertising, for example ordering the first computer for branch accounting in 1959, and experimenting with cinema advertising. In 1967 Barclays would pioneer the world’s first external wall-mounted cash machines.

The card scheme was approved by the board without any market research or pilot, or adequate in-house computer system, and in the face of not inconsiderable internal and external suspicion, even hostility. It was recognised that profitability would be long-term, since the set-up costs were so high and credit controls strict.

Although the idea of a plastic card for making general purchases was novel in Britain, consumer credit had already secured a place in people’s lives. Working people had long bought essentials ‘on tick’ from their corner shop, and after World War Two the idea of hire purchase was developed into big business, becoming an integral part of the ‘affluent society’.

The most successful outlets in the early period, despite a very low profit margin, were petrol stations, whose proprietors envisaged improved security in reducing the use of cash, while Barclays saw advantage in roadside advertising.

Launch

‘The Barclaycard is the largest operation the Bank has ever mounted’, declared Barclays’ staff magazine.

On 10^th January 1966 the scheme was announced to the public. The press release shows that Barclays carefully eschewed advertising it as a source of unsecured borrowing. Instead, Barclaycard was described as,

‘a logical extension of the existing commercial bank facilities provided by the Barclays Group. Its purpose is to reduce the use of cash in shopping and other transactions and the scheme is designed to appeal not only to those who must travel and spend a good deal of money in restaurants, but also to the everyday shopper throughout the country. For retail and service establishments it will provide a means of reducing or eliminating the book-keeping now needed to maintain customers’ credit accounts.’

Indeed, Thomson saw Barclaycard as, ‘…more of a development of existing retail banking than an innovation…’ As with automated accounting and cash machines, Barclaycard held a promise for the bank of reducing its labour costs, which, with the advent of relatively full employment and strong trade unions, were rising steadily.

Barclays set itself the daunting task of recruiting 1 million cardholders and 30,000 outlets by the launch date. A derelict footwear factory in Northampton was converted as the operations centre, while £500,000 was spent on advertising and over 23 million forms were sent to prospective customers. Barclays adapted the computer programme used by BankAmericard. Distribution of the 1m cards involved extra Post Office and railway facilities.

Signing up merchant outlets was achieved by an organisational innovation. Dale recruited salesmen, largely selected from the Barclays staff on recommendation by inspection teams and branch managers, who were trained to call personally on prospective merchants. The idea of undertaking ‘selling’ was still anathema to the traditional British banker, but these recruits were often glad to break free of the confines of branch banking and enter the modern world of marketing. External training was also used by Barclays for the first time. In the words of one of the early salesmen,

‘It was all direct selling and it was cold selling in many ways.  It was in actual fact, just walking along the streets and just looking at shops and saying, yes, the average sale in that shop is a certain amount, that’s a good average sale.’

Acceptance – the triumph of plastic

Most of the 1.25m unsolicited cards sent to potential users in 1966 were accepted, but some were either returned, destroyed or not used: in 2015 Group Archives was pleased to receive the timely donation from a customer, of her late father’s unused card, surviving in pristine condition from 1966!

Barclaycard steadily secured a place in retail culture. Its first operating profit was recorded in 1972, by which time there were 1.7m cardholders and 52,000 merchants. As another salesman recalled of this period:

‘Well, I would just go and say, have you ever thought of taking Barclaycard?   It was such a strong product then that they either said yes or no.  And if they said yes, you’d sign them up and if no, you’d go into the next shop.  It was so easy to do then.’

The move towards a plastic credit society was cautious in the early years. When in November 1967 (following relaxation of the government’s credit squeeze), Barclaycard granted extended or revolving credit to holders, this was done on the understanding (with the Bank of England), that the card could not be used to acquire credit for more than 3 months, and that advertising would be suspended pro tem. This, it was recognised by Barclays at the time, was the only way that the card would ever make a profit. In effect card holders had a personal overdraft facility.

Confirmation that credit cards were here to stay came in 1972 with the launch of Barclaycard’s first major rival – Access – by Lloyds, NatWest and Midland.

Advertising

As in other areas, Barclaycard’s marketing was at the forefront of innovation for Barclays and British banking as a whole.

From the start, use was made of modern techniques, including direct mailings and colour magazine adverts. The initial recruitment of holders in 1966 was helped by a mass campaign, including the first direct mail shot by a British bank and a complete list of all the merchant outlets, believed to be one of the largest newspapers adverts ever published. High street campaigns were another radical departure for a Bank:

‘….we would go to a town and set this promotion up with all the retailers.  So we picked somewhere big like Brighton or Manchester or Liverpool and you always needed one or two big department stores as a sort of corner-stone, and we persuaded all these stores and shops to display Barclaycard material.’ Barclaycard ‘girls’, hired from an agency and dressed in a uniform to attract attention, would stop people on the street.

In 1968 an award-winning cinema film, Travelling Light, featured a young shopper with a card tucked into her bikini:

‘ One of my jobs was to make sure that the Barclaycard always showed correctly and so on, so I had the job of positioning it in her briefs to make sure it was all positioned  correctly…. It had a very good message, because I think the message at the end was that all you need to go shopping is a Barclaycard.’

Later developments

Although space doesn’t permit an account of Barclaycard’s subsequent history here, it’s worth noting some of the landmarks, several of which have derived from advances in computer and mobile phone technology:

• 1972: first television advert (first for Barclays, too)
• 1973: 2 million card holders
• 1977: Barclaycard a founder of the VISA network
• 1977: Company Barclaycard
• 1982: first in series of Alan Whicker TV adverts
• 1985: 8 million card holders
• 1986: PDQ machines, the first electronic card payment terminals in the UK, introduced to replace manual imprinters
• 1988: Student Barclaycard
• 1990: first in series of Rowan Atkinson TV adverts
• 1990s: expansion into Europe
• 1995: Barclaycard Netlink, the UK’s first bank-related commercial internet service, which soon enabled card holders to pay their bills online
• 1997: introduction of microchips on cards to improve security
• 2001: initial sponsorship of FA Premiership
• 2002: 11 million cards
• 2004: acquisition of Juniper, enabling Barclaycard to expand in USA
• 2007: ‘contactless’ cards, first in the UK
• 2012: PayTag, enabling customers to pay using their mobile phone by sticking a Barclaycard PayTag to the back of their handset
• 2014: 30 million cards

Records and research

‘Plastic money’, a phrase detected in a Barclays report from as early as 1967, has attracted attention from academic researchers in recent years, Barclaycard being cited as an example of technical and financial innovation, marketing success and market leadership.

Most of the documentation of Barclaycard is to be found with the Bank’s main record series. By establishing contacts with the marketing teams, a good representative selection of advertising material has also been captured, and this has been supplemented by donations from former staff members.

Research by Archives staff has established a good framework for the factual history of Barclaycard. For the story of the early years, Group Archives is able to supplement the written record by means of oral history interviews, a few excerpts from which have been quoted above.

In just over a decade from conception in 1965, Barclays successfully embedded the credit card in the retail economy of Britain, an essential payment medium that is taken for granted today.

Nicholas Webb
Archivist
Barclays Group Archives

Related:

Browse the Barclays Group Archives Collections on the Archives Hub

Previous feature: Barclays Group Archives

All images copyright the Barclays Group and reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder.

Archives Hub feature for April 2016

The Henry Moore Institute is a world-recognised centre for the study of sculpture in the heart of Leeds. An award-winning exhibitions venue, research centre, Library and Archive of Sculptors’ Papers, the Institute hosts a year-round programme of exhibitions, conferences and lectures, as well as developing research and publications, to expand the understanding and scholarship of historical and contemporary sculpture. The Institute is part of the Henry Moore Foundation, which was set up by Moore in 1977 to encourage appreciation of the visual arts, particularly sculpture.

Henry Moore (1898–1986) studied in Leeds at the city’s School of Art (now known as Leeds College of Art) in 1919 and was always grateful for the quality of art education he received. In 1982, through his Foundation, investment was made in Leeds City Art Gallery to establish the Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture (HMCSS) which built on the existing sculpture collection by diversifying and collecting works on paper and preparatory archive material.

In 1993 the Henry Moore Foundation funded refurbishment by architects Dixon Jones of the building next to the City Art Gallery to house the HMCSS, named the Henry Moore Institute, which offered new galleries, conference facilities and new accommodation for the Research Library and Archive of Sculptors’ Papers. Since 1993 the Henry Moore Institute Research Library and Archive have continued to play a crucial role in the work and endeavours of the Institute as intended by Moore, providing an important research facility to enable a greater understanding of the history and practice of sculpture. Leeds Museums and Galleries owns the Archive which the Institute houses and maintains, in addition to managing the closely related Leeds Sculpture Collections, in a unique partnership that has built one of the largest public collections of British sculpture.

The Henry Moore Institute Archive is a specialist repository for papers relating to sculpture in Britain and has material dating from the eighteenth century to the present day with a particular emphasis on the period post-1880. The Archive now comprises over 300 individual collections which contain a diverse range of material including the personal papers of sculptors, correspondence, diaries, important collections of photographs, casting ledgers, sketchbooks and works on paper, press cuttings and printed ephemera. The collection is used extensively for research, display and features in many publications related to sculpture and other related disciplines.

The following collections from the Archive demonstrate the extent, variety and unique nature of the material held:

The Thornycroft Family Papers

The first major acquisition by the Henry Moore Institute Archive was the Thornycroft family papers in 1986. The papers are a rare survival which document the work of three generations of nineteenth and early twentieth-century artists. John Francis (1780–1861), was the first of the three generations, a portrait sculptor who exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy. John Francis taught his daughter, Mary (1809–95), who became a successful sculptor and produced many commissions for Queen Victoria. Her husband, Thomas Thornycroft (1815–85), was one of her father’s pupils, who specialised in public commemorative sculpture and completed many statues of Prince Albert.

Their youngest son, Sir William Hamo Thornycroft (1850–1925), also trained as a sculptor and his papers form the main part of the family’s collection. The papers of Hamo Thornycroft are important for their extensive scope and for the fact that they document the everyday activities of one of the foremost practitioners of the New Sculpture movement. The collection provides detailed documentation of all his major works, including ‘The Mower’ from 1884, a maquette for which is held in the Leeds Sculpture Collections. The collection is extremely comprehensive and consists of approximately 3,000 items of correspondence, 32 sketchbooks, 300 drawings which range from initial sketches and life drawings to presentation drawings and architectural plans for his work, as well as over 300 photographs of his work, studio and personal family photographs.

Papers of Betty Rea

The representation of female artists within the collection is a continuing area of development. Among current holdings is the archive of Betty Rea (1904–65). Rea was a sculptor who favoured realist sculpture in a period when abstract modernism held sway. Her sculptures tenderly celebrate quotidian life, whether by depicting teenage girls rocking with laughter or women completing household tasks, as can be seen in works such as ‘Silly Girls’ (1959) or ‘Folding a Carpet’ (1956). Betty Rea’s archive gives an interesting glimpse into both her artistic practice and the social and political world in which she lived. The contents of this collection can be considered as representative of the contents of many other collections. For example, the Betty Rea archive contains an album of photographs and over 200 loose photographs that record Rea and her sculptural process, a selection of correspondence that refer to the organisation of exhibitions, exhibition catalogues, private view cards, press cuttings largely relating to exhibitions Rea was involved in and one of her sketchbooks.

Material from the Henry Moore Institute Archive is frequently drawn upon and used to inform exhibitions held at the Institute as well as other institutions. For example, in 2005 the Institute curated the exhibition Jaki Irvine: Plans for Forgotten Works. This exhibition, held in Gallery 4, displayed a series of works created by Jaki Irvine as a result of her Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute in 2004. During her Fellowship, Irvine engaged with some of the least expected areas of the Institute’s archive and material relating to the life and work of Betty Rea particularly captured her interest. Read more about this exhibition and Jaki Irvine’s Fellowship here: http://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2005/jaki-irvine-plans-for-forgotten-works

Stephen Cripps Archive

More recent acquisitions include the archive of British sculptor and performance artist Stephen Cripps (1952-82) which was acquired in 2013, and provides a fascinating insight into Cripps’ artistic practice. His work was experimental and often included found objects, sound recordings from the urban environment around him and explosives. In 2013 the Institute curated the exhibition Stephen Cripps: Pyrotechnic Sculptor which was held in the Sculpture Studies Galleries of Leeds Art Gallery.

This exhibition celebrated the acquisition of the Cripps’ archive and utilised items from the collection, such as his drawings and photographs of his performances, to explore the originality and experimental nature of Cripps’ sculptural work.

 

 

The scope of the Henry Moore Institute Archive holdings can be viewed through an A to Z of collections on our website: https://www.henry-moore.org/hmi/archive/archive-collections-a-z. We began adding descriptions to the Archives Hub at the end of 2015 and now have over twenty-five of our collections available to search through the Hub.

 

The Archive is open to all who wish to consult the collection. Please contact Claire Mayoh, Archivist, for further information about the collection or to arrange an appointment to visit, (claire@henry-moore.org).

 

 

Katie Gilliland
Library, Archive and Collections Trainee
Henry Moore Institute

Browse the collections on the Archives Hub

 

Archives Hub feature for March 2016

APAC, the Association of performing arts collections in the UK and Ireland: A peer network championing the documentation of performing arts material and its access by everyone.

Performing arts are all around us and come in many different shapes and sizes: drama, opera, circus, local amateur theatre groups, dance, carnivals, pantomime, music festivals and more. Although performances are increasingly recorded live and high profile productions screened to your local cinemas; capturing the process of putting on a show, the collaborations between a creative team and cast, followed by the public reception present quite a few challenges to collection managers. How to capture the depth and breadth of performing arts at local and national level? How to make performing arts information and material easily accessible to the diverse users ranging from academics, theatre enthusiasts, family historians, school children and the creative industry itself?

The Association of Performing Arts Collections, APAC, was founded in 1979 by a number of librarians, archivists and museums curators, as the then Theatre Information Group. Its mission is to champion best practice in documenting the performing arts and making it accessible to their users. The peer network of information professionals and interested individuals has grown to almost 100 members and includes institutions responsible for most of the UK’s performing arts heritage: public museums, libraries, and archives; archives of theatres and companies; college and university archives and libraries. APAC is the UK and Ireland affiliate of SIBMAS, the international organisation of libraries, museums, archives and documentation centres of performing arts. The national and international network of collection managers provides an excellent forum for information exchange, to discuss issues and explore solutions.

The APAC Executive Committee arranges regular meetings, alongside visits to collections and performing arts venues in addition to conferences and study days concentrating on issues of relevance to our holdings, such as copyright, digital preservation, audio-visual materials, costume, photography, digitisation, exhibitions, etc. These events are aimed at updating and extending members’ knowledge and skills, but also to benefit from each other’s trials and errors and encourage collaborative projects. In addition APAC has a number of working groups bringing together APAC members discussing specific challenges in their day-to-day work and seeking solutions, which are shared with the wider membership. Current working groups concentrate on digital preservation and authority datasets for performing arts.

One major challenge faced by most organisations holding performing arts materials is the fact, that international documentation standards for archive, library and museum collections do not adequately allow the capture of production/event information, which includes details of the work, its venue, production run and creative and cast involved. Many theatre and performance venues managing their own collections have implemented solutions to document their performance history and then to link these up with relevant material held within their organisation. Excellent examples are the National Theatre Archive, the Royal Opera House Collections, the Royal Albert Hall or the archives of the Royal Shakespeare Company held by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. However, much related material is held by other organisations across the country, which tend to not have equivalent production databases due to lack of resources, both time and money. Also organisations, such as museums, local libraries or archives do not want to duplicate the effort of re-entering performance data in their own systems and then just link up their own material.

The technical developments and online opportunities over the last decade led to APAC’s main vision of establishing an www.IMDB.com style solution of making a single database freely available online, where past and current productions across the UK and Ireland can be recorded. It is not only the ambition to facilitate a single point of access to find out about production, cast and venue information, but also to make the link to actual holdings held by organisations across the two countries. This ambitious project will hopefully see the closing of the major information gap, but should also result in a new and innovative way of making material discoverable using technology readily available. In tandem with technical developments, the APAC Authority Working Group, comprising of information professionals across the sector plans to draw up guidelines on how to use this resource alongside your in-house archive, library or museum system.

To find out more about APAC, please check out the APAC website, which holds information about APAC members and other resources, which may be of relevance to other organisations: www.performingartscollections.org.uk.

And now it is time to meet some of the APAC members holding archival collections and making these available via the Archives Hub:

Central Saint Martin’s Museum & Study Collection

The Central Saint Martin’s Museum & Study Collection has been collecting work by students and staff for more than a century and for the last 20 years has bought work from degree shows. There has been a theatre design department (now called Design for Performance) for much of that time and the collection now includes dress research, costume designs, theatre models and photographs from that department. Drama Centre London is also part of Central Saint Martin’s, and the museum has some of their material.

http://www.arts.ac.uk/csm/about-csm/museum-and-study-collection/

National Theatre

The National Theatre Archive documents, protects and makes accessible material related to the history of the theatre. The NT Archive collects around productions as well as the administrative and strategic history of the institution. Its external collections focus on the early days of the National Theatre and on staff members, who were integral to its development.

A couple of the external collections are on the Hub with more to come. The Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Collection (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb2080-smnt) charts the movement to found the National Theatre and the collection of Catherine Fleming (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb2080-cf), a vocal coach, who worked with the National Theatre Company when it was housed at the Old Vic.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-2080

Rambert Dance Company Archive

The Rambert Archive documents the development of dance in Britain through the heritage of Britain’s first established dance company, Rambert. The collections include the Company collection, dating from the first performance of a ballet choreographed by an English person. The collections also include personal archives created by our founder, Dame Marie Rambert DBE, who played a role in the birth of modernism in ballet and music, as well in the early days of the Dalcroze Eurythmics movement. Other former alumni have contributed collections, including those of the choreographer Walter Gore, whose ballet company pioneered new works in the 1950s; the Ballet Workshop who hosted new collaborations between choreographers, designers and composers including some of the earliest black British ballets; the first tours to China and to Australian and New Zealand by any British dance company, and extensive material about the popularisation of dance as an art-form during the Second World War.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-2228

Royal Academy of Dance

The Royal Academy of Dance was founded in 1920, a time when there was a heightened interest in the establishment of a British Ballet tradition. As a result, the RAD’s archive collections contain a variety of materials that relate to this period including programmes, photographs, costume designs, papers and correspondence. These are housed alongside the significant personal collections of RAD founders Dame Adeline Genée (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb3370-rad/ag ), Phyllis Bedells (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb3370-rad/pb ) and Philip Richardson (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb3370-rad/pjsr ), and the photographic archive of GBL Wilson (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb3370-rad-gblw ) documents the subsequent heyday of British Ballet from the 1940s through to the 1980s.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-3370

Theatres Trust

The Theatres Trust’s collections focus on theatre buildings, their architecture, design, management and history. Our institutional archive charts the development of, and The Theatres Trust’s relationship with theatre buildings in the United Kingdom and primarily contains correspondence, building descriptions, photographs, press cuttings, architectural plans and planning applications. Our donated special collections consist primarily of theatre photographs, postcards, press cuttings and scrapbooks. Other resources provided by The Theatres Trust include an online Theatres Database and Image Library.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-3401

The Theatres Trust Archive: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb3401-ttt

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance is the UK’s only conservatoire of music and contemporary dance. Leaders in music and contemporary dance education, the Conservatoire also provides exciting opportunities for the public to encounter dance and music, and access arts health programmes, all housed in landmark buildings.
The Laban Archive, within the Faculty of Dance at Trinity Laban, focuses on the history and development of Rudolf Laban the man, Laban the institution and on the field of contemporary dance from its roots in European dance theatre practice in the early twentieth century, via its American influences in the 1960s and 1970s to its current contemporary artists. Whilst tying in with the dance faculty’s focus on contemporary dance, the contents reflect the wide influences and associations of the dance form and document both the creative processes and performances of Laban-influenced choreographers and dance practitioners.

Collections include the Laban Collection, comprising papers, notation scores, photographs and other documents of Rudolf Laban and his associates for the period 1918-2001, the Sylvia Bodmer Collection, comprising notebooks, papers, photographs and correspondence of a distinguished exponent of Rudolf Laban’s movement ideas, the Peter Brinson Collection, being the professional and personal papers of a key figure in the expansion of dance education in the UK, and the Peter Williams Collection which includes ca. 50,000 photographs of dance companies from around the world for the period 1950-1980.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-1701

University of Kent, Special Collections & Archives

Special Collections & Archives at the University of Kent includes a significant Theatre and Performance Archive. With a focus on theatre history, the Collections are particularly rich in Victorian and Edwardian Theatre and contain playbills, programmes, scripts, photographs, publicity and administrative material. There is also a collection of twentieth and twenty-first century programmes and theatrical ephemera.

As well as the unique Britannia Theatre prompt scripts, heavily annotated for use by Britannia’s Stage manager, Frederick Wilton (Pettingell Collection), Kent holds the archive of the Melville Theatrical dynasty, which produced significant popular productions from the late nineteenth into the twentieth centuries. Other significant holdings include two collections related to Dion Boucicault, with materials such as legal papers, scripts, research material and printed performance ephemera from the Victorian period up to the late twentieth century.

In addition, the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive has recently been founded at the University. The British Stand-Up Comedy Archive intends to celebrate, preserve, and provide access to the archives and records of British stand-up comedy and comedians.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-1089

V&A Department of Theatre and Performance

The V&A holds the United Kingdom’s national collection of the performing arts and is one of the largest of its kind in the world. In 1924, the private collection of Gabrielle Enthoven transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum and in keeping with her mission to document and index every performance, more than 750,000 playbills and programmes of London and regional productions from the 18th century to the present day now form the centre of the collection. In addition our relevant library and museum object collections, the V&A has more than 450 archive collections documenting the many aspects of performing arts including:

– Theatre company archives, including English Stage Company at the Royal Court, Young Vic, Cheek by Jowl, Talawa, Tricycle Theatre, Prospect Theatre Company;
– Personal papers, including Sir Michael Redgrave, Peter Brook, Vivien Leigh, Paul Scofield, Ivor Novello;
– Designer and architect collections, incl. Lez Brotherston, Oliver Messel, Frank Matcham Company; and the
– Arts Council of Great Britain Archive.

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/GB-71

Ramona Riedzewski, APAC Treasurer and Membership Secretary
V&A Department of Theatre and Performance, Archivist and Conservation Manager

 Browse the collections on the Archives Hub:

Central Saint Martin’s Museum and Study Collection

National Theatre

Rambert Dance Company Archive

Royal Academy of Dance 

The Theatres Trust

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Laban Archive

University of Kent, Special Collections and Archives

V&A Department of Theatre and Performance

All images reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holders.

 

Archives Hub feature for November 2015

The papers of 19^th Century author Anna Eliza Bray (1790-1883) have recently been catalogued at West Sussex Record Office and are now available for researchers to access.  The catalogue can be viewed via our Search Online facility at http://www.westsussexpast.org.uk/searchonline/.

Anna Eliza Bray (formerly Stothard, neé Kempe) was born on 25th December 1790 in Newington, Surrey, the daughter of Alfred Kempe and Ann Arrow, and sister of the antiquary Alfred John Kempe.  She was originally destined for a career in the theatre but this endeavour was cut short as she fell ill days before her first performance at Bath’s Theatre Royal in May 1815, and she subsequently lost the opportunity to appear on the stage again.

In February 1818, she married Charles Alfred Stothard, an antiquarian draughtsman whom she had met a number of years before through his father, the Royal Academy artist Thomas Stothard.  She travelled to France with her husband in 1820 for his work, and afterwards published her first book ‘Letters written during a tour of Normandy’.  This established her as a writer and enabled her to progress into the literary circles of her day, which included notable figures such as Sir Walter Scott, John Murray, Amelia Opie, Letitia Elizabeth Landon and (the most influential character in her career) Robert Southey, who was Poet Laureate from 1813-1843.  However, her husband died shortly afterwards in a tragic accident on 28th May 1821, when he fell from a ladder in Bere Ferrers Church in Devon while drawing the stained glass window.

In late 1822, she married Reverend Edward Atkyns Bray and moved to Tavistock in Devon.  The West Country was a significant influence on her writing and it was during this period that most of her literary output was produced, including her best-known work ‘A Description of the part of Devonshire bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy’, published by John Murray in 1836.  Other works included a 10-volume set of historical novels, another travel book entitled ‘Mountains and Lakes of Switzerland’ and a children’s book entitled ‘A Peep at the Pixies’.

After her husband’s death in 1857, Mrs Bray moved back to London and continued to write well into the 1870s, editing and publishing her late husband’s sermons and writing further books on French history and Devon folklore.  In the last few years of her life, she was briefly back in the public eye again, after being accused of stealing a small part of the Bayeux Tapestry on her trip to France almost 60 years before.  Fortunately, the publication of an article in the Times written by her nephew subsequently cleared her name.  She died on 21^st January 1883 at the age of 92.

The archive was presented to West Sussex Record Office in November 2000 by a member of the Kempe family, the present day descendants of Anna Eliza Bray.  Later members of the Kempe family also have their archives housed at the Record Office, including Mrs Bray’s great nephew, the mathematician Sir Alfred Bray Kempe.

In terms of size, the archive is a very small one but the saying ‘quality over quantity’ certainly applies here, as it spans nearly 70 years of the late Regency and Victorian period.  It has been catalogued into four series: correspondence, manuscripts, printed books and miscellaneous.

The correspondence has been sub-divided into the main families represented in the collection: Landon, Southey, Warter and Kempe as well as an additional section for miscellaneous letters.

The manuscripts are handwritten journals and drafts; most of the works are by Mrs Bray, but also include drafts of works she has copied from books of other authors such as Amelia Opie and a handwritten poetry book dating from the early 1820s belonging to Mary Maria Colling, an amateur poet from Tavistock.  Mrs Bray, with assistance from Robert Southey, published a selection of Colling’s poetry on her behalf in 1831 entitled ‘Fables and Other Pieces in Verse’.  Mrs Bray’s autobiography, published posthumously in 1884, forms a significant part of the draft papers.  The archive includes a printed copy and a 3-volume draft manuscript of the autobiography which have been immensely helpful in revealing a great deal more about her life; parts of it have also been used to make sense of other documents in the archive.

Printed books are her publications; although not all are included in the archive, there is a good selection of her work represented, such as her biography of the artist Thomas Stothard.

Miscellaneous items include a scrapbook of watercolours, locks of hair belonging to Robert and Caroline Southey and a piece of mourning stationary signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in the latter part of the 19^th Century.

The archive also contains over 100 letters from Caroline Southey, the second wife of Robert Southey, with whom Mrs Bray was first acquainted in 1840.  Regular correspondence continued until Mrs Southey’s death in 1854, and letters in the archive mention notable figures including William Wordsworth and members of the Coleridge family.  There is also ‘Mrs Southey’s Narrative’, a biographical piece written by Caroline Southey in 1840 regarding her courtship and marriage to Robert Southey, copied by Mrs Bray’s niece from the original manuscript.

I will be presenting a talk on the Bray archive at West Sussex Record Office in Chichester entitled ‘A Peep at the Pixies’: exploring the life and literary archive of Anna Eliza Bray (1790-1883) on Tuesday 24^th November 2015 at 7pm.  Tickets cost £7.50 including refreshments, and a selection of documents from the archive will be out on display.  Places must be booked in advance by contacting our reception on 01243 753602.

For any enquiries regarding the collection, catalogue or the November talk please contact West Sussex Record Office by emailing records.office@westsussex.gov.uk.

Holly Wright
Searchroom Assistant, West Sussex Record Office

Related

Papers of Anna Eliza Bray (1790-1883) on the Archives Hub:
https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb812-bray

Browse other collections of West Sussex Record Office on the Archives Hub.

All images are reproduced with the permission of West Sussex Record Office