While digitising a box of photographs of Oxfordshire churches with fellow volunteer Muny, we found a wonderful wall painting in a Kersting print; a welcome surprise after the usual mix of white-walled naves and pillars.
CON_B00607_F007_005. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.CON_B00607_F007_006. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
In the Middle Ages, it was common practice to paint the walls of churches. Few people could read, so it was necessary to teach by using pictures. During the Reformation, these images were covered over as they were considered symbols of Popish idolatry.
The painting is on the wall which separates the nave from the chancel, and is an example of how certain images became assigned to specific positions in the church. One of the most common is Doom, or the Last Judgement. The symbolism explains the positioning of the Nave as representing the ‘Church militant’ and the chancel as the ‘Church Triumphant’, separated by the judgment before which all souls must pass.
The Last Judgment in South Leigh follows a traditional pattern. Two angels with trumpets are waking up the dead. On the left, an angel in white is calling to the saved, with a scroll above announcing ’Venite Benedicte Patris Mei’ (Come you blessed to my Father). They then move towards the north wall where (not visible in the photograph) St Peter awaits them at the gates of Heaven. On the right, the angel wears dark clothing and summons the damned, the scroll above saying ‘Discedite Maledicti’ (Depart you cursed). They are bound together with what looks like barbed wire and are being pushed towards the jaws of hell, which are just visible on the south wall.
The image is clearly designed to scare the wits out of the congregation:
“The damned are dragged into the mouth of hell propped open by a devil.” Image courtesy of www.wasleys.org.uk
The original paintings were discovered in 1870, when the old layers of whitewash were removed after the new vicar, Gerard Moultie, decided the church needed restoration. The work was carried out for £85 by Messrs Burlison and Gryllis, a firm heavily influenced by William Morris. This is particularly evident where the originals were too faint to copy and were effectively replaced by 19th-century design, for example in the painting of flowers and birds beneath the Last Judgment.
The original artists were probably trained in monasteries. They were not necessarily monks, but young men who showed artistic ability and were trained in monastic scriptoria. There is also evidence of a growing number of itinerant painters who were associated with the Guilds of Painter-Stainers in London and other cities.
For a small village church, South Leigh has several associations with the famous. The ancestors of William Morris owned land there, and it is only 10 miles or so from Kelmscott Manor, Morris’s country house.
In 1725, John Wesley preached his first sermon from the pulpit (he returned in 1771 and was refused entry).
Between 1947 and 1949, the poet Dylan Thomas and his wife lived in the village and maintained an eccentric lifestyle. This was many years after he wrote ’It is the sinner’s dust tongued bell claps me to churches’, though it would be wonderful to imagine him seeing the Last Judgment through an alcoholic haze and wondering which way he would go.
John Ramsey
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
Managing the digitisation project of one of the most varied, mysterious, and extensive photographic collections in the world, in one of its most prestigious art institutes can look a lot like this:
and not much like the constant carousel of wonderful architectural detail that one might imagine. The volunteers, busy sorting through the images and penciling the accession numbers on the mounts, or zooming in to check the focus in the digitisation studio, are the ones who get to really see the collection, really make serendipitous discoveries. I have to make the time to go and explore, and be sure to do it too or else I might get to the end of whole months having only seen filenames, spreadsheets and conversion code on Terminal.
Belluno_Ponte della Vittoria e Duomo_Anthony Kersting Archive
Today I thought I’d go looking for my hometown – Belluno, in the Italian Dolomites – and see it through A.F. Kersting’s eyes. The 4293 Kersting negatives, which we plan to digitise as part of our project, are numbered sequentially and neatly stacked in their cases. To every negative number corresponds a handwritten entry on a ledger, so if you were to pick a number from the shelf you could easily look it up in the ledger and find out where the image was taken. It’s a bit more difficult to start your search from a specific city; on the negative there are only accession numbers and entries on the ledgers are also sequential by number, not by location. Besides, part of the mystery surrounding photographer A.F. Kersting is that he would travel so extensively: opening a page at random of his ledger you can see that one day he was in Jersey, the next in Scotland, the following entry would be in Munich, then Dubrovnik, then Madrid… which makes tracing his steps and locating a particular town very tricky – and transcribing the ledgers (another fascinating task reserved for our volunteers) very necessary!
Belluno_Piazza Duomo_Anthony Kersting Archive
What I do have to go by in my quick morning search is the prints collection, the selected negatives for which we have prints, and which are arranged by country. These prints were created by Kersting and are unnumbered but annotated in pencil at the back. I ventured to the Italy box and looked for my small town almost as a challenge, and there, to my delight, I found the squares and fountains of my childhood, almost untouched by time, with the only exception being the clothes of the passers-by and the cars parked where they shouldn’t be.
Belluno_Piazza delle Erbe_Anthony Kersting Archive
We are not there yet with the digitisation so what you see below are just some quick group snaps, but hopefully they will give you a taste of how wonderful a photographer Kersting was, and how extensively he documented every corner of the world he could reach. When we’ll have completed the digitisation of the whole collection you’ll be able to search by place and by date, as well as by accession number, and the collection will be truly open. For now, enjoy this small selection as a Friday treat.
Faye Fornasier
Digitisation, Database and Cataloguing Manager Courtauld Connects
While transcribing one of the A.F. Kersting’s ledgers, a volunteer came across an illegible entry: KER_NEG_W1013-6. It was posted on SLACK for all the volunteers involved in the Courtauld Connects digitisation project and yet despite our best efforts the entry remained unidentified.
The clues were numerous but confusing: Revivalist or Georgian, Heraldic or Masonic, double-headed eagle or griffin, Country house or lodge, demolished or renovated. Although the town was illegible, it was agreed that the county was Northamptonshire, which became our starting point. Pattishall, Puxley, Pytchley, Padley? I think we researched every town in the county beginning with the capital P.
I contacted the foremost expert on Northamptonshire country houses, who worked with Pevsner, HHA, Historic England, images of England, the AA, and Country Life photographic archives; and Nick Kingsley, archivist and architectural historian, but none could identify the images. One suggestion was that it could be a scheme by Claud Phillimore or even an early work by David Hicks, which led me in another direction for a short time.
I made a last-ditch attempt to identify the building by contacting the Northamptonshire Heritage Group, the National Council on Archives, and the National Archives. However, it was while in Brixton library, reading through the Arthur Mee and Nicolas Pevsner Northamptonshire editions within The Buildings of England Series and Pevsner Architectural Guides, that I started to question if it was indeed Northamptonshire.
After this exhaustive research into architecture, I decided to turn to the paintings. I emailed several experts and Paul Cox, Associate Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, kindly took the time to compare one of the portraits with many from the late 1590s-c1610, but again with no success. I am known as a passionate advocate of contemporary art but a visit to the National Portrait Gallery reminded me of the beauty of 16th century Tudor portraiture.
The clothing in the stunning portrait painting at the bottom of the stairs in the mystery house identified the period as early 20th century, and this led to some fascinating and extensive research into the work of several British artists. A visit to the National Portrait Gallery and its newly refurbished 20th century gallery confirmed I was in the right artistic period and I was amazed that early 20th century British realist painting is so under-rated.
At the same time, I continued to delve into the mystery of the double-headed eagle. I discovered a 1780 Satirical print of the arms of the Feilding family superimposed on the Habsburg double-headed eagle lacking one head, dedicated to the Garter King of Arms and mocking the family’s pretensions at ancestral connections to the Habsburg dynasty and the Feilding family of Warwickshire.
Thus, Warwickshire and the Feilding family became to focus of the next stage of this investigation. To cut a long story short, research into the Feilding family and their fascinating history led me to Newham Paddock, the family home in Warwickshire.
It was interesting to read that Lady Dorothie Feilding-Moore became a highly decorated volunteer nurse and ambulance driver on the Western Front during World War 1. She was the first woman to be awarded the Military medal for bravery in the field. She also received the 1914 Star, the Croix de Guerre and the order of Leopold II.
By Belgian Photographer (The Illustrated War News) [Public domain] via Wikimedia CommonsThe Feilding family have been Lords of Newnham Paddox since 1433. In 1622, James I made William Feilding first Earl of Denbigh, and this was an important clue which led to Monks Kirby, the home to the Earls of Denbigh, and their estate at Newnham Paddox.
Monks Kirby and the Earls of Denbigh led to Pailton House, and although there was no initial evidence, I did believe that Pailton House was our mystery Kersting.
Pailton House and gardens. 1910s IMAGE LOCATION: (Warwickshire County Record Office) Reference: PH, 352/105/55, img: 6462 Reproduced from the “Our Warwickshire” website
Looking through The Tatler 1940, I found that Lord and Lady Denbigh had lived at Pailton House while Newnham Paddock was being used as a convent school.
Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media at The Courtauld Institute of Art, found some images online where the architrave resembled Pailton House. However, the banisters were different and the beautiful oval hallway was still proving elusive.
I contacted the renovation company and their reply stated that the house had actually been split into two residences some time ago, as confirmed by a local tradesman. Tom Bilson then discovered some plans for Pailton House on eBay.
I decided to contact the Denbigh family directly, sending the Kersting photographs via email and was pleasantly surprised when Lady Denbigh graciously replied:
Dear Lorraine, thank you for your message. Yes, it is Pailton House, Pailton, Warwickshire CV23. The house at Newnham Paddox was demolished in 1953 and Billy and Betty (the 10th Earl and Countess) lived at Pailton House until his death. Betty then sold the house and it was divided up into 5 houses. Betty then built a wooden house on what would have been the carriage turning circle of the old mansion, we live in that today.
As for the paintings – the large portrait is by Harold Harvey painted in 1936 I think, of Betty. In the dining room the portrait is of Elizabeth Aston, mother of the first Earl – (along with the other oldest portrait, attributed to Zuccaro, but unlikely!). The other smaller one is also by Harold Harvey. The other picture in the drawing room is now with Billy and Betty’s daughter, Lady Clare Simonian. I hope this helps – I am afraid I cannot comment on the oval room as I have never seen it, by the time of our marriage in 1996 it had long been sold”.
Recently, Lady Suzy Denbigh, The Countess of Denbigh at Newnham Paddox, kindly sent information and photographs of the actual paintings.
Elizabeth Aston Courtesy of Lady Suzy Denbigh, Countess of Denbigh at Newnham PaddoxSir Basil Feilding Courtesy of Lady Suzy Denbigh, Countess of Denbigh at Newnham PaddoxBetty, Countess of Denbigh by Harold Harvey, c1931 Courtesy of Lady Suzy Denbigh, Countess of Denbigh at Newnham Paddox
Personally, it was a fascinating ‘journey’, informative and great fun to research. Jane MacIntyre and I have now moved on from this success and onto over 400 Kersting ‘illegibles’, which we have just completed, albeit with one or two individual words remaining to be identified. The challenge is now to revisit the entire Anthony Kersting ledgers.
By Lorraine Stoker, Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
Observing portraiture through the eyes of Anthony Kersting
When I first started my internship, I was in awe at the large collection of archives kept everywhere around the Witt and Conway library which is situated in the basement of The Courtauld Institute. I was so intrigued that I simply wanted to open every archive box I could without being tagged as the new nosey intern. I am happy to say that I now proudly hold that title even before I opened all the boxes. However, being nosey can somehow have its perks! After asking so many questions regarding the stacks of blue labeled boxes around the staff section of the Conway, I was introduced to the mysterious and yet enchanting world of the British photographer Anthony Kersting. What struck me most was the number of boxes labeled with the name of one person, and also the number of countries mentioned under his name on the boxes. I was curious about how much this man achieved, traveled and explored throughout his life.
Kersting’s journal entries [36- Tangier, Morocco on 7/11- Beeston, Nottingham on 15/11…]Anthony Kersting was a photographer whose interest around the world focused on religious monuments, landscapes, portraits and sometimes private homes. Tony, for short, was born on the 7 November 1916 and died on 2 September 2008. Although frequent traveling was still unusual in his early years of activity as a photographer, and the breadth of his travels rather hard to believe, his photographs and journal entries represent irrefutable proof of his gallivanting around the world. I was really impressed by the number of places he visited in a short period of time, especially in the 1930s when traveling was expensive and, more often than not, hazardous. Indeed, he traveled to places such as Norway, Egypt, Palestine, Morocco and The Bahamas. Kersting’s photographs perfectly find comfort within their habitat. I was quite intrigued as to what methods he used to create this effortless relationship between him and his subjects. I chose to analyze portraiture as a theme because it reflects reality through the eyes of the beholder; as it is, in effect, a window to Kersting’s personality.
The Courtauld’s Witt Library is a large collection of photographs, reproductions and cuttings of paintings, drawings and engravings of Western Art from c1200 to the present day. Within its 19 thousand boxes sit just over 2.15 million images depicting many diverse themes and subjects. The complete archive of 160,000 black and white prints and over 40,000 negatives by architectural and landscape photographer Anthony F. Kersting was bequeathed to the Courtauld’s Conway Library on his death in 2008.
As a Digitisation and Digital Media Intern, I decided to take a look at these contrasting and yet extensive collections to discover how landscape was, and still is, a theme within creative expression. From the work of Édouard Manet, Federico Barocci through to the many unpublished photographs taken by Anthony Kersting we see a reflection of the spirit of nature that continues to creatively saunter through human history.
Nature seems to have its own distinctive way of projectingdifferent subject matters and visual habitats. Before the 17th century, the concept of landscape was limited to the different narratives of historical, religious and folkloric fields. However, today landscape has become one of the ruling themes within the bounds of artistic expression and documentation. A large number of great artists use landscape as a form of artistic authority; an impression to record the different impacts we have on our grounds, territory and the scope of the earth.
To start off this reflection on the crowning charm of nature’s picturesque scenery, I chose Federico Barocci’s simple yet spiritual approach towards landscape. During his lifetime Barocci was a celebrated figureof the Italian Renaissance, due in part to a notable commission received in his early 20s to create frescos at the Vatican.
His sketches, which I discovered in the Witt Library, include a delicate study of trees and space showing his respect for nature, in what I consider to be an ethereal and docile interpretation. His use of chalk typifies the ‘Italian light’ that many artists around that time idealised.
Moving on from the Italian Renaissance, I explored the French School of the Witt Library, specifically the word of Impressionist painter Édouard Manet. Although many would consider Manet to be a realist painter, there is a crucial moment in which he evolved into an Impressionist, a style celebrated by fairly small, yet undisguised brush strokes, clear composition, and the study of lightin its adaptable qualities. The two paintings depicted here give a recognisable sense of movement as a crucial abstract of experience, human realisation and demeanour towards the flora and fauna of consciousness.
Finally, nothing describes the work of architectural and landscape photographer Anthony Kersting more than saying that I find it very difficult to be around all the archived photographs, which are shelved right behind my office chair (lucky me!) in their respective boxes, without wishing I could take one home! I chose his photographs not only for his sense of narrative, which you can easily pick up from his extensive travels around the world, but for the magnificent way in which he captured the many regions and seasons that he journeyed through and experienced. From sea stretches in Mahabalipuram in India to the Mountainous plains of Jordan, Kersting’s talent in photographing landscape is evident. His sharpness in photographing the most minutedetail of space is immaculate. This was particularly evident in one of the photographs I luckily stumbled upon, of the Gulf of Aqaba seen from the Transjordan mountains to the East. Kersting perfectly instils this hazy and yet earthly view of the desert landscape.
The subjectivity and artistic tendencies of these three very different charcoal sketches, paintings, and photographs are clearly evident. However, as time drifts away, nothing can take away the essence of nature that is willing to adjust towards maybe a whit of artistic creativity and interpretation. These three artists, which I am fortunate enough to write about in a non-critical nor comparative approach, give us reason to celebrate their life and genius, for their remarkable ways of catching the embodiment of the true nature of landscape in its different thematic guises.
Alia Ahmad
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Placement
As we process more and more boxes of negatives from the Anthony Kersting archive – that’s over 3000 sheet negs in 19 days – I become convinced that the smell of acetic acid in the studio will be an inextricable part of the memories of Summer 2017, both for me and for the volunteers handling and imaging the negatives.
Although most of the negatives in the archive are in very good condition, many have suffered some temperature variation in the past 50-70 years, and are in various stages of decay. This is where digitisation comes in and saves the day. At the heart of any digitisation effort are two main purposes: sharing and caring.
At the heart of any digitisation effort are two main purposes: sharing and caring.
Sharing, because these images have been kept shelved away for a very long time. How many people, since the negatives were created, would have known where to look, who to ask, what to look for, and how to find what? An insignificant number compared to the people searching the internet for historical pictures of their hometown, of monuments and buildings destroyed by war and natural disasters, of factory workers in Jamaica (those are great, can’t wait to share them!), and of generally wonderful looking places.
But digitising is also caring for the object, giving it some rest, allowing a newer, more robust and accessible version of it to take its place. In the sprint relay that’s the photographer’s vision, where the image is the baton, negatives and prints are the first runners. Exhausted after 70 years on the track, they are ready to exchange with the digital files, which will carry the image into the future.
Caring for the object, but also caring for the original photographer’s vision. As the negatives age in challenging environments, they suffer visual decay. This means that, depending on the type of negative, the original image will be compromised and look very different from how it was intended. Digitising before this happens ensures that the photographer’s vision is preserved for posterity in digital form and that the negatives can be moved to a more stable environment to stop further decay.
But what to say about the negatives which have already suffered damage? Unfortunately, in most cases these are nearly impossible to repair. Where possible, we digitise them as they are and appreciate them for their faults. The volunteers examine them as they prepare for digitisation and record in our database the details of broken or corroded glass plates or film negatives showing channelling. When performing quality checks on the digital images, they can also flag major scratches and deal with any dye retrieval.
Although the original vision is compromised, the damaged negatives take on a beauty of their own. Here are a few favourites.
As the acetate film decays, the base of the negative can shrink and the gelatine can become detached from its support. In the examples below, the channeling and distortion make the landscapes appear as if under water.
In some negatives, the dyes contained in the antihalation layer can react to the released acetic acid and become blue or pink. The images below will be processed in black and white as they were intended but in colour the scenes look dreamlike and striking.
KER_NEG_G2978KER_NEG_G2979
Scratches are the most common type of damage. In the first example I like to imagine the scratches are jetpack contrails. In the second, the scratch looks almost like the trajectory of the jumping dolphin. The third is so surreal, such an unexpected setting, the magic would come through regardless of the damage.
I have been volunteering at the Courtauld Institute since March 2017. Throughout my thirty-eight years of teaching Art, Design and Art History in inner-London schools I have visited the Courtauld Gallery many times and have also participated in the Institute’s more recent schools outreach and broadening participation activities. However, it was the Courtauld Connects digitisation project, involving the creation of an online archive of 1.1 million images from their own image collection, with the 20th century housing projects and the Anthony Kersting Middle Eastern photographic collection, which attracted my attention. As Sir Nicolas Serota commented, the project ‘is an exciting contemporary expression of Samuel Courtauld’s belief that ‘art is for the people’, and I was eager to play a small part in the transformation of the Courtauld archives into a national and international public resource.
As a volunteer, I have access to the Courtauld, its community, exhibitions, events and collections. I can even view and sit in awe of the Gauguins every day now! In addition, working as part of a great team, the practical training and experience in cataloguing, handling, transcribing and digitising historical material and in creating a digital archive has certainly been educational and highly rewarding.
Visiting the Tate Archives as part of our training and development was a fantastic experience. After walking through the bowels of the art gallery, with its air conditioning and heating ducts – even an old delivery bicycle – past the spectacular spiral staircase inspired by the original floor tiles, we entered the ‘Site Timeline’ – a drum-shaped room at the heart of the building. This room, a small part of the highly successful £45m revamp, is dedicated to the History of the site and is set within the foundation of the oldest part of the building’s structure, Millbank Prison. I was well-aware of the history of The Tate as a prison, but it was quite remarkable to hear that in the 1960s there was a serious proposal to add a brutalist, modern extension to the building!
The new staircase, Tate Britain. Photo courtesy of Lorraine Stoker.
One interesting part of the renovation I have since identified is that when designing the rotunda mirrored bar in the Members Room, the architects Caruso St John were inspired by the Courtauld’s own A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet.
Though a regular visitor, I had never got further than the Djanogly Cafè, so The Digital Archive corridor – with its gallery of touchscreens – certainly surprised and impressed me. You can reference a work of art in the Tate collection, access the image of the painting or sculpture and compare it next to the digitised image of the archival item. It was amazing to digitally turn the pages of a Donald Rodney sketchbook, and I have just discovered I can do this on my laptop.
The touch screens in the Digital Archive corridor the Tate, where you can explore digitised items from the collection. Photo courtesy of Lorraine Stoker.
The Hyman Kreitman Reading Rooms were next. There, we heard about the 1928 flood and the new flood doors which are, of course, still untested!
At the start of the digitisation of its collection, the Tate’s mission statement was ‘to fulfil our responsibility to promote public enjoyment, knowledge, and understanding of British and international art, we decided that our selection of archive material should follow these principles and reflect that this collection belonged to the nation’. The sheer scale of the Tate’s Archive digitisation, now in its third year, is overwhelming, with over 52,000 pieces already captured, all of which are available to view on the website. This stands in addition to the 65,000 paintings, sculpture and works on paper, also available to browse online. The aim is to take the largest archive of British art in the world and make it accessible to national and international online audiences, so with new collections coming in each year, this is an ongoing task.
The Courtauld’s Photographic Library digitisation project is in its first six-month developmental phase and this Tate Britain visit certainly put into context the extensive possibilities within an innovative digitisation programme and public online interaction, such as crowdsourcing, transcription algorithms, and the development of new routes into the collection in addition to the traditional paths of art or title based retrieval. Without doubt, this insight into the successful digitisation project at the Tate Britain has galvanised the Courtauld Connects volunteers, as we look forward to the completion of the developmental phase and the exciting possibilities over the next four years.
Tate Britain and Vickers Tower, 12th September 1964, Anthony Kersting. (KER_NEG_G4137)Tate Britain Sculpture Gallery, 24th January 1958, Anthony Kersting. (KER_NEG_W1000)Tate Britain Sculpture Gallery, 24th January 1958, Anthony Kersting. (KER_NEG_W0999)
My name is Jane Macintyre. I am one of the volunteers working on the Courtauld Connects digitisation project at The Courtauld Institute of Art.
On the afternoon of 12th June, HRH The Princess Royal visited both The Courtauld Gallery and the Institute in her role as Chancellor of the University of London. Prior to the event, she had expressed an interest in meeting the digitisation team – Tom, Matthew, Faye and Sarah – plus one of the volunteers. About five weeks before the visit a ballot determined, as luck would have it, that the volunteer would be me. I was bursting to tell everyone but had been sworn to secrecy.
It turned out that HRH wouldn’t be able to visit the basement studio or library space, but the prints and drawings room on the first floor of the building substituted as a suitable venue where we could present images. Tom and Matthew had selected a small spread of Conway mounts, Laib photos and Anthony Kersting’s images and ledger books. They took care to choose some particularly relevant images such as the only photograph in the collection of the Princess’s home, Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire, and some Olympics venues such as the Athens Arena from 1896, the first Olympics of modern times. Faye set up the camera and connected it to her laptop to mimic the studio facility.
HRH The Princess Royal meeting the Digital Media Team. Photo courtesy of Jim Winslet.
Security on the day was tight. At 2.15pm everyone was summoned to the foyer to receive our credentials and a final briefing, then we took our places in the prints room where we awaited a last security sweep before HRH arrived. It seemed like a long time: excitement mounted.
Finally, the Princess came into the prints room accompanied by the Director of The Courtauld, Professor Deborah Swallow. The Princess, clearly well-informed and interested, was first introduced to the prints and drawings team, and after perusing some of the drawings, came over to talk to the digital team. Tom summarised what the project was about, and presented Matt, Faye, Sarah and myself (in strict sequence). The Princess asked me to explain the role of the volunteers and then Tom showed her the selected array of photographs, which led to a discussion on Gatcombe Park and the changes that had been made to it since the photograph was taken in 1945. She also picked up on the photograph of the Athens Olympics, before moving on to the next part of her visit, the launch the Founders’ Circle, a new society to recognise major benefactors to The Courtauld.
So five weeks of anticipation was over in a few minutes. We definitely rose to the occasion and did a good job of explaining the project. Never having met royalty before, I was struck by the level of organisation, coordination and sheer choreography required to achieve a smooth and effective visit.
On Thursdays we have an evening shift for those volunteers who can’t participate during work hours. Sarah, our Volunteer Coordinator, is here for that shift but I am not, so on Friday morning I go through the Capture One sessions to see what the team’s been up to. It’s so impressive: the images the volunteers create are just fantastic, they all learn so fast and their contribution to the project is amazing.
This morning I came in and looked at the last image they took. They were digitising 17 x 22cm glass negatives from the Kersting archive and this one shows a very ornate chinoiserie bedroom.
KER_NEG_W1248
Before the project started, in order to find out more about the bedroom I would have had to go through Anthony Kersting’s ledgers, find the right entry, and decipher his handwriting – which is something I am particularly bad at – but now, thanks to our volunteers’ efforts, all I need to do is search for the negative number in their transcription.
According to Kersting, this is a picture of Lady Fitzwilliam’s bedroom in Milton House, which he took the 10th of November 1959. Further research reveals that the building’s name is in fact Milton Hall, and that there aren’t many images of it available online. So here is a preview of what is to come once the Courtauld’s photographic collections become available on our website: zooming into the image we can see some wonderful mother and child scenes in the hand-painted Chinese wallpaper. Enjoy!
Milton Hall, wallpaper detail. Anthony Kersting archive. The Courtauld Institute of Art.Milton Hall, wallpaper detail. Anthony Kersting archive. The Courtauld Institute of Art.Milton Hall, wallpaper detail. Anthony Kersting archive. The Courtauld Institute of Art.Milton Hall, wallpaper detail. Anthony Kersting archive. The Courtauld Institute of Art.Milton Hall, wallpaper detail. Anthony Kersting archive. The Courtauld Institute of Art.
Hello and welcome to our Digital Media blog– so nice of you to come and visit!
This post is an introduction to the HLF Digitisation Project here at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The project is run by Tom Bilson, Head of Digital Media, Sarah Way, Volunteer Coordinator, and myself, Faye Fornasier, Digitisation, Metadata & Cataloguing Coordinator, and together with our amazing volunteers we will use this space to talk about what we’re doing and share our work and serendipity.
The digitisation pilot, running now until August, will be a journey of discovery and exploration. It will set the pace for the rest of the project, which, if funded, will run for four years and complete the digitisation of the Courtauld’s photo libraries, started last summer with the Witt Library as a separate project, and part of the overarching Courtauld Connects.
The three collections we are covering are the Conway Library, just under a million mounted photographs and cuttings of architecture and sculpture started by Lord Conway of Allington; the complete archive of black and white prints and negatives by photographer Anthony F. Kersting, covering architecture of almost every European country, Asia, New Zealand, the Middle and Far East; and The De Laszlo Gift of Paul Laib Negatives, with over 20,000 images of works of all the major artists active in Britain between 1900 and 1945.
A red box of Conway photographs, all mounted on brown card, waiting to be labelled.
So far, the work has been great fun. In January we had our Volunteer Open Day, which was fantastically rewarding with over 137 registrations. In February we set up the Digitisation Studio from scratch, redecorating and building furniture ourselves; Sarah met over 40 prospective volunteers in one-to-one interviews and launched the shift booking portal, while also finding the time to go on an amazing trip abroad; Tom went shopping for a Content Management System & website for our new images, and transitioned between two fascinating exhibitions by artists working with the collections; and I got the photographic equipment up and running, tested the imaging settings and workflow for different materials, and put together some step-by-step instructions for when the volunteers arrive, on Tuesday next week.
Yesterday, we had an induction event with our first 26 volunteers and they’ve already signed up for most of the next three weeks. The volunteers will bring all sorts of different experiences to the digitisation process and and insight on the images themselves, so over the course of the project we will ask them to share their stories and discoveries. What more can I say – we’re incredibly excited.
Some of the negatives have never been out of their box and seeing what happens when they go online will be magical – so save this page for updates but also let us know what you would like to find on this blog. We will be happy to answer any questions and post suggestions are always welcome.
