Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700 (MOB)

Mobility of Objects across Boundaries (MOB) is a research network which reconsiders the history of objects across Western Europe AD 1000-1700. It brings together art historians, historians, archaeologists, literary scholars, digital humanists and museum curators to examine selected objects from this period and understand the impact and consequences of mobility of objects to larger historical transformations 1000-1700.

The network is significant because during this period major transformations took place in material culture. Quite simply, more objects were manufactured and used than ever before and many objects travelled across geographic, political, religious, linguistic, class and cultural boundaries. There are several key problems to our current study of material culture 1000-1700. Firstly, what remains unclear to academics is exactly why these changes in material culture occurred and how the movement of objects may have resulted in these bigger historical transformations. Secondly, each academic discipline tends to work separately on objects from this period.

In order to solve these problems, MOB will start with the objects themselves to focus on their mobility. It will use new categories to examine objects from the period 1000-1700: thresholds and boundaries, framing and translation. Key objects from an under-explored collection housed by the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, will be the starting point: a shoe, a pilgrim badge, a chest, a hare tile and a key. These objects were produced in multiples and thus central to the everyday lives of individuals 1000-1700, but they were also extremely mobile. For example, shoes allowed people to move across thresholds, from public into private spaces, from secular to religious spaces. Chests moved possessions across urban streets and into the domestic sphere, while pilgrim badges were worn on the body but travelled with those who wore them. The tile of three hares modeled on a Chinese motif from Dunhuang reveals how images could travel and be translated in different ways, while keys reveal the way in which objects were stored or locked up, harnessing mobility. The network will allow a group of international interdisciplinary scholars to examine these objects and share their different disciplinary approaches as well as to establish future directions for studies involving the mobility of material culture.

In order to make the findings of the network available to everyone with an interest in objects from 1000-1700, MOB will use the expertise of the Digital Humanities Research Centre at the University of Chester (https://dhchester.org/) to connect the Grosvenor museum objects examined by the network to Europeana (http://www.europeana.eu), one of the most important cultural heritage digital initiatives worldwide, and which participates with more than 3,500 cultural institutions and contains more than 45 million items. This will allow anyone to compare the objects from the Grosvenor collection to hundreds of similar objects contained in thousands of different collections across Europe. In addition, the objects examined by MOB will be featured in short films, hosted on the Open Arts Web Archive (Open University) (http://www.openartsarchive.org/), accessible to the public and which can be used as teaching tools in schools. The films will provide an interactive link to a major series of OU projects on multiple platforms, from BBC film series to OpenLearn teaching.

Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries (MOB) is a project investigating the evidence for transformations in material culture 1000-1700. There are two key impact outcomes from the network: digital dissemination and preservation; the use of films and teaching materials in schools

Firstly, objects related to mobility from the Grosvenor Museum collection will be showcased for the first time as objects that transcended European boundaries. The database already existent at the Grosvenor will constitute the starting point of a larger possible connection between West Cheshire museums and important digital initiatives such as Europeana (http://www.europeana.eu). The team recognizes the importance of digital preservation and distribution of the information produced by this project. The PI, CI, Graduate Administrator and Elizabeth Montgomery of the Grosvenor Museum will work with Dr Patricia Murrieta-Flores, director of the Digital Humanities Research Centre at the University of Chester and the technical advisor drawn from the DHRC, (https://dhchester.org/) to establish the framework for the interoperable dataset from the selected objects of the Grosvenor Museum and to integrate them to the Europeana collections, as well as the Open Arts Archive. The research network will also facilitate the necessary groundwork for beginning the research related to the mobility of objects in such datasets, and which will be a crucial resource for an enormous range of non-academic beneficiaries. It is widely acknowledged that material culture and evidence relating to their biographies must be carefully presented and that the public need to be made aware of more 'local' collections that have wider European significance.

Secondly, it will take selected objects from the Grosvenor Collection and feature them in open access short films, hosted on the Open Arts Archive (http://www.openartsarchive.org/) and the Grosvenor Museum website (http://grosvenormuseum.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/). In short videos on key MOB objects, academic participants of the MOB network will showcase their findings to the public. These films will feature among those of the Open Arts Objects project, which are already widely used in teaching of A-level Art History. Each video will be accompanied by teaching support material that will be used by schools; these will be produced in consultation with teachers so as to match the curriculum at A-level for History, English, Art History and Archaeology. These films will tap into a major series of OU projects (from BBC productions to school teaching), reaching a varied and wide audience.