Early modern copper plates at the Bodleian Libraries

This Collaborative Doctoral Partnership project focuses on the origins, history, and future
curatorial treatment of engraved and etched copper plates, within the Bodleian Libraries. The
Bodleian holds some 2,000 engraved and etched copper plates, most originally crafted in the
seventeenth or eighteenth century for making picture prints or book illustrations. This body of
material holds the potential for research into any stage of the creation, collection, and
curation of these copper plates between the 17th and 21st centuries. This collaborative
doctoral partnership aims to increase knowledge of this collection while scoping further
curatorial possibilities for integrating printing matrices with other library collections. As such,
the studentship will contribute to both the historical record of the Bodleian and to future
curatorial treatment, within museums and libraries, of three-dimensional items which have
the particular character of printing matrices.
This PhD scholarship is expected to focus on the Rawlinson Collection, a group of
750 engraved and etched copper plates owned by the London-based antiquarian collector
Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755), and it may make reference to the nearly 1,400 other
historical copper plates at the Bodleian. The Rawlinson plates illustrate scenes and objects
of antiquarian and topographical interest and many portraits and include work
by Wenceslaus Hollar and David Loggan. Another group of plates within this collection was
made for Rawlinson himself, to depict unique objects in his own vast antiquarian collections,
including medieval manuscripts, antique and exotic cultural objects, inscriptions, and seal
matrices.
The aim of this research is to undertake the first major study of this unique corpus of print
history within the UK. By doing so, the project will advance understanding of such plates as
cultural heritage objects in and of themselves, not as secondary to the material they were
used to print. It will support research into printing matrices and their curation, as well as their
connection to relevant areas of study such as art history, the history of collections, and
materials science. What were the considerations which motivated a collector to preserve
copper plates? What value was placed upon them within the Bodleian Library and the wider
University? What facets are relevant to contemporary scholarship? What role do such
objects have in the scholarly environment increasingly dependent on digital information?