Artists’ Books online and Symposium

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Anna

A selection of artists’ books has been launched online on VADS from the bookRoom collection at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA).

bookRoom is an experimental post-digital research and publishing platform within the School of Fine Art and Photography at UCA, led by Emmanuelle Waeckerlé.

Due to copyright restrictions it is usually quite difficult to view artists books online, so this is a great resource to browse a selection of artists books online, mostly by students and staff from UCA.

VADS is a unique online collection of over 140,000 images from over 300 different UK collections – all available free for non-commercial use in education. VADS covers the broad range of the creative arts including applied arts, architecture, design, fashion, fine art, and media.

Symposium on 18th Februrary (online)

Continuing the Artists’ Book theme, there is also a Symposium coming up by Spineless Wonders. Spineless Wonders is a network of artists, writers, academics and librarians, creating and researching small press publications including artists books. They are based at various universities across the UK, including the Slade School of Fine Art, who host this online event.

The event is free and features three panels on:

Community Presses
Multilingualism and Translation
Ephemera and the Environment

Book your tickets here 

 

Image in the public domain from pxhere

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previous realted posts:

Printed Matter virtual book fair

 Artsits’ Book fair and symposium 

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National Art Library to re-open

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Anna

Great news for art book lovers and researchers, the National Art Library has re-opened!

The National Art Library is held at the V&A Museum in South Kensington, and holds the UK’s most comprehensive public reference collection of literature on the fine and decorative arts, including books, journals, exhibition catalogues, auction house sales catalogues, comics, e-resources and more. It had been shut since March 2020, and has been part of a restructure due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For now it is only open on Wednesdays 11-5, but they hope to extend this in the coming months, so keep an eye on their website.

 

Photo: Andreas Praefcke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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Open access photography archive of British art now online

Posted on November 29, 2021 by Anna

An open access photography archive of British art and architecture collected by the Paul Mellon Centre from 1964 is now available to browse online. It consists of photographs of works that were often behind closed doors of private houses and collections, and has a particular emphasis on 18th century art.

This historically important and visually rich collection has now been digitised, with typed and handwritten descriptive notations transcribed for searchability, and is available, free, online.

Many images are available for re-use through Creative Commons licenses, but please check before using  any images in this way.

Two Carib Women, A Child Holding The Hand Of One by Augustus Brunai from the Paul Mellon Photography Archive (image in the public domain CC0 1.0)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previous related posts:

VADS images resource new website 

Copyright free images

Directory of Photographic Collections in the U.K.

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Plant data

Posted on November 5, 2021 by Anna

Plants of the World Online is an online database of digitised data of flora gathered over the last 250 years of botanical research. It was set up by Kew Gardens and contains data from them and their partners, including the taxonomy, identification, images, distribution, traits, threat status of plants worldwide.

Many of the images included are taken from scans of the plants from Kew’s Herbarium through their Herbarium Catalogue which includes items that have been dried or preserved over the last couple of centuries.

For example here is a scan of a Asplenium jacksonii 

It was announced yesterday (4th November) that the government is going to fund a £15 million project to further digitise the Herbarium collection and make it more accessible to researchers around the world, in the hope of revolutionising climate change research. So keep an eye out for further improvements!

Here is some information on digitising plant specimens from the Natural History Museum

Here is a link to GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world’s governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.

image © copyright of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew http://specimens.kew.org/herbarium/K000914604

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previous related posts:

Free online collection of nature and botanical illustrations

Green is gorgeous

British Art and Natural Forces online events

 

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Textile structures and resources

Posted on October 8, 2021 by Anna

Knitting is not just for woolly jumpers, did you see the amazing talents of Margaret Seaman earlier this summer, who knitted an incredible version of the Queen’s Sandringham House ?

Or how about an architectural structure? This impressive project is created by knitting textiles with an industrial machine to form the basis of the concrete structure.

Have you taken up crochet over the various lock-downs? Or maybe you have just been knitting for years. Either way, if you are feeling inspired by these crafts, or other textile projects, the library has lots of resources that can help you.

Here is a list of some knitting resources available in the library, a mixture of physical books and e-books. E-books can be read on any device, you just need to log in with your username and password.

The Materials and Products Library is now open again in Aldgate Library, so be sure to check it out on the third floor, where you can browse and touch many different materials, including fabrics.

You can also access many online resources through the library catalogue (using username and password), including the Vogue Archive, which has many knitting patterns, including these stocking tops from 1899!

You can also access thousands of images and articles through JSTOR, for example here is a search for texiles in the image search (log in with username and password), and also Bridgman Education (images) – click here for images of covers of some very stylish knitting patterns.

This is just a selection, get in touch with your Academic Liaison Librarian if you want further information or help searching nay of the resources.

other resources:

Southampton Knitting Reference Library

V&A Knitting patterns

Internet archive crochet patterns

 

Previous related posts:

New online resources

Bummock – Artists in Archives

Materials and Products

painting of a lady crocheting in a garden

Image from the public domain via Raw Pixel. ‘Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly’ (1880) painting by Mary Cassatt. Original from The MET Museum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

 


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Artists’ Lives resource

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Anna

Have you ever come across the Artists’ Lives resource from the British Library? It is a fantastic collection of aural interviews with artists where you can hear them talk about their lives, work, friendships and more.

It is a platform for British artists to create a record of their lives in their own words. The first recording was made in 1990, and is still ongoing.

If you have visited and enjoyed the Eileen Agar exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery recently, then how about listening to her talk about her life, as she was one of the first to be recorded in the 1990′s shortly before she died ? Click on this link  and you can find artists included in the A-Z by surname.

Find some more resources on Eileen Agar on the Tate website here.

Previous related posts:

British art podcasts

Sound archives and exhibitions

 

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

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Olympic design resources

Posted on August 11, 2021 by Anna

If the Olympics has got you all fired up and inspired, but in an artistic rather than a running kind of way, then check out the new theme in Bloomsbury Design Library:

‘Olympic Design: Visual identity, activism and designing to define a nation‘ has free chapters and articles from across the platform  on this theme, including on such things as:

  • The history of Japanese design
  • The Tokyo 1964 Olympics
  • Design activism and resistance
  • Yusaku Kamekura graphic designer for the 1964 Olympics
  • Learn about pong and how it shaped a new gaming experience

You can access this as well as a wealth of further design related resources by logging into Bloomsbury Design Library with your university username and password through the library catalogue.

Search the library catalogue for other Olympic themed items, click here to see a list

 

Previous related posts

Architecture Librarian’s  ARCLIB – Spring visit to the Olympic park

Olympic poster design

 

Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

 

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The School of Art, Architecture and Design Summer Show now live online!

Posted on June 30, 2021 by Anna

Once again our students from the School of Art, Architecture and Design bowl us over with their creativity during another crazy year! Check out all the work they have been doing on the online platform ‘Liveness’, live until 10th July.

Disciplines represented in the LIVENESS show will include Architecture, Fashion, Fine Art, Furniture and Product, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interior Design, Jewellery, Photography and Textiles and more. There will also be a programme of live events, so be sure to have a good exploration of the site.

Alongside this, BA Photography students have on online show ‘Strange Days’ , which can also be viewed.

Congratulations to all our hard working talented students!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previous related posts:

London Met Arts Summer Shows online!

Cass Summer shows 2019 

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Fine Art Spring show now live online

Posted on April 23, 2021 by Anna

London Met School of Art, Architecture and Design BA Fine Art students, Level 4 and level 5, spring show is now live online.

Browse  the website here until  31st of May, for some fantastic work! You can ‘visit’ a 3D virtual gallery, or browse the catalogue.

https://www.kunstmatrix.com/en/fine-art-londonmet

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The Annual Frederick Parker Lectures

Posted on March 19, 2021 by Anna

The Fredrick Parker Collection is held in our Special Collections, and is a unique resource covering over 300 years of British Furniture making and design, from 1600 to the present day. The Collection consists of over 200 chairs, together with an archive of related historical documents and artifacts and became part of the Furniture Makers’ Company in 2013. The collection is owned by the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers (now known as The Furniture Makers) one of the livery companies of the City of London, and has been on long-term loan to London Metropolitan University since 2002.

The Annual Frederick Parker Lectures will this year be held on-line on two successive Thursdays at 6pm lasting an hour with questions, free to those that book.

March 25th: Gina Pierce ‘The Archive is Alive -Parker Knoll Furnishing Fabrics’

April 1st: Luke Honey ‘A Royal Seat – The Story of British Coronation Furniture’

Register now to attend!

https://student.londonmet.ac.uk/media/london-metropolitan-university/london-met-photos/professional-service-departments-photos/library-services/special-collections/Frederick-Parker-Banner-893x520.jpg

A tool chest, a portrait of Frederick Parker and a chair from the collection


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