The theme of this event is Illustrating Festivals. This event is FREE and booking is available HERE

This event is run in conjunction with ArtsFest at the University of Wolverhampton.

PROGRAMME

KRISTIN BLUEMEL Joan Hassall’s The Marriage of Robin Redbreast and the Wren  Wartime Edinburgh inspired English wood engraver Joan Hassall to design and illustrate for the newly established Saltire Society some of the most beautiful chapbooks of modern times. This lightning talk introduces you to the Christmas favourite of 1945, The Marriage of Robin Redbreast and the Wren. KRISTIN is Professor of English at Monmouth University in New Jersey. She spent most of 2022 chasing the spirit of Thomas Bewick around Newcastle-upon-Tyne while writing Enchanted Wood, a book about British women wood engravers (forthcoming in 2024).

BRIAN MAIDMENT, 'Christmas newly invented - Thomas Hervey's Book of Christmas (1837)' This brief talk looks at the interplay between disillusioned late Regency graphic comedy, the growing marketplace for seasonal books, and a more optimistic, if nationalistic, early Victorian version of Christmas. BRIAN is Emeritus Professor of the History of Print at Liverpool John Moores University and an ex-president of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. His two most recent books are Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order 1820-1850 (2013) and Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture (2021).

LORRAINE JANZEN KOOISTRA, Jack Yeats’s illustration of the Hunt the Wren Day ritual in celebration of St Stephen’s Day This talk will focus on an illustration by Jack Yeats (1871-1957) hand-coloured by Pamela Colman Smith (1878-1951) for her Green Sheaf magazine. Accompanied by a traditional refrain, Yeats’s line drawing pictures the festival of Wren Day as celebrated on St. Stephen’s Day (26 December) in Ireland. I will situate the hand-coloured image in the context of the folkloric expressions and artisanal practices of two late-Victorian serials associated with the Irish revival. LORRAINE is Professor of English Emerita and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Digital Humanities at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Her books include The Artist as Critic: Bitextuality and Fin-de-Siècle Illustrated Books; Christina Rossetti and Illustration: a Publishing History; and Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: the Illustrated Gift Book and Victorian Visual Culture 1855-75.

FRANCESCA TANCINI Walter Crane and his Christmas-related cards and ephemera, Christmas crackers, hanging stockings and jolly hollies in cards, ephemera, and illustrations by Walter Crane. Browsing through notebooks, drawings and sketches, we will take a look at the festive production of British artist Walter Crane: cards, calendars and other ephemera, illustrations. This brief talk analyses Christmas iconography in Victorian times touching some of its most beloved symbols. FRANCESCA has been Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Newcastle University with PiCoBoo, an EU-funded research project in partnership with Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children’s Books, with a secondment at the V&A. Francesca has been researching illustration through postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and is currently compiling a descriptive bibliography of Walter Crane’s books.

DAVE STEEL, Free festival posters of the 1970s. Dave Steele will talk about the network of low tech DIY community printers producing designs for the emerging festival movement. Many borrowed designs and techniques to produce an innocent naivety characteristic of the time. Dave will share some of his experiences as a self taught silk screen printer producing festival printing. DAVE’s print career spanned 50 years including craft & commercial screen printing, commercial litho platemaking/process), high st. retail instant print, DTP/postscript and latterly digital advisor & trainer to print and creative industries. He maintains an interest in print history and joined the Printing Historical Society in 2014. Dave has recently completed his PhD at Warwick. His research explores the reputational power of nineteenth-century English reform crowds. @dr_davesteele

JOANNE McNEISH, Illustrating Printers’ Ingenuity through 75 Years of Edinburgh Festival Fringe Ephemera, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe operated based on an open-access framework meaning that anyone can perform with almost no limit. Printed ephemera such as flyers, posters and waybills (theatre programs) were ideal promotional vehicles, particularly for new and unknown performers. Beyond simply providing information about the show, they created a relationship between performer and potential audience members. JOANNE is an Associate Professor, Marketing at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has a particular interest in paper documents (e.g. bills and statements, textbooks, flyers, catalogues) as examples of a resilient technology, which continue to be used simultaneously with digital technologies, rather than being replaced by them.

ANTONY QUINN, Festive magazines and special numbers. Walk into a British newsagent around Christmas and you’ll be offered a special ‘double number’ by weekly magazines as varied as The Spectator, Economist and New Scientist. In July, there will be special summer numbers of the women’s glossies focusing on fiction. This talk examines the evolution of special numbers and identifies some prime examples. ANTHONY is a freelance journalist, author and lecturer. He founded Magforum.com, the magazine history website, in 2001. He has been group editor at BBC Magazines, head of publishing at West Herts College in Watford, and chief sub-editor at the Financial Times. His books include A History of British Magazine Design (V&A, 2015) and Kitchener Wants You: The Man, the Poster and the Legacy with Martyn Thatcher (Uniform Press, 2016).