Printing and Print Culture in the Midlands: a Webinar 

Artsfest / Artsfest 2020 / Printing and Print Culture in the Midlands: a Webinar

As part of our Artsfest Online autumn programme, the University of Wolverhampton is pleased to present an online talk with members of The Centre for Printing History and Culture. Hosted by Dr Malcolm Dick Director of the Centre for West Midlands History, University of Birmingham.

The Midlands was Britain’s most historically important printing region outside London. Through its connections with William Caslon I, England’s first native type-founder (Cradley), and John Baskerville, the famous printer, (Birmingham) it became a centre of world printing during the mid-eighteenth century. Its contribution to printing history, however, extends beyond Caslon and Baskerville, and for three centuries the region’s printers, type-founders, engravers, bookmakers, newspaper makers and typographic educators combined to make the region not only a national and international typographic force. But it is not simply technological advances that made the region’s printing trade significant. Its products were a reflection of its changing intellectual, social, spiritual, and commercial life, which has been preserved through the production of books, broadsides, ballads, newspapers and a range of general printing.

This book launch draws attention to a special edition of the journal Midland History, 2020, vol. 45, no 2 (Taylor & Francis Online ) which is dedicated to printing history and culture of the Midlands. Each of the authors will give a short presentation on their articles and there will be ample opportunity for discussion. Contributors include:

John Hinks: The history of printing and print culture: contexts and controversies

Caroline Archer: Places, spaces and the printing press: trade interaction in Birmingham

Sahar Afshar: The Gurmukhi type of Oxford University Press

Caroline Archer: The Baskerville Punches: revelations in craftsmanship

John Grayson: Imperfect printed enamel surfaces: interpreting marks of eighteenth-century Midland craftsmanship

David Osbaldestin: The art of ephemera: typographic innovations of nineteenth-century Midland jobbing printers

Guy Sjögren: Proclamation or persuasion: promoting the Birmingham cut-nail trade 1827-95

Andrew Jackson and Elaine Johnston: Provincial newspapers, sports reporting and the origins, rise and fall of women’s football: Lincolnshire, 1880s-1940s

Jenny Gilbert: ‘Better dressed than Birmingham’? wholesale clothing catalogues and the communication of mass fashion, 1920s-1960s

Artsfest 2020

Beatrice Warde's VE Day Diary - A reading by Jessica Glaser / Liz Berry and Tom Hicks: In Conversation / In Conversation: Artist Dean Kelland and James Latunji-Cockbill Part 1 / Dr Max Stewart and Glass Artist Allister Malcolm in Conversation / Lisa Blower and Rob Francis in conversation / Louise Fenton - Lethal in Lace: The Story of a Witchcraft Poppet / Finding our Funny Roots: delving into Black Country humour / Books Across the Sea - Talk by Jessica Glaser / Dr Dean Kelland and James Latunji-Cockbill from IKON In conversation Pt2 / The Rise of Mass Fashion in the Black Country, Talk by Dr Jenny Gilbert / VJ Day Diary of Beatrice Warde - Reading By Jessica Glaser / Printing and Print Culture in the Midlands: a Webinar / Black Country Geopoetics, Talk and Workshop with Writer R.M. Francis / The Haunted and Cursed Dolls in Greyfriars Bothy, Dr Louise Fenton / Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles at Seventy, a talk by Dr Phil Nichols / Pen, Print and Communication in the Eighteenth Century: Webinar Book / We are Invisible, We are Visible / HoPIN Launch Event (History of the Printed Image Network) / 'Somehow', Poetry Reading and Talk with Helen Calcutt / Myriad Editions Literary Salon / Liz Berry Chats Dialect and Poetry with R. M. Francis