This week we welcome guest author Dr Nina Adamova, British Academy Visiting Fellow at St Petersburg University, who explores a particularly interesting copy of The Nuremburg Chronicle held at the Central Library. Dr. Adamova will be delivering a talk on the same subject tomorrow at 2pm. Tickets are still available at the time of writing. …
Category: Treasures & Discoveries
Leeds and the Spanish Civil War
This week Local and Family History’s Josh Flint and Scott Ramsey – PHD Researcher, School of History, The University of Leeds – tell us about the exciting Exhibitions from the International Brigade Memorial Trust and the Basque Children of ’37 Association coming to the Leeds Central Library from the 19 March – 5 April. This…
The Ancient Art of Bookbinding
This week we hear from Library Officer, Philip Wilde, who highlights some amazing examples of bookbinding in the Central Library collections… The ancient art of bookbinding has been a craft for over 2,000 years. Originally the binding served the purely practical purpose of protecting the book however, book coverings were later to be seen as…
Double, double toil and trouble – What inspired the witches in Macbeth?
This week we hear from Collections Manager Rhian Isaac on some sources for Shakespeare’s witches… It’s a month until Shakespeare Week and to start getting people in the mood I have been bringing out some of our collections to explore why Shakespeare may have incorporated the supernatural into his plays. Monsters, fairies, witches, demons and…
Speed-dating our Library Treasures IV
Last Wednesday night saw the latest instalment of the Speed-date a Library Treasure event, this time taking place in the cosy upstairs room of Further North in Chapel Allerton. Leeds Libraries staff brought along a number of treasures from the special collections and with 3 minutes between each bell they hurried to extol the virtues…
‘Sundry Articles of Queens or Cream-Colou-r’d Earthen-Ware’ – The Leeds Pottery Books
Adam Barham, Assistant Librarian Manager in the Art Library, takes a look at our collection of rare Leeds Pottery Books… Leeds Central Library houses several rare volumes relating to the Leeds Pottery Company. These include the Design, Drawing & Pattern Books and another set of volumes entitled ‘Designs of Sundry Articles of Queens or Cream-Colou-r’d…
Leeds Baby Week and US. Patent 3,216,423
This week, Librarian Louise Birch takes a look at an intriguing patent for Leeds Baby Week: an “Apparatus Facilitating the Birth of A Child By Centrifugal Force”. Leeds Central Library is home to a Business and Intellectual Property Centre, part of a network of regional centres here to help out all you inventors, designers and…
Thomas Gent’s 1733 Wood Engraving of Leeds
Librarian Antony Ramm takes a brief look at a lesser-known view of Leeds in the 18th-century… Eighteenth-century Leeds suffers slightly, perhaps, in the popular mind-set, sandwiched between a 19th-century more obviously traceable in its effects on the built environment of the city, and a seventeenth-century with more viscerally thrilling episodes and dominant personalities. While much good…
