Open House London; Upcoming events; RSA Archive staff changes

To begin with an apology for the long gap since our last posting!

The RSA will as usual be participating in Open House London- Architecture Up Close which takes place over the weekend of the 20-21st September. The House will be open to the public on Sunday 21st September from 12pm to 5pm (last admittance 4.30pm). As part of the event Dr David Allan, RSA Honorary Historical Adviser and Chair of the William Shipley Group will be giving a talk guiding visitors through the series of paintings, ‘The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture’, which are in the RSA’s Great Room and were painted by James Barry between 1777 and 1784. Due to our involvement in this event there will be no ordinary RSA Open House in September.

There are a couple of upcoming events which we would like to draw your attention to:

An exhibition to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Scott Russell (1808-1882) opened on 22nd May and will run until 20th November 2008. The Exhibition is being held at the Institution of Civil Engineers, One Great George Street, Westminster and is open Monday-Friday 9.30am-5.30pm. Scott Russell was a Member of the Society and became Secretary in 1845.

We would also like to give advance notice of the Samuel Johnson Tercentenary celebrations which will be taking place in 2009. Various events have been planned for next year by the Samuel Johnson Tercentenary Committee and the RSA will be participating in them. Samuel Johnson was one of the Society’s early Members and took a great deal of interest in the Society, attending meetings and participating in debates. Further details of RSA participation in these celebrations will follow in the coming year.

There will soon be some staff changes in the RSA Archive team. Firstly we will be welcoming a new member of the team, Amy-Jo Bransfield, who will be joining the department in the newly created position of Assistant Archivist and Records Manager. Amy is in the process of completing an MA in Archives and Records Management at University College London and joins the RSA on 1st October.

In addition the Archive and Records Management Trainee, Sophie Cawthorne, will be leaving the RSA on 19st September in order to begin an MA in Archive and Records Management at the University of Liverpool. We shall be very sorry to lose Sophie, but wish her all the best on her course and in her future career, and we look forward to welcoming her replacement Phoebe Fox-Bekerman on 22nd September. As a result of the changeover we will not be able to accommodate researchers in person between 24th September and 7th October, although we can be contacted as usual via letter, e-mail or telephone during this period. Normal service will resume from 8th October. For further details about how to arrange appointments please see the main RSA Archive page on our website.

Finally we would like to apologise for the disappearance of the archive catalogue from the RSA website which occurred as a result of the new website being launched in May. We hope that the catalogue will be reinstated shortly, but in the meantime please feel free to contact the RSA Archive with any questions relating to the catalogue.

David Livingstone letters; William Shipley Group events; Visitors to the RSA Archive; new opening hours

Two letters sent to the Society from the missionary and African explorer David Livingstone (1818-1873) have recently been digitised as part of Livingstone Online. Livingstone Online, funded by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL and the Wellcome Trust, aims ‘to use the potential of electronic publishing to make available an online edition of the medical and scientific correspondence of David Livingstone’. The website provides transcriptions of Livingstone’s correspondence alongside high resolution images of the original manuscripts.

The letters were both addressed to Peter Le Neve Foster (1809–1879), who was Secretary of the Society from 1853 until his death. The letters dated December 1864 and February 1865 concern Livingstone’s requests for information on the ivory market with reference to a lecture by Richard Owen delivered to the Society in 1857.

A joint meeting will take place on Tuesday 13 May between the William Shipley Group and the Georgian Group. The lecture “James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and the Society of Arts” by Dr Kerry Bristol, Director of the Centre for Architecture and Material Culture at the University of Leeds, will look at Stuart’s close connections with the Society of Arts. The event will take place at 6.30pm at The Georgian Group, 6 Fitzroy Square, London. Tickets are £10 each. Please book via the Georgian Group’s website.

Readers of this blog may be interested to know about some of the visitors the RSA Archive has received since the beginning of the year. In addition to researchers and academics, the Archive has also welcomed a number of visits from other members of the archive profession. While our collection of historically important records is always of great interest to visitors, our strong rooms (constructed as part of the Heritage Lottery funded project between 1997 and 2002) are of particular interest to those within the profession, as they meet the relevant British Standard for the storage of archives.

Recent visitors have included Liz Wilson, Archivist to the illustrator Quentin Blake, who is one of the RSA’s RDI’s (Royal Designer for Industry). The picture below shows the 1988 Christmas card designed specifically for the Society by Blake.

We also welcomed Professor Robert McWilliam and Archivist Carol Morgan, both of the Institution of Civil Engineers. They had particular interest in our collection of papers written by the engineer and naval architect, John Scott Russell (1808-1882) who became Secretary of the Society in 1845. Professor McWilliam, who is also a Fellow of the RSA, is working on an exhibition to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Scott Russell’s birth which is planned to open later this year at the Institution.


The RSA Archive was also involved in an event at the start of the year to commemorate the 302nd anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin. The lecture ‘Heritage and Learning Beyond the Classroom’, held as part of RSA Thursday and in conjunction with Benjamin Franklin House, was held on 17th January. Speaker Barry Sheerman MP, Chair of the Education and Skills Select Committee, discussed the importance of teaching young people about our cultural heritage (with particular reference to Franklin) and the benefits this can have in terms of citizenship. The lecture was chaired by Dr Marcia Balisciano, who is Director of Benjamin Franklin House.

The RSA Archive provided a display for visitors to the lecture including letters from Franklin to the Society and material showing how archives can be used as resources for the teaching of citizenship. Franklin became a member of the Society in 1756 and was very actively involved during the years he spent living in London. The picture above shows a plaster cast of Franklin by Jean-Jacques Caffieri which was presented to the Society in 1791 by Pahin de la Blancherie and is displayed in the Benjamin Franklin room within the RSA House.


Lastly, we regret that due to internal obligations and pressure on staff time we are now operating revised opening hours. The RSA Archive is open to the public Wednesday to Friday from 9.30am to 4.45pm by appointment only.

One hundredth anniversary of the RSA becoming 'Royal'; William Shipley Group events; new research on sculpture uses RSA Archive

January 2008 marks the hundredth anniversary of the RSA becoming the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. The minutes of the Council meeting on 27th January 1908 (reference AD.MA/100/12/200) record that King Edward VII, who was then Patron of the Society, had granted permission for the use of the prefix ‘Royal’ in its title. It then states that 'it was resolved that the Secretary be instructed to take all the necessary steps for prefixing the word "Royal" to the title, whenever the title is used'. A short notice was also published in the newly entitled Journal of the Royal Society of Arts on January 31st 1908 Volume 56.

It was not however recorded in the minutes who had made the initial suggestion to apply to the King for the use of the prefix 'Royal'. The Society had possessed a Royal Charter since 1847 which amongst other things established the Council as the governing body of the Society. There is no reason given in the Council minutes as to why the use of the prefix ‘Royal’ was not sought at that time. ‘The History of the Royal Society of Arts’ by Sir Henry Trueman Wood, published in 1913, notes that the granting of the Royal Charter in 1847 marked the beginning of a new chapter in the RSA’s history. After this point greater emphasis began to be placed on lectures and the reading of papers, the Journal commenced publication in 1852 and the Society started ‘a fresh career of usefulness’.

A joint meeting between the William Shipley Group and the Johnson Society of London will take place on Saturday 12 January. ' "The Wider Range of Knowledge": Johnson, the RSA and the Adelphi revisited', will consider Dr Samuel Johnson's connections with the RSA. The event will take place at 2.30pm at Wesley's Chapel, 49 City Road, London.

Please contact Susan Bennett on susan@bennett.as for further details, and visit the William Shipley Group website for information about more upcoming events.

We were pleased to receive a copy of an article from the Sculpture Journal by David Wilson, Director of the Wordsworth Centre The article, ‘New information from the Society of Arts: Roubiliac’s model of Hercules and Atlas, and Nathaniel Smith’s model of St Andrew after Duquesnoy’, draws upon research undertaken last year by Mr Wilson in the RSA Archive. We hold two letters by Louis Francois-Roubiliac (1702-1762), which Mr Wilson reports were previously unknown to scholars in this field. The above work, Beasts, by Nathaniel Smith, a pupil of Roubiliac's, is certified as being by Smith in one of the letters.