To celebrate St Valentine’s Day this year we are featuring the Map of Matrimony, with its Kingdom of Courtship, River of Love, Dangerous Straits of Flirtation, Isles of Jealousy and Quicksands of Censure. Allegorical…
This is the final part of our mini blog series featuring sensational headlines from The St Andrews Citizen newspaper. Spoiler alert: contains graphic descriptions of murder – not for the faint-hearted! There are few…
One of the most enjoyable parts of working in Special Collections is, for me, answering the myriad of enquiries we receive from all over the world. Some of these are straightforward requests for information about staff…
Over the last six weeks we’ve had a glimpse into the world of Victorian cloth bindings, from its humble beginnings in coloured cloths and paper labels to bindings ostentatiously covered in gilt, or a riot of colour.…
Last week we considered grains as a form of decoration, whereby the natural grain of the cloth was disguised with a design. Almost simultaneously with the development of a myriad of grains came another revolution in…
The idea of using cotton cloth as a covering for books probably originated with the London publisher William Pickering, whilst the binder Archibald Leighton solved the earliest technical problems of colouring and…
We’ve sadly come to the end of our year long exploration of our collections. We’ve had tremendous fun getting to know obscure corners of our photographs, manuscripts, rare books and muniments better. Next week we’ll…