Philadelphia, October 12 - 15, 2017
Deadline: Oct 25, 2016

Call for Participants

"Color Printing and the Global Eighteenth Century"
Working Group Organizers: Marie-Stephanie Delamaire (Winterthur Museum)
& Jeannie Kenmotsu (Royal Ontario Museum)

Bibliography Among the Disciplines Conference
12–15 October 2017, Philadelphia, PA

The long eighteenth century was a period of major breakthroughs in the
domain of color printing in several parts of the world. In Asia and
Europe, various relief and intaglio techniques were adapted to full
color printing and achieved widespread uses in the visual arts.
Multiple-block color printing techniques were explored in
seventeenth-century Chinese painting manuals; these relief techniques
were later seen in Japanese sheet prints and illustrated books on a far
greater scale in the eighteenth century, from the poetry anthologies
illustrated by Katsuma Ryūsui to Suzuki Harunobu's vividly colored
"brocade pictures". Printing à la poupée was practiced in the Low
Countries, Italy, Britain, and France among others for decorative
printing as well as lavishly illustrated botanical and ornithological
volumes such as those of Pierre-Joseph Redouté. Jacob Christoph Le Blon
and his successors experimented with multiple-plate intaglio printing,
and produced color prints in collaboration with leading artists.

Although scholars have increasingly studied eighteenth-century
knowledge of the properties, meanings, and uses of colors, the
materials and practices involved in the production and reception of
color-printed images have received comparatively less attention. This
project will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines and
fields (printing history, book history, critical bibliography, history
of art, history of technology, etc.) to explore the proliferation of
color-printed images in the long eighteenth century. How do we
understand the emergence of widespread color-printing practices across
the globe approximately at the same time? What were the economic,
social, or political factors that facilitated color printing as a major
medium for visual creation? What were the taxonomic, semantic, and
aesthetic consequences of printing in color as opposed to hand painting
in color? We encourage submissions that engage with the specific
material practices of color-printed images that emerged in Europe and
Asia between the second half of the seventeenth century up to the early
nineteenth century, while reflecting on the broader questions they
raise with regards to our knowledge of the period and the validity of
current approaches.

Possible topics might include but are not limited to: the production
and consumption of color-printed images; color printing as a mode of
cultural exchange; the materiality of color printmaking and the
production of knowledge (including, but not limited to, spheres of
natural history, the fine arts, mapmaking, color theory, and
connoisseurship etc.); book illustration versus sheet prints; the
relationship between printing in color and painting; conservation
issues particular to color-printed works as they relate to methods and
approaches to historical inquiry; changes in disciplinary perspectives
concerning color printing and the eighteen century.

Participants should be able to commit to attending all sessions of the
working group:
Thursday, 12 October 2017, 2:00-3:30pm, 4:00-5:00pm
Friday, 13 October 2017, 10:45am-12:15pm
Saturday, 14 October 2017, 8:30-10:00am

Participants should further be able to commit to meeting again one year
after the conference to work toward a publication of the results of the
working group. In their statements of interest, participants should
indicate their availability to meet during the year following the
conference (e.g., will you be abroad - if so, when, and do you
anticipate that you will have sufficient internet connectivity to meet
virtually?).

In order to be considered please submit proposals for participation by
25 October 2016 to:
http://rarebookschool.org/ bibliography-conference- groups/
Proposal should include a brief 2-page CV and a statement of interest
of no more than 500 words, outlining your relevant research, what you
hope to contribute toward the group, and what you hope to take away
from it (including potential project ideas you hope the group may
pursue).

Bibliography Among the Disciplines, a four-day international
conference, will bring together scholarly professionals poised to
address current problems pertaining to the study of textual artifacts
that cross scholarly, pedagogical, professional, and curatorial
domains. The conference will explore theories and methods common to the
object-oriented disciplines, such as anthropology and archaeology, but
new to bibliography. The program aims to promote focused
cross-disciplinary exchange and future scholarly collaborations.
Bibliography Among the Disciplines is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, and organized by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of
Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School. For more
information, please visit:
http://rarebookschool.org/ bibliography-conference-2017/