Blog

1. 

   Hulme Trust Archive: Manchester through the ages

   Thanks to a grant from the Hulme Trust in 2015, we’ve been working on cataloguing and conserving the substantial Hulme Trust Archive held at Chetham’s Library, to make it more...

   22nd June 2018 • Read more

2. 

   Sweated industries: “almost ceaseless toil, hard and unlovely to the last degree”

   ‘… earnings barely sufficient to sustain an existence; hours of labour such as to make the lives of the workers periods of almost ceaseless toil hard and unlovely to the...

   8th June 2018 • Read more

3. 

   Another Manchester Man

     We have recently acquired a copy of the first book printing of The Manchester Man by Isabella Banks, also known as Mrs G. Linnaeus Banks, or simply Mrs Banks....

   27th March 2018 • Read more

4. 

   Lustrings, Peeling and thread sattins, Sarsanets, Persians, Burdets, Camblets, Calimancoes and all other sorts of Stuffs

   Welcome to the age of consumerism! The 18th century has arrived, bringing the birth of the industrial revolution, the spread of global trade and capitalism, empire, and the abhorrent transatlantic...

   22nd March 2018 • Read more

5. 

   Graven images

   This week on BBC Four Andrew Graham Dixon presents the first of a new series ‘Art, Passion and Power: the Story of the Royal Collection’, featuring the portrait drawings and...

   17th January 2018 • Read more

6. 

   A Rare Piece of Irish History

   Among the treasures of the Heywood archive is a single-sheet broadside that would be easy to overlook. Yet the item, entitled The Provisional Government to the People of Ireland, is...

   16th January 2018 • Read more

7. 

   Apples and ale with Christmas tale will make a household merry

   The current season of Christmas songs and carols carries on a centuries old tradition. The first Christmas celebrations may have drawn upon pagan customs, but our earliest reference to Christmas...

   19th December 2017 • Read more

8. 

   Anatomy as art

   During their residency of exploration and study, Brass Art spent time looking at the Library’s collection of works on human anatomy, chiefly William Cowper’s The anatomy of humane bodies (Oxford: 1698)....

   6th December 2017 • Read more

9. 

   Ways of Reading ‘Gestured’ by Rowan Bailey

   As we reach the end of Brass Art’s magical installation ‘Gestured’, we’re delighted to share this insightful and thought-provoking essay by Dr Rowan Bailey of the Sculptural Research Group based...

   6th December 2017 • Read more

10. 

    Inviting the world to our table: Cooking a programme of outreach activities with “The Ballad of Chetham’s Library”

    For the past few years, digitisation has become a “hot” word in the development plans of museums, libraries and archives. The process entails the creation of high-resolution digital surrogates of...

    22nd November 2017 • Read more