Blog

1. 

   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

2. 

   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

3. 

   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

4. 

   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

5. 

   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

6. 

   The Gestures of Hogarth

   Among the works in the collection that inspired and influenced Brass Art’s commission ‘Gestured’ were some of the engravings and etchings of William Hogarth (1697-1764). The Library’s Hogarth collection consists...

   1st November 2017 • Read more

7. 

   You must locate a fantasy

   Announcing a new residency in partnership with Book Works For this open call we are inviting artists to propose a project that engages creatively and critically with Chetham’s Library, and...

   17th October 2017 • Read more

8. 

   Reform and repression – the Hay Scrapbooks

   Almost 200 years after the Peterloo Massacre, we can read contemporary press reports of this horrific event in Chetham’s Library’s Hay scrapbooks, which have just returned from a much needed...

   15th September 2017 • Read more

9. 

   Manga among the manuscripts

   Another guest post from our most excellent volunteer and great friend of the Library, Patti Collins. One of the delights of the library is that the most unlikely items often...

   25th July 2017 • Read more

10. 

    The Revolution will not be Televised

    And indeed it wasn’t – not the French one, at least. It was engraved, however, a more genteel if slower way to record change, here presented as a Bastille day...

    14th July 2017 • Read more