Wood Engraving for Science

A team from the University of Sussex went to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff to celebrate Super Science Saturday in October 2019. We had an amazing time; nearly 300 people came to participate. We looked at image-making technologies, from wood engraving and photography to digital media. Participants worked with archival images from scientific…

Dalziel Project

Click here for information about the Dalziel Project’s new book, and here to read the project’s research output in Textual Practice. The Dalziel project would not be possible without funding from the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), as well as the generous support of our project partners, The British Museum and Sylph Editions. In particular,…

Responding to Collections

BACA students joined us once again for two online events of talks and creative activities with a group of experts and artists. Each activity involved working with archival material, or thinking about how archival material might be used as a creative prompt. Have a look below at the activity instructions from each contributor if you…

Unlocking the archive

I have been very fortunate spend recent months curating Beyond the Archive, an online of critical and creative writing drawings and prints by Year 7 students of Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA). This group is undertaking a series of structured workshops (to resume when the school re-opens) devised by teachers Lauren Howfield and Emily Jewell,…

Stranger Things: Collages by Cosmo Callesini, Dorcas Mimbulu and others (BACA)

These collages were created by students from Brighton Aldridge Academy, during the summer 2019 schools workshops. Participants were challenged to create human-animal hybrid figures, using illustrations from across the Dalziel Archive. Human-animal hybrid figures appeared frequently in Victorian popular culture, especially in children’s fiction, and theatrical entertainments, such as ‘freak’ shows. Workshop students also wrote…

Things Weird and Wonderful, by students from Plashet School

Among the many thousands of illustrations produced by the Brothers Dalziel, images of animals abound. Everything from frogs, cockatoos, and koalas, to starfish and sunflowers, are represented, reflecting the Victorian love of Natural History, and the many popular periodicals, dedicated to the subject, published throughout the nineteenth century. During the Summer 2019 series of workshops,…

The Lost Story, by Bara’a Mohamed and anonymous

This gothic short story was written by two students from the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA). For more information on their project, click here. The illustrations they have used are unidentified wood engravings by Dalziel after Arthur Hughes, Dalziel Archive Vol. XXVII (1870), British Museum reg. no. 1913,0415.188 ‘No!’ the old frail beggar wailed desperately.…

Beyond the Archive: Creative Engagements from Plashet School, BACA, Priory School, Blatchington Mill and North Notts College

During the 2019 summer term, the Dalziel Project ran a series of workshops with schools in Sussex and London, introducing 150 new students to archival research, and complementing their curriculum learning through creative tasks in English, History, and Art. The one-day sessions took place at Plashet School in East Ham, London (27th May); Blatchington Mill…

Contemporary Printmakers in the Dalziel Archive: Peter S. Smith

As part of the Dalziel Project, contemporary printmakers have been collaborating with researchers, exploring the archive in the British Museum. This has generated new work in dialogue with the Dalziels. Bethan Stevens has written about this in Printmaking Today, focusing on the recent Dalziel-related work of Neil Bousfield, Louise Hayward, Chris Pig and Peter S. Smith: you…

Exploring Materiality and Immateriality in Victorian Wood Engravings, by Carey Gibbons

Carey Gibbons recently completed a Ph.D. from the Courtauld Institute of Art: The Limits of the Body in Victorian Illustration: Arthur Hughes and Frederick Sandys. Gibbons’s research crosses disciplines, engaging with the illustrations of Hughes and Sandys in relation to their accompanying texts and Victorian science, religion, and gender constructions. She recently curated an exhibition at the…

Contemporary Printmakers in the Dalziel Archive: Chris Pig

Click images above to view gallery As part of the Dalziel Project, contemporary printmakers have been collaborating with researchers, exploring the archive in the British Museum (see more here). This has generated new work in dialogue with the Dalziels. Bethan Stevens recently wrote about this in Printmaking Today, focusing on the recent Dalziel-related work of Neil…

UCA Showcase: Photographic Responses to Dalziel

Here we present a selection of students’ work produced in early 2018 as part of our ongoing collaborative project with UCA Rochester. The images are taken from both developmental work and from final pieces, all of which engage with the Dalziel Archive photographically. Students used photography in mixed-media reproductions and reinventions of Dalziel engravings (John…

Jemima Woolnough, 'Time Takes its Toll'

Time Takes its Toll, by Jemima Woolnough

Earlier this year, young artists at UCA Rochester developed responses to the Dalziel Archive as part of our continuing collaboration. They researched the Dalziel Archive and the Alice to Alice: Dalziel 1865–71 online exhibition and produced new works of art responding to its themes–particularly temporality and sequence. Jemima Woolnough created a sculptural-photographic project, constructing a…