Treasures of the Brotherton, University of Leeds
Sara Holdsworth discovers Shakespeare’s First Folio, Brontë manuscripts and much more in this fascinating collection
The towering white art deco tower of the university’s Parkinson building is a familiar Leeds landmark. It is now also the home of a new gallery showcasing the university library’s collections of rare books and manuscripts. Universities can sometimes cold-shoulder the town but here visitors feel welcome and there is no sense of entering a members-only space. I was reassured that the gallery was so easy to find. Giant purple signage draws you in from the street right through its glass doors.
The Brotherton, which is one of the most important library collections in the country, encompasses English literature, cookery books, Romany material, a Russian archive and the Liddle collection of documented first world war experiences. There are two exhibition rooms plus a space for educational activities and events. The main area offers a well-selected display of “treasures”. Diversity is a strength here, with the valuable, the beautiful and the unexpected plucked from across the collections on show.
There is an attempt at thematic groupings: one is the transition from manuscript to print, another an assortment of mainly literary writings, and a third concerns maps, science and politics. However, it is individual items that fascinate. A Shakespeare First Folio is a highlight, as is a Caxton-printed book with type as fresh and black as the day it was made, and a Kelmscott Press book of Chaucer that recreates the glories of medieval printing.
The display is also full of stranger things. I was intrigued by a 1520 book on the grammar of Rotwelsch, a lost language that is a hybrid of German, Yiddish and Romany. Thomas Scattergood’s manuscript scrapbook of medical case histories from the 1840s shows an early example of forensic science used to solve crime. The handwritten page displayed is headed “Supposed bloodstains: the Oulton murder”. Many items have a Yorkshire connection: there are Tony Harrison’s manuscripts of “loaners” (an archaic word for citizens of Leeds) and a group of Brontë manuscripts, the most striking of which are some bleak letters from Branwell to friends begging for five pence worth of gin. The letters include cartoons of his drinking cronies, plus, for good measure, a head with an eyepatch in a hangman’s noose.
As with many library displays, the emphasis is on illustrated manuscripts, letters, fine bindings, maps and ephemera such as playbills and polling cards. Plain old books, however interesting in content, with their pages of text to be read rather than looked at, are generally hard to make into a visually engaging display. They are things that have to be interpreted in time rather than space. Rare exceptions are books such as the First Folio, whose cultural significance have turned them into objects of veneration.
Too much text?
The in-built bias towards the visual also has an influence on the written interpretation of books in a museum context. Received wisdom has it that there is nothing duller than a text about a text. I am not sure this is always so. The exhibition Shakespeare’s Dead at the new Weston Library in Oxford used early quartos to great effect as jumping-off points for an uncompromisingly intellectual analysis of Shakespeare’s attitudes to death. There, ideas were allowed to take centre stage with the physical books as supporting parts. At the Brotherton, by contrast, the panel, label and on-screen texts aim only for a brief provision of facts.
This conciseness is unquestionably a virtue in terms of intellectual accessibility, but has limitations. I would have liked more anecdotes and human stories – of collectors, of writers and their subjects – that could illuminate the objects. It is significant that one of the most memorable displays is a smuggled map and compass in a sardine tin, which allowed a British soldier to escape from a German prisoner of war camp in 1917 (he was the first to do so) together with the telegram inviting the escapee to lunch with the King at Windsor Castle.
Lively interpretation is also impeded by the “treasures” format; it becomes difficult to provide sufficient context to make sense of individual objects. I missed opportunities for multi-sensory interpretation – it was frustrating not to be able to hear some of the poetry or listen to the score by the 14-year-old Mendelsohn. Perhaps these layers could be added in future.
Frustrating displays
The shallowness of contextual interpretation and the lack of individual voices are a particular issue in the temporary exhibition alongside the Brotherton treasures, For All Time: Shakespeare in Yorkshire. I loved the regional hubris of the title but was disappointed by some of the content. There are interesting sections on the Wars of the Roses and Sir John Oldcastle using 16th-century maps and histories, but the promise of the introductory panel to “explore how directors today are still using his work to ask questions about regional identity” is not delivered beyond a few photos of productions.
Access to the views of actors, directors and theatre-goers might have added substance and colour to the historic material.
The exhibition design is a mixed bag. The thematic sections have well laid out, if rather old-fashioned, text and graphics. There are effective large-scale images that add drama to the space, the light boxes are well designed and the small screens with additional information and images are helpfully positioned on a plinth in front of the cases.
However, it was a mistake to put small objects that cry out to be examined in detail, such as a palm-sized Babylonian clay tablet, in wall cases behind the run of desk cases. This puts them more than a metre from viewers. And to add to their frustration, the placement of labels above the cases is poor as the arrows don’t point accurately to their subjects and it takes a lot of effort to match up text and object.
Despite these minor annoyances, the new gallery reveals the potential of this fascinating collection that was previously largely hidden from view. It contributes to the growing public interest in archives, manuscripts and the book as object, a trend that may reflect a reaction against the tyranny of digital text.
Sara Holdsworth is a museum and gallery consultant
Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund; The John Brotherton-Ratcliffe Trust
Gallery design GSSArchitecture
Construction NRB
Exhibition design Redman Design
Graphic design Redman Design
Print graphics Leach
Interpretation In house
Display cases ClickNetherfield
Lighting UFO
Projection Atlas AV
Installation The Hub
Admission Free
The Brotherton, which is one of the most important library collections in the country, encompasses English literature, cookery books, Romany material, a Russian archive and the Liddle collection of documented first world war experiences. There are two exhibition rooms plus a space for educational activities and events. The main area offers a well-selected display of “treasures”. Diversity is a strength here, with the valuable, the beautiful and the unexpected plucked from across the collections on show.
There is an attempt at thematic groupings: one is the transition from manuscript to print, another an assortment of mainly literary writings, and a third concerns maps, science and politics. However, it is individual items that fascinate. A Shakespeare First Folio is a highlight, as is a Caxton-printed book with type as fresh and black as the day it was made, and a Kelmscott Press book of Chaucer that recreates the glories of medieval printing.
The display is also full of stranger things. I was intrigued by a 1520 book on the grammar of Rotwelsch, a lost language that is a hybrid of German, Yiddish and Romany. Thomas Scattergood’s manuscript scrapbook of medical case histories from the 1840s shows an early example of forensic science used to solve crime. The handwritten page displayed is headed “Supposed bloodstains: the Oulton murder”. Many items have a Yorkshire connection: there are Tony Harrison’s manuscripts of “loaners” (an archaic word for citizens of Leeds) and a group of Brontë manuscripts, the most striking of which are some bleak letters from Branwell to friends begging for five pence worth of gin. The letters include cartoons of his drinking cronies, plus, for good measure, a head with an eyepatch in a hangman’s noose.
As with many library displays, the emphasis is on illustrated manuscripts, letters, fine bindings, maps and ephemera such as playbills and polling cards. Plain old books, however interesting in content, with their pages of text to be read rather than looked at, are generally hard to make into a visually engaging display. They are things that have to be interpreted in time rather than space. Rare exceptions are books such as the First Folio, whose cultural significance have turned them into objects of veneration.
Too much text?
The in-built bias towards the visual also has an influence on the written interpretation of books in a museum context. Received wisdom has it that there is nothing duller than a text about a text. I am not sure this is always so. The exhibition Shakespeare’s Dead at the new Weston Library in Oxford used early quartos to great effect as jumping-off points for an uncompromisingly intellectual analysis of Shakespeare’s attitudes to death. There, ideas were allowed to take centre stage with the physical books as supporting parts. At the Brotherton, by contrast, the panel, label and on-screen texts aim only for a brief provision of facts.
This conciseness is unquestionably a virtue in terms of intellectual accessibility, but has limitations. I would have liked more anecdotes and human stories – of collectors, of writers and their subjects – that could illuminate the objects. It is significant that one of the most memorable displays is a smuggled map and compass in a sardine tin, which allowed a British soldier to escape from a German prisoner of war camp in 1917 (he was the first to do so) together with the telegram inviting the escapee to lunch with the King at Windsor Castle.
Lively interpretation is also impeded by the “treasures” format; it becomes difficult to provide sufficient context to make sense of individual objects. I missed opportunities for multi-sensory interpretation – it was frustrating not to be able to hear some of the poetry or listen to the score by the 14-year-old Mendelsohn. Perhaps these layers could be added in future.
Frustrating displays
The shallowness of contextual interpretation and the lack of individual voices are a particular issue in the temporary exhibition alongside the Brotherton treasures, For All Time: Shakespeare in Yorkshire. I loved the regional hubris of the title but was disappointed by some of the content. There are interesting sections on the Wars of the Roses and Sir John Oldcastle using 16th-century maps and histories, but the promise of the introductory panel to “explore how directors today are still using his work to ask questions about regional identity” is not delivered beyond a few photos of productions.
Access to the views of actors, directors and theatre-goers might have added substance and colour to the historic material.
The exhibition design is a mixed bag. The thematic sections have well laid out, if rather old-fashioned, text and graphics. There are effective large-scale images that add drama to the space, the light boxes are well designed and the small screens with additional information and images are helpfully positioned on a plinth in front of the cases.
However, it was a mistake to put small objects that cry out to be examined in detail, such as a palm-sized Babylonian clay tablet, in wall cases behind the run of desk cases. This puts them more than a metre from viewers. And to add to their frustration, the placement of labels above the cases is poor as the arrows don’t point accurately to their subjects and it takes a lot of effort to match up text and object.
Despite these minor annoyances, the new gallery reveals the potential of this fascinating collection that was previously largely hidden from view. It contributes to the growing public interest in archives, manuscripts and the book as object, a trend that may reflect a reaction against the tyranny of digital text.
Sara Holdsworth is a museum and gallery consultant
Project data
Cost £1.9mMain funders Heritage Lottery Fund; The John Brotherton-Ratcliffe Trust
Gallery design GSSArchitecture
Construction NRB
Exhibition design Redman Design
Graphic design Redman Design
Print graphics Leach
Interpretation In house
Display cases ClickNetherfield
Lighting UFO
Projection Atlas AV
Installation The Hub
Admission Free