Special Collections & Archives opened its doors to welcome visitors to the University of Liverpool’s recent Open Days with an array of notable books from the collections on view in the reading room. We included the Trianon Press facsimile of William Blake’s watercolours for the poems of Thomas Gray:
Treasures from our Special Collections on show in the Sydney Jones Library: William Blake watercolour #livopenday pic.twitter.com/xrYMgS3aIX
— LiverpoolUniLibrary (@LivUniLibrary) June 22, 2013
and Walter Crane’s Flower Wedding:
Tuesday Library Treasure: Walter Crane’s Flower Wedding pic.twitter.com/KtfVX6nNC8
— LiverpoolUniLibrary (@LivUniLibrary) June 25, 2013
Visitors clearly enjoyed their day – although we did risk turning the Trianon Press facsimile into a literal watercolour!
RT @daisgoodman: the Sydney Jones library at Liverpool uni has the most beautiful collection of old books I want to cry #livopenday
— Uni of Liverpool (@livuni) June 22, 2013
Prospective students had a packed programme, so we designed a set of postcards to give a flavour of Special Collections & Archives to those who might not have time to visit. The images were drawn from the Collection Pathways posters also used to advertise the collections within departments. Shown below are:
The Annunciation scene from a medieval manuscript book of hours: Liverpool University Library MS.F.2.8; the world map from a 1482 edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia; the Sankey viaduct from Thomas Bury’s Coloured Views of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway (1831); and the timeline from Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker, as featured recently on BBC Radio 4 (see SC&A’s blog).
