The Institute of Historical Research at the School of Advanced Studies of the University of London hosts our seminar on Collecting & Display. The monthly seminars take place at the Institute, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU. Seminars begin at 6.00 and last approximately one hour.
Please see the Conferences page for recent updates.
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AUTUMN 2025
The Seminar for Collecting and Display invites you to its forthcoming seminars
IN PERSON OR ON ZOOM
Seminar for Collecting and Display invites you to its seminar
on Monday, 6th October, 2025, at 6pm BST
Dr Sumner Braund, Curator of Founding Collections at the History of Science Museum, University of Oxford will speak on:
A thrilling chase: Lewis Evans and the market for astrolabes at the end of the nineteenth century
Astrolabe, made by Abd al-A’imma, Persian, early 18th century, HSM Inv. No. 37321: Collections Online | History of Science Museum
Over the course of his life (1853-1930 CE), Lewis Evans, an English businessman and independent scholar, remained a dedicated collector of historic scientific instruments. His particular passion was for instruments that could be used to keep time from the position of the sun, stars, or moon. This fascination led him to build a collection of medieval and early modern sundials, astronomical compendia, celestial globes, and astrolabes that rivalled the collections of such instruments in the British Museum and South Kensington Museum. Many instruments made Evans’ collection notable, however, one type of instrument particularly stands out: the astrolabe. With an astrolabe, a person could keep accurate time by following the movement of the stars across the night sky or that of the sun during the day. Timekeeping, however, was only one use of this highly complex astronomical instrument. For example, in addition to astronomical observations, the astrolabe could be used to calculate the height and distance of terrestrial objects, to determine prayer times that depended on the rising or setting of the sun, and to make astrological readings. The earliest extant references to the instrument come from the Classical world, notably in the work of Ptolemy (c. 100-170 CE), and the physical survival of astrolabes or their parts from the ninth century onwardsthat it was an instrument widely used and developed across Northern Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian sub-continent.
By the late nineteenth century, however, the astrolabe had been obsolete for at least a century in Europe and had transformed into a rare, historic object – a collector’s item, which had acquired a layered set of associations for European collectors. On the one hand, the astrolabe recalled a bygone age of astronomy in Europe, in which astronomers made astute observations and cast horoscopes. On the other hand, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century astrolabes began to appear amongst the art and antiquities that were being sold by art dealers and collectors who specialised in goods ‘from the East’. In this context, astrolabes from the Islamic world were increasingly seen in Europe as representations of both the sophistication and superstition of a constructed Orient. The instrument was at once an art object and a window onto historic and contemporary worlds in which the science of astronomy and astrology were intertwined – it was a tantalizing and elusive object to collect.
Why did Lewis Evans want such an instrument? Where did get the 63 astrolabes in his collection – and from whom? This paper will explore the market for astrolabes at the turn of the century, following one collector’s journey through the auction houses and art dealerships of Paris and London.
Speaker Biography
Dr Sumner Braund, Curator of Founding Collections at the History of Science Museum, University of Oxford. Dr Braund’s current research focuses on the provenance of the Lewis Evans Collection at HSM. She has been exploring the social, political, and economic networks that made it possible for Lewis Evans, a businessman and independent scholar of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to build a globally significant collection of scientific instruments. Previously, as a Research Fellow at HSM, she investigated the provenance of a group of instruments from the Islamic World that form an important part of the Lewis Evans Collection: Finding and Founding research project | History of Science Museum. She held a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which enabled her to complete a DPhil in History at the University of Oxford, where she also completed her MSt in Medieval Studies. She also received a BA Hons in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto.
JOINING INSTRUCTIONS
Our speaker will present in person so do join us if you can.
To attend in person: The seminar will take place in Senate House, Malet St London WC1E 7HU, Room 349. Please register with the Institute of Historical Research by Sunday evening that you will be attending in person.
To attend online: Please register with the Institute of Historical Research by Sunday evening and you will be sent the zoom link on registration and again on the day. If you do not receive the link on registration and you wish to attend, please contact collectingdisplay@gmail.com and we will make sure that you are on the list. Some emails are still going to spam and if you don’t get a reply, please email as an alternative adrianaturpin@gmail.com.Please note: you need to register by Sunday evening.
Seminar for Collecting and Display invites you to its seminar
on Monday, 27th October 2025, at 6pm GMT
Professor Michał Mencfel will speak on
The Picture Gallery of Prince Stanislaw Poniatowski
Artist unknown (after Angelica Kauffmann): portrait of Prince Stanislaw Poniatowski, after 1788 [© Royal Castle, Warsaw]
The lecture discusses the gallery of paintings belonging to Prince Stanisław Poniatowski (1754-1833), the nephew of the last King of Poland Stanisław August Poniatowski. Due to complex political and personal circumstances, Poniatowski left the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and, at the beginning of the 19th century, settled in Italy, where he spent the rest of his life. During his twenty-year stay in Rome, he amassed a rich collection of antiquities and works of art, the most famous and most researched part of which is his collection of engraved gems. Based on fragmentary and scattered sources, I reconstruct the history of Poniatowski’s lesser-known picture gallery, from its beginnings in the late 1790s, through its dynamic growth between 1802 and 1820, to its dispersal following a sale in London in 1839. Poniatowski’s collecting activities are examined in the context of his biography, as well as his milieu and the political and social circumstances in which he was involved. The gallery serves as a prominent example of the dynamic changes that occurred in Rome’s collecting culture during the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic eras.
Speaker biography:
Michał Mencfel is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan, Poland. His research interests include the history of collections of the 16th-19th century and the artistic culture of European aristocracy. His current research project explores the antiquarian practices and the poetics of memorabilia in Europe around 1800. His writings have appeared in a multitude of journals and collective works. His recent book is the biography of Athanasius Raczyński.
Recent publications include:
- Athanasius Raczyński (1788-1874). Aristocrat, Diplomat, and Patron of the Arts, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2022 (Athanasius Raczyński (1788–1874). Aristocrat, Diplomat, and Patron of the Arts | Brill)
- The Poet’s Scull: National trauma, a passion for graves, and the collecting of national memorabilia in early nineteenth-century Poland, “Journal of the History of Collections,” Volume 34, Issue 1, March 2022, s. 157-
174, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhaa040
- The English Voyage of Michał Jerzy Wandalin Mniszech and Plat to found the Polish Museum, „Muzealnictwo” 62 (2021), s. 214-219, DOI: 10.5604/01.3001.0015.2414
- Juan Donoso Cortés y Atanazy Raczyński: historia y consecuencias de su amistad,
„Hispania. Revista Española de Historia,” vol. LXXIX, No. 261, enero-abrilm 2019, s. 127-156, https://doi.org/10.3989/hispania.2019.005
JOINING INSTRUCTIONS
Our speaker will present in person so do join us if you can.
To attend in person: The seminar will take place in the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St London WC1E 7HU, NB 02. Please register with the Institute of Historical research by Sunday evening that you will be attending in person.
To attend online: Please register with the Institute of Historical Research by Sunday evening and you will be sent the zoom link on the day. If you do not receive the link and you wish to attend, please contact collectingdisplay@gmail.com. Some emails are still going to spam and if you don’t get a reply when you book, please email as an alternative adrianaturpin@gmail.com to get the link.
Please note: you need to register by Sunday evening.
Seminar for Collecting and Display invites you to its seminar
on Monday, 24th November 2025, at 6pm GMT
Fiona Mann will speak on:
The Country Banker’s Wife and the Artist: Julia Rae and Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82): Sybilla Palmifera 1866 [© Liverpool Museums]
In April 1855 the successful Birkenhead banker, George Rae, married a young Welsh woman, Julia Williams, following the death of his first wife. Not only did Julia enthusiastically take charge of George’s three young children, but she also became closely involved with her husband’s passion for collecting works of art, in particular those of the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
While her knowledge of Rossetti’s works and her role in showing guests around the Raes’ art collection in their home has been briefly acknowledged, little has been published on the part Julia played in influencing both colour and composition in paintings they commissioned from Rossetti, including the beautiful Monna Vanna and Sibylla Palmifera; on her regular visits with her husband to Rossetti’s London studios, to check on the progress of his pictures; and on the importance she placed on the display of Rossetti’s works in their home. In particular, her correspondence with Rossetti and later with his close friend and loyal supporter, the critic Frederic George Stephens, has remained unexplored, as has the crucial role she played in preserving the significant Rossetti collection for the nation.
Despite being so active in both art collecting and philanthropy, Julia Rae remains a shadowy figure today. We do not know what she looked like, with apparently no surviving portraits of her to be found, although in 1884 the Wales Bank voted to commission a portrait of her from the foremost portrait painter of the day, Frank Holl.
Like so many Victorian women, Julia Rae has largely remained hidden behind the imposing figure of her famous banker husband. Her contribution to collecting deserves to be properly recognized.
Speaker’s biography
Fiona Mann is an Associate Researcher at Oxford Brookes University, where in 2012 she completed her thesis on the practice and reception of watercolour techniques in England between 1850 and 1880. She has published essays in the Burlington Magazine and The British Art Journal and co-authored an article on Burne-Jones for Tate Papers. She recently presented a paper at the conference Colour Matters: Exploring Colour and Chromatic Materialities in the Long Nineteenth Century (1798-1914), held at Trinity College, Oxford, in December 2023.
JOINING INSTRUCTIONS
Our speaker will present in person so do join us if you can.
To attend in person: The seminar will take place in the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St London WC1E 7HU, room Pollard 301. Please register with the Institute of Historical research by Sunday evening that you will be attending in person.
To attend online: Please register with the Institute of Historical Research by Sunday evening and you will be sent the zoom link on the day. If you do not receive the link and you wish to attend, please contact collectingdisplay@gmail.com. Some emails are still going to spam so if you don’t get a reply on the day, please email as an alternative adrianaturpin@gmailccom.
Please note: you need to register by Sunday evening.
collectinganddisplay.org 