National Library of Scotland and the Edinburgh College of Art: an enduring partnership

Since 2014, the National Library’s Public Programmes team have been regularly working with Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) Illustration tutors and their 1st Year students on an annual collaborative project. Taking inspiration from different aspects of the National Library’s collections, the students have created Riso prints, linocuts, drawings and paper sculptures as part of their course work and these have been subsequently displayed at the Library and shared on social media. Themes have included Stevenson lighthouses, polar exploration, pop-up books, maps, Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, and the works of Muriel Spark. 

This year, in coordination with Rare Book Collections, the National Library ran two workshops for ECA students. Under the guidance of Astrid Jaekel, Teaching Fellow Illustration in the School of Design, the students examined 18th and early 19th century Scottish broadsides to help develop ideas for their own projects involving linocuts.   

Broadsides were a type of popular press street literature which were typically printed on one side of a single sheet of paper, and often posted up in public places. The topics tended towards dramatic, humorous, or tragic narratives and often incorporated woodcuts and wood block printing.

Shelfmark: F.3.a.14

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Shelfmark: RB.l.106(107)

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Shelfmark: L.C.1268

Here is a selection of some of the beautiful linocut artworks produced by the ECA students that were inspired by our broadsides. 

Abi Cherry

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Abi Cherry

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Charlotte Arah

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Coco Wu

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Ella Stovell

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Florence Gui

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Grace Cooke

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Grace Cooke

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Rebecca Tate

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The Rare Book Division has maintained strong and long-standing working ties with the Edinburgh College of Art (ECA). The Division has hosted twelve internships for ECA postgraduate students since 2011. These interns have come from the United States, Canada, the UK and countries in Continental Europe.  

Our current ECA intern, Nava Rizvi is working towards an MSc in History of Art, Theory and Display. Nava has an art background in printmaking, was a scholarship intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and catalogued artworks as in intern at Christie’s (Dubai). As part of her internship at the National Library of Scotland, Nava is cataloguing and researching portfolios of 17th and 18th century etchings and engravings which are part of the Newhailes Collection

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Other collaborative work with the ECA has involved our collection of Eduardo Paolozzi maquettes in a Surrealist Summer School (July 2017) and a Surrealism and Scotland workshop (June, 2021) with Dr. Patricia Allmer, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History.  

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There have also been occasional workshops on “Orientalism in 19th century travel books and fine art publications” with Dr. Claudia Hopkins, and yearly seminars on private press, and artist books since 2010 with Mary Asiedu, ECA Lecturer in Graphic Design.  

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Further reading:

Ballads and broadsides in Britain, 1500-1800. Edited by Patricia Fumerton, Anita Guerrini; with the assistance of Kris McAbee. (Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2016) Shelfmark: HB2.210.8.184

Sons of Scotia, raise your voice: early 19th-century Scottish broadsides from a collection in Edinburgh University Library. Selected and edited with an introduction by Peter B. Freshwater. (Edinburgh: Friends of Edinburgh University Library, 1991). Shelfmark: H3.92.2745

Handmade prints: an introduction to creative printmaking without a press. Anne Desmet & Jim Anderson. (London: A & C Black, 2000). Shelfmark: HP3.201.0691

The printmaker’s art: a guide to the processes used by artists from the Renaissance to the present day. Hannah Brocklehurst and Kerry Watson. (Edinburgh: Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland, 2015). Shelfmark: PB7.215.70/10