Advertising & graphic design

Theatre posters

The term ‘poster’ originates from the medieval period when brief hand-written details of performances were handed out and stuck to posts in towns. By 1576, when the first public theatre in England opened, performances were announced by the distribution of handbills (as well as a drum procession through the streets, and by a flag hoisted at the theatre where the performance was taking place).

An adorned print: Print culture, female leisure and the dissemination of fashion in France and England, around 1660-1779

Marie-Thérèse Perdou de Subligny (1666-1735) was one of the first opera dancers, with a career that began in around 1688. Her presentation in an adorned engraved print (fig.1) provides an ideal platform for the discussion of cultural life between 1660 and 1779, bringing together diverse issues such as the production and consumption of French prints; opera; celebrity; the dissemination of fashion and female domestic craft. This paper sets the Subligny print in its cultural contexts, and rejects the notion that decorated engravings, such as this one, disseminated contemporary fashions.

Victorian circus

History of circus performance in Britain in the 19th century, and the development of circus acts, portable buildings and tenting.

In conversation, Yohji Yamamoto

Portrait miniatures: artist biographies F-L

Biographies F-L of British portrait minature artists.