Reading Readers – Hilary Matthews
This month, University of Reading PhD student Hilary Matthews tells us about her research into livestock portraiture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. As a Reading University PhD student, I am looking at how the paintings and prints of livestock in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century functioned within the society that produced them. […]
Discovering the Landscape #23: New Towns, Landscape and Gordon Patterson
Guest post written by Penny Beckett, Chair of FOLAR MERL is to host FOLAR’s third AGM and Study Session: New Towns, Landscape and Gordon Patterson – Celebrating mid 20C Design on Saturday 19 March 2016. MERL staff will mount an exhibition of related New Town material selected from the Landscape Institute’s archive and from other […]
Explore Your Archive: Interview with Guy Baxter, University Archivist
Whitney, our marketing volunteer, has been continuing her exploration of the world of archives in an interview with University Archivist, Guy Baxter… What is your job title and what do you do within the museum? I’m the University archivist. I’m responsible for the University’s archive collections. Most of the archives I look after are the ones […]
Discovering the Landscape: Student bursary winners announced
We are delighted to announce that Moa Carlsson and Tianyi Jiang have been awarded Landscape Student Travel Bursaries. The purpose of the two student travel bursaries is to enable students to access collections held at Reading related to landscape, including landscape design, management and architecture. Moa is a doctoral student at the Department of Architecture […]
Discovering the Landscape #21: 2000 books now catalogued!
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Librarian: Landscape Institute 2000 items from the Landscape Institute library have now been integrated into our MERL library collection. All of these books have been cleaned, processed, catalogued and labelled and are available in our open access library. A small number of rare books received from the Landscape Institute have also been catalogued into our […]
Discovering the Landscape #19: From New York's High Line to London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (MERL and LI joint annual lecture on 22 October by James Corner)
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute We are delighted to announce that cutting edge Landscape architect James Corner – renowned for designing New York’s much loved High Line and the South Park Plaza of London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park – will deliver a lecture here at MERL on Thursday 22 October, as a […]
Discovering the Landscape #18: From Devon to Derbyshire, the Shell Guides to Great Britain
Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute The Shell Guides, published between 1934 and 1984, were designed to be light hearted but engaging guide books to the countryside and historical sites of Great Britain for the growing number of mid twentieth century car owners. Published by the Architectural Press and funded by Shell-Mex (more […]
Discovering the Landscape #17: Sylvia Crowe
The ‘Discovering the Landscape’ series continues with a profile of Sylvia Crowe, ending with an overview of our Crowe collections. Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute The landscape architect has to understand what the people want and to understand what the wild life wants, as well as understanding the function of whatever it is you […]
The Cheese Curry Experiment
It is difficult to know quite how to categorise this post by Project Officer, Felicity McWilliams, but it’s all in the name of research for one of our new galleries…promise! Given that it is, apparently, British Cheese Week, today seems an appropriate time to share with you the results of a little experiment I carried […]
Discovering the Landscape #15: The Chelsea Flower Show
Written by Adam Lines, Reading Room Supervisor As the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is on (19-23 May 2015) is on – what better time to delve into our Landscape Institute collection for some garden inspiration! These beautiful images show a Sculpture Garden for Chelsea Flower Show designed by Preben Jakobsen (1934-2012) in 1982. Preben Jakobsen was an award […]