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Beauty By the Books, Transcribing Early Modern Recipes

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An iPad on a stand in a kitchen. On the screen is an etching of an old lady sitting at her dressing table mirror holding flowers, two younger women are putting feathers in her hair.
Exploring Research Seminar, Photo: Thomas S.G. Farnetti. Image on screen: An old lady sitting at her dressing table mirror holding flowers, two younger women are putting feathers in her hair. Etching attributed to J. Falck after B. Strozzi. Strozzi, Bernardo, 1581-1644. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

What you’ll do

This event has now past. You can watch a recording of it on Zoom.

Join an online discussion about transcribing early modern recipe books and find out how people at the time thought differently about the connections between food, beauty, bodies and health.  

The conversation will explore the practice of reading old handwriting (paleography) and transcribing it into a format that’s accessible to everyone.  

Speakers will include Professor Jill Burke, author of ‘How to be a Renaissance Woman’, Julia Nurse, a collections research specialist at Wellcome Collection, and Pamela Forde, archive manager at the Royal College of Physicians.   

The discussion will be facilitated by Gail Chapman from the Royal College of Physicians and there will be a chance to ask questions during a Q&A at the end.  

It will take place on Zoom and ticket holders will be sent joining instructions. You can submit questions in advance or during the event using Slido.   

The event is part of a day-long, global transcribathon hosted by Wellcome Collection, the Royal College of Physicians and the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective (EMROC).

Our major new exhibition, ‘The Cult of Beauty‘, explores notions of beauty across time and cultures. It runs from 26 October 2023 – 28 April 2024

Dates

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Past

Need to know

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Booking a ticket guarantees you entry to the online event. You will be given joining instructions in your confirmation email.

Auto-captioned

There will be automatically generated subtitles for this event.

For more information, please visit our Accessibility page. If you have any queries about accessibility, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 0 2 0. 7 6 1 1. 2 2 2 2

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About your contributors

Photograph of Jill Burke

Jill Burke

Speaker

Professor Jill Burke is Chair of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh. She has published widely on the history of art, gender and the body. She is currently Principal Investigator of a Royal Society-funded project, Renaissance Goo, working with a soft-matter scientist to remake 16th-century cosmetic and skincare recipes. She was on the curatorial team of ‘The Renaissance Nude’ exhibition at the J Paul Getty Museum and the Royal Academy, London in 2018–19. Her first book, ‘Changing Patrons’, questions the motivations behind Italian Renaissance art patronage and her second, ‘The Italian Renaissance Nude’, was nominated as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2019.

Black and white photograph of Julia Nurse, a white woman with brown hair, smiling. She wears an animal-print dress and the corners of paintings are visible in the background.

Julia Nurse

(she/her)
Speaker

Julia Nurse is a collections research specialist at Wellcome Collection with a background in Art History and Museum Studies. She currently runs the Exploring Research programme, and has a particular interest in the medieval and early modern periods, especially the interaction of medicine, science and art within print culture.

Photograph of Pamela Forde

Pamela Forde

Speaker

Pamela Forde is Archive Manager for the collections at the Royal College of Physicians, which date back over 700 years. Her role includes collections management and conservation. 

Photograph of Gail Chapman

Gail Chapman

Facilitator

Gail Chapman is Public Programmes Officer at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). She produces and coordinates the RCP museum’s public programme of talks and lectures, Lates events, exhibition openings and open days.