The First workshop is about creating a TEI (the Text Encoding Initiative) document using a free program Brackets. Putting the technical aspect aside, the preparatory work is about exploring the online Royal Archives Collection which includes his collection of Raphael's paintings, his involvement in the 1851 Great Exhibition, and his interests in the emerging photography.
I am intrigued to learn more about the 1851 Exhibition as during my thesis, I have been looking a lot into the French's colonial and world exhibitions, but have little knowledge about the contemporary Anglophone world.
While bowsing the archives, I've discovered a collection involving the Secretary of the Royal Commission of the Exhibition of 1851, Edgar Bowring's Papers. He happens to be the youngest son of Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), the fourth governor of Hong Kong.
The name of Sir John Bowring is familiar among Thai people as he is mentioned in the national curriculum of history. He was actually the main instigator of the first Siamese-British treaty. This treaty signed in 1855 between King Mongkut (known in English as King Rama IV) and Bowring is very important in Thai history as it opens a new era of Thai modernity emerging within the context of threats from modern colonisation. This treaty, to my knowledge, is often quoted by historians of critical history as the historical moment that marked Thailand as a 'crypto colony'. One of the agreements is that Siam (the former name of Thailand) granted extraterritoriality to British citizens and subjects residing in Siam.
For the Second workshop, I chose to work on the transcription of Albert's speech for the Laying of the Foundational Stone of the National Gallery of Edinburgh in 1850. The first thing that struck me is the address of the Prince to his public as solely 'Gentlemen' (how unsurprisingly). I shared this remark with our group. Some suggested that it is because this kind of speech was usually delivered in what we commonly know as gentlemen's dinner (very homosocial indeed!).
Curious about the circumstances of his speech (whether it was delivered in this kind of dinner or in public), I've digged into it. My search in the British Newspaper Archives allowed me to find news report on the event.
I skimmed through it and find the reporter's comments at the end of the Prince's speech quite amusing
Contrary to our hypothesis, the speech was delivered at the laying of the stone's site itself (aka in public), but we were right about the destined audience. The Prince delivered it to a handful of commissioners who surrounded him (all gentlemen of course) at the ceremony.
The reporter commented on his foreign identity as well: 'The Prince spoke without notes, and with a pronunciation in which his foreign origin could barely be detected.'
Gutenberg link to the 1862 publication of his speeches
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61205/61205-h/61205-h.htm
For the Third workshop, I chose to work on Dr. Becker, Albert's librarian who acted in his name for his collection of photography. The letter I work on is destined to the publisher Colnaghi who is to publish a photo catalogue of paintings shown in the 1857 Manchester exhibition. The prince seems outrageous by the way in which the painters and paintings were to be organised in the catalogue and demanded they be presented chronologically. Otherwise the publisher could not quote him as the patron in their printed version. It seems that his demand was taken into account as we can read his name on the printed catalogue here.
N.B. Fun fact: the first photographic catalogue in England was published for the 1851 Great Exhibition
During this workshop, we talked a lot about photographic techniques during the19th century (for example, glass plates) .
- daguerrotype
- wet collodian negative
- the albumen print
- the ambrotype
- carbon printing from 1860s
Albert was interested in new processes of photography, particularly the 'fading'
The Fourth session is about the Prince's Raphael collection. It's quite fascinating as this collection was ambitious as it sought for the first time to gather together every known work of Raphael, reproducing them in photographic form in order to bring out the artist's evolution. It didn't finish until some 15 years after the Prince's death in 1861.
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