52 weeks of Historical How-to’s, week 34: Headache remedy
This week’s blog takes a look at medicinal remedies. My attention was first drawn to The method of physick by Philip Barrough as it contains ‘the cavses, signes, and cures of […]
Tag: Rare Book Collection
Lighting the Past turns 1 year old – catalogues almost 10,000 books to-date!
On 10 June 2014 Lighting the Past celebrated its first birthday, when Phase 1 cataloguing on the programme began officially. Over this last year we’ve achieved much, having catalogued three […]
52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 33: The Art of Stained Glass
Special Collections contains a number of publications and collected archives relating to the production and design of stained glass. As an aspiring stained glass artist I decided to look through […]
A Tale of Two Cities: fragment of extremely rare 17th century Glasgow Catechism uncovered
A few months ago, while walking the stacks of our 17th century collections, a copy of Andrea Morosini’s folio Historia Veneta (1623) caught my eye. Normally, when trolling stacks of […]
52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 32: ‘To make a Hedge Hog’
For my daughter’s second birthday recently, I attempted to recreate Judith Kerr’s forgetful cat Mog in sponge cake and sugarpaste. This kind of novelty cake stretches back much further than […]
Cataloguing of all 17th Century Books by Athanasius Kircher Complete!
On the 15th of May, Hermine Lefebvre, USTC/ENSSIB intern for 2014, completed a wonderful cataloguing project which has seen all of St Andrews’ 17th century editions of Athanasius Kircher added […]
52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 31: Vegetarian Hotch-Potch
This week’s historical how-to takes a look at early vegetarian cooking. Although not a vegetarian myself, inspired by Vegetarian Week which has just passed, I thought I would delve into […]
52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 28: translating 17th century verse into Esperanto
For this week’s how-to post, I’ve taken some inspiration from one of our quirkiest collections, that of the Reverend John Beveridge (1857-1943). Beveridge gifted his library and archive to the […]
52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 27: Embroidery
Four weeks ago, we described how to make a linen shift using the directions in Robert Byfield’s Sectum: the Universal Directory in the Art of Cutting, published in 1825. This […]
52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 26: Brewing Scurvy Grass Ale!
This week’s How-to post gave an excuse for our two departmental home-brewers, Marc and Daryl, to stretch their boundaries to adapt a strange recipe for “Scurvy-grass Ale” found in an […]