The medieval stone crosses of Kells, in County Meath in Ireland, are among the finest examples of the Irish high crosses with a history of seeking to replicate them, as explored in an online exhibition that I have curated. These large carved stone monuments, often with panels of figural decoration and a large ring surrounding
Every change of context, every change of medium can be interpreted as a negation of the status of a copy as a copy—as an essential rupture, as a new start that opens a new future. In this sense, a copy is never really a copy; rather a new original in a new context. Every copy
The power of storytelling using manga cartoons is the subject of this latest project of PhD research from Institute of Archaeology UCL, investigating the way teens engage with digitally produced replicas of Kushite Kingdom shabti figurines. The project aims to foster engagement with teens, as members of the youth generational community (Modest 2013: 98) ,
Societies have long replicated, imitated, or even invented a past that never existed through built forms. From the copies of Greek temples that became popular across the Roman empire, to the themed residential neighborhoods that continue to transform cities around the world, re-producing a space from another time has helped people to construct a sense
This short post is intended to raise a question rather than to offer specific solutions. It poses a question about the operation of replicas in the context of a world where environmental sustainability is an existential issue and where mass tourism, at least pre-pandemic, is a major contributor to environmental degradation at both the local
As I approached the study of the nineteenth-century plaster casts of the V&A collection, I realised how fragmentary and undetailed is the technical information on the plaster casts manufacturing during the Victorian era, as well as its contemporary review. After spending quite a relevant amount of time reviewing manuals and recipes books, I figured I
I started working on my AHRC-funded collaborative doctoral project “The nature of replication: Re-contextualising 19th- and early 20th-century replicas at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History – an interdisciplinary and comparative approach” in 2018. My first steps were to review, assess and provenance the models and casts held in the Oxford University Museum of
My involvement in the topic of authenticity was largely provoked by an interest in the history of popular music (see e.g. Graves-Brown 2009). Indeed my first foray in this area, which ultimately evolved into my chapter in our OUP Handbook (Graves-Brown 2013), began as a paper which took its title from the Bonzo Dog Band
The publication of New Futures for Replicas: Principles and Guidance for Museums and Heritage prompted me to think about the extent to which current philosophies underpinning the treatment of replicas and the replication of objects relate to those which are advocated in relation to the reconstruction of heritage assets such as monuments, historic buildings and
‘DO NOT TOUCH’: a refrain common to both museums and galleries. But in some cases, touching is the best way of making sense of an object, particularly when that object is a reproduction. This is especially true of plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, of which Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum has a fine collection.
Recent Comments