Places spaces and the printing press
- Submitting institution
-
Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_T1007
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- Routledge
- Brief description of type
- An edited Journal Special Issue
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The researcher conceived, crafted, co-edited and contributed an article to <Printing history and culture in the Midlands> a volume of eight articles exploring the printing trade and associated print culture of the region. The title is a special edition of the peer-reviewed journal, <Midland History>, the principle organ for scholarly work on the English midlands.
The volume uses diverse methodological approaches from historiography to craft-based practice, and draws on much primary and secondary evidence. It provides a valuable look at printing outside London and unites two subjects—printing history and print culture—which have traditionally been discussed separately. The volume’s originality lies in the fact the subject is scrutinised by observers who are not necessarily printing historians and who bring other disciplinary perspectives, social and ethnic outlooks, and life-experiences to the discussion.
The researcher’s own article, ‘Places, spaces and the printing press: trade interactions in Birmingham’, draws on primary and secondary historical sources, theories of place and space, and established typographic discourse. Using Birmingham as a case-study it considers how, over the course of three centuries, the town’s printing industry both benefited from and contributed to the progress of other trades and to what extent skills were transferred from printing to other industries. It looks at the ways in which Birmingham’s urban layout supported the reassignment of skills, encouraged industrial interactions and enabled transactions between printing and other trades; and how industrial districts and manufacturing links drew on regional resources, skills and capital for the advancement of the trade. The significance of the article is in signposting how a critical study of such interactions might be used to shed new light on the printing trade in particular and its role in the progress of industry in general, thereby leading to new understandings of how towns and their trades function.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -