Interview with a Librarian - Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros

The Society of Antiquaries of London is well-known to bibliophiles, regularly hosting meetings and offering access to a rather remarkable library in Burlington House. This month, our Librarian Interview is with Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Library and Museum Collections.

 

The Society has such a vast collection, and your library is at its very heart – please tell us which items are the ones you treasure most (both in your library and in the more general collection).

With over 130,000 books, hundreds of manuscripts, more than 300 years’ worth of archival collections and around 45,000 museum objects, it is very difficult to choose. We have a wealth of treasures, each one of them beautiful, and each one fascinating in its own way. A perfect example is The costume of the original inhabitants of the British islands (1815). The author, Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick (1783–1848), was an antiquary who filled almost every room in his house with historic arms and armour. His book contains twenty-four colour plates by the soldier, naturalist and artist Charles Hamilton Smith (1776–1859) and was the first publication to use archaeological evidence to help create visual representations of an imagined prehistoric past. It includes a fantastically animated and colourful depiction of the ‘Grand Conventional Festival of the Britons’ at a Stonehenge that looks shiny and new, with every sharp-edged stone in its place. The crowds are dressed in their technicolour Sunday best, although one or two are wearing nothing at all, and there is a definite rock concert (or should that be ‘stone concert’?) atmosphere in the air. I love the contrast between this fantasy and the reality of a photographic image of Stonehenge in our museum collection. It was probably taken around 1901, when work sponsored by the Society was being carried out at the site. It shows a small group of people standing inside the circle of worn, crooked and fallen stones, with a horse and carriage in the foreground. We can guess from the hats, heavy coats, and umbrellas, that the weather that day was dismal. The joyous summer festivals ended long ago, and these people are in the serious business of preserving an ancient monument and deciphering its mysteries, come rain or shine.

 

Which one is the most valuable book or manuscript in your library? Tell us a bit more about it.

We have many priceless treasures. What matters to us is their significance rather than their monetary value, which is almost irrelevant as so many of the items in our collections are irreplaceable. Among the most significant are the Society’s three Magna Cartas. The first is a pretty faithful copy of the authorised 1215 version. It is bound inside the ‘Black Book’ of Peterborough, a register of the Benedictine abbey which was first copied and compiled in the early 12th century and supplemented over the next two centuries. Our second copy is a roll containing a contemporary copy of the third revision of the Magna Carta issued by Henry III in 1225 (the final form was later confirmed and enshrined in English law with 47 clauses instead of the original 63), which includes the Charter of the Forest. It is believed to have belonged to Halesowen Abbey in Worcestershire and it was owned by Bishop Charles Lyttelton, the Society’s President from 1765 to 1768. The third one is bound inside a volume commonly known as the ‘Hart Book of Statutes’. It is also a copy of the 1225 reissue and the 1225 Charter of the Forest. It is an illuminated document, probably commissioned by a wealthy practising lawyer, and was given to the Society by William Henry Hart, FSA, in 1862. Magna Carta signals a huge turning point in English history: the end of the absolute power of the monarch and the birth of individual rights. The 1225 version became the definitive text that inspired the US Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is why, ten years after our last Magna Carta exhibition, we will be hosting another one next summer, to explore the impact the document continues to have on our lives. The free event will be open to the public from May to July 2025.

 

You have been at Burlington House for 150 years now and your lease has just been renewed, which must have been hugely exciting. Do you have any books specifically referring to that move to Burlington House?

We’re all enormously excited about this new chapter in our history and the fantastic opportunity we now have of carefully adapting the building to enable us to display more of our collections and open the Society to the public more than ever before. It is also a huge relief to know that we won’t have to relocate. Moving an institution to a new location is never easy, especially when it involves decanting thousands of items. Even when it runs fairly smoothly it can be fraught with danger. The Society’s Proceedings for the 21st Jan. 1875, record the President’s first address in Burlington House. In it he mentions two ‘drawbacks’ associated with the move from Somerset to the new premises. The first drawback was the loss of the whole Autumn Session of meetings although, personally, I’m amazed that they only had to suspend normal operations between July and December 1874 to carry out the move. The second drawback, in the President’s own words, was of a more ‘personal’ nature:

Our Secretary, while engaged with his usual activity and zeal in the discharge of his official duties, by arranging the books of the Library on the upper bookshelves, unfortunately missed his footing and fell to the ground, sustaining a severe injury to the right shoulder. He has in consequence during the last few weeks endured great pain and inconvenience, to say nothing of the necessity which he has found of conducting his correspondence and other writing by means of an amanuensis. It is a high gratification to us this evening to see a gentleman whom we all so much respect and value, restored to health, and resuming his customary place among us. May he long continue to fill it.

 

As part of your celebrations, you will have an exhibition, the Reign, with two contemporary artists, Adam Dant and Dan Llywellyn Hall, who took inspiration from your collection to help with fundraising. I know the artists were very impressed by the library – which books did they like in particular?

Adam Dant spent quite a bit of time in our library. His studio is at the edge of the financial district, and the origin myths of London appear regularly in the prints, drawings and maps he creates. Myths such as the foundation of Troia Nova by Brutus, the defeat of the giant Gogmagog, the antics of Boudica, Jack Cade and the Beggar of Bethnal Green have all been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny of Antiquaries throughout the ages. Adam investigated our collection with a view to retelling these foundation stories, constructing them from visual evidence as opposed to creating imaginative illustrations.

 

Fundraising is always important to an organisation like yours, especially in the age of digitalisation – what other fundraising activities do you do?

The Reign exhibition from 28th June to 5th July 2024 with artists Adam Dant and Dan Llywelyn Hall will culminate in a fundraising auction on 4th July to raise funds for our Prints and Drawings Collection at Burlington House. We plan to fund a new Curatorial Assistant post to begin the enormous task of cataloguing, digitising and sharing our collection of some 25,000 prints and drawings, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. This will enable us to undertake the first ever comprehensive and professional approach to cataloguing the prints and drawings, which, for the most part, are undocumented and inaccessible online. If you would like to visit the exhibition or attend the fundraising auction, see here >

We are also currently fundraising to conserve a unique set of 17th-century tapestries inside Kelmscott Manor’s Tapestry Room. Originally a bedroom, the Tapestry Room acquired an added significance when William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti took on the joint tenancy of Kelmscott Manor in 1871.We have raised 90% of the £306,000 needed to complete the project and reinstate the tapestries as they were when Frederick Evans photographed them in 1896. If you would like to support the project please visit their website >

 

Tell us a bit more about your strong link to William Morris, you are the custodians of his country house, Kelmscott Manor – do you have any Morris related treasures in your library?

The bulk of our Morris collection is naturally housed at Kelmscott Manor, but we do have a few treasures at Burlington House as well, which speak of William Morris’s work as an author, linguist, calligrapher, designer and printer. We have a few of his printing blocks and binding tools as well as some of his books. Among his manuscript books there is a tiny 13th-century French Bible with exquisite calligraphy, decorated initials and borders, which clearly inspired his designs, as well as notebooks with his handwritten translations of myths and legends such as that of Lancelot du Lac. An unfinished calligraphic manuscript of ‘The Story of Egil Son of Scaldgrim’ has a beautifully flourished penwork initial. We also have some of his printed works. Our copy of his epic poem in four volumes, The Earthly Paradise (1870), was a Christmas gift to his daughters. It has a letter he wrote to them dated 25 December 1870 and pasted into the first volume. The most impressive printed volume we hold is William Morris’s masterpiece, the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer, from the Kelmscott Press (1986). Completed just before his death, it has been described as ‘one of the great books of the world’. The type, known as ‘Chaucer’, was designed by Morris himself, as were the ornamental woodcut title, 14 large borders, 18 different frames surrounding the illustrations and 26 initials. The 87 wood-engraved illustrations on the specially-made paper were designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

 

As a way to promote the SAL and its treasures you are now open to the public on Fridays and have some special late nights. I loved your Halloween one last year, so many amazing books and manuscripts – please tell us about a couple you found most fascinating.

I am especially interested in publications that show how magic, the occult, religious beliefs and political propaganda are often interconnected. This was particularly clear in two of the items we had on display that night. One was a large and impressive tome written by a king while the other was a small anonymous pamphlet. Daemonologie, or The Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince, James by the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland (1620) was intended to convince sceptics of the reality of witchcraft and to justify the practice of witch trials, as well as brutal punishments. The Society’s copy is filled with marginal comments by one J. Collier who owned it in 1750. Collier refers to James I as Solomon (‘the Scotch Solomon’, ‘Solomon the second’), and adds ‘An Epitaph for a King’s Monument’: ‘Here lying Jimmy lyes: what, James the younger? O no, no, no; 'tis Jammy the Witch-monger. What, did he living lie; and lyes now dead? Read thou this piece – 'twill answer in my stead’. The 1652 pamphlet has an extremely long and self-explanatory title: The ranters monster: being a true relation of one Mary Adams, living at Tillingham in Essex, who named her self the Virgin Mary, blasphemously affirming, that she was conceived with child by the Holy Ghost; that from her should spring forth the savior of the world; and that all those that did not believe in him were damn’d: with the manner how she was deliver’d of the ugliest ill-shapen monster that ever eyes beheld, and afterwards rotted away in prison: to the great admiration of all those that shall read the ensuing subject; the like never before heard of. According to the pamphlet, Mary was brought up in a good Christian home but later rebelled against her upbringing, first joining the Anabaptists and then the Ranters, a free-thinking dissenting group that arose during the period of the English Commonwealth and rejected the authority of the established Church. Mary denied the teachings of the Gospel and claimed she would give birth to the true Messiah. The local minster imprisoned Mary for blasphemy, and after eight days of tortuous labour, her child was stillborn, with ‘claws like a toad’ instead of hands and feet. As punishment for this blasphemy by God, Mary became consumed by disease, covered in ‘blotches, blains, boils and stinking scabs’. Despite purporting to be a ‘true relation’, there is no evidence to corroborate these events or confirm those involved even existed. Instead, it was part of a phenomenon of monstrous birth pamphlets that became popular in early modern England. This tabloid-like form of entertainment could serve as a means of moral and religious instruction to women and a shocking warning of divine retribution to those living in sin. ‘The Ranter’s Monster’ is also Puritan propaganda against religious dissenters who posed a growing threat to governance and societal order during the Commonwealth period.

 

 

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