On 4 March, almost two years to the day since the Project was launch in the Library of Birmingham in 2024, the team took a pause from their work and gathered once again at LoB for ‘Small Performances: an interlude’. This half-day event provided an update on the project, its research, discoveries, outputs and impact […]
Whilst Baskerville is known for the roman typeface that now bears his name–and is the subject of the Small Performances project–he was also responsible for cutting a Greek typeface for Oxford University Press, for which he is less well-known. In June 1761 the university authorised the printing of two edition of the Novum Testamentum: 500 […]
As part of the Small Performances Project the development team at Cambridge University Library has been able to introduce Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) views to selected items in the Cambridge Digital Library (CUDL). In addition to the high resolution deep-zoom IIIF images, you can now explore items from the Baskerville Punches collection by moving the light source, enabling you to […]
Small Performances has inspired several artistic responses from stone carving to jewellery, from photography to theatre productions. We never expected our work to be captured in verse. Here’s an ode to the Baskerville punches, written by the poet Kathleen Bell who, following her visit to ‘Capturing Craft’ our exhibition in Birmingham documenting the making of […]
Have you ever wondered how we preserve and study the tiny, intricate tools used to print books centuries ago? At the heart of the Baskerville Project lies a fascinating technique called Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) also known as Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM), a digital method that lets us explore the surface of historic metal punches […]
In 2025 our typeface designers, Riccardo Olocco and Michele Patane ran three very successful type revival workshops at the University of Reading, UK; Atelier national de recherche typographique Nancy, France; and École cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Switzerland. In each instance Riccardo and Michele worked with students on MA type face design courses to design a digital revival […]
At the start of September, the Small Performances team were privileged to participate in a unique three-day conference at the University of Cambridge: “The Craft, Texture, and Aesthetics of Letter Forms from Antiquity to the Present”, and to present two updates on the Baskerville project. Two of the Small Performances team, Marcos Martinon-Torres and Maciej […]
The Small Performances team was so thrilled to host a unique performance of ‘Make Your Mark’ a theatre piece researched, written and performed by Theatre(ish) our wonderful theatre collaborators, from Birmingham. Theatre(ish), the brilliant and talented Marcus Paragpuri and Antonia Parker Smith, worked extensively with schools in Birmingham taking the Baskerville story and his […]
The Small Performances team was delighted to have the opportunity to present the Baskerville project at the annual Association of European Printing Museums’ three-day conference which this year investigated the relationship between printing history and the heritage sites that are custodians of the material evidence of print. The conference was held at Winterbourne House & […]
Small Performances team members, Caroline Archer-Parré, Ann-Marie Carey, Maciej Pawlikowski, Liam Sims and advisory board member, Malcolm Dick, were invited to attended a ‘Specialists Day’ at Nottingham Industrial Museum to observe two rather carriages. Organised by the Carriage Foundation in conjunction with the Baskerville Society were were invited to a close-up observation of the collection’s […]