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The Collation

A Geek-Peek at Folger "ART File" and "ART Box" Classification

One of the most fascinating books I read while working on my dissertation had nothing to do with the topic as such:

Front cover of the User’s Guide to the Dept. of Prints & Drawings in the British Museum

It’s the 189-page “user’s guide” to the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, published in 1987. In it, Antony Griffiths and Reginald Williams matter-of-factly explain the dozens of schemes their department had used over the years in attempts to store, organize, and index prints and drawings. Phrases like “unfortunately, there is no way of telling [obvious thing one would want to know]” and “Thus, despite its name [a given index doesn’t do what it claims]” regularly punctuate the text. Besides being essential for conducting research in those pre-online-catalog days, the book recorded changing ideas about the most important aspect of a given piece. 

  1. At first, the British Museum tried collecting three copies of every print, one to file under the artist’s name, one to file under the engraver’s name, one to file under the subject depicted, but that was soon abandoned as impractical.
  2. Similar views are found elsewhere, though, with different lettering and design.
  3. Pre-1700 prints and all drawings were deemed special enough to get “ART Box” classifications instead of “ART File,” which meant they were stored in boxes, safer housing than the file drawers that held post-1700 prints and photographs. Most “ART File” material has since been re-housed in individual folders, leap-frogging over “ART Box” in terms of storage quality.
  4. It doesn’t. Instead, there’s a dummy on the shelf explaining that it’s framed and hung elsewhere in the vault.
  5. Where “S528” represents “Shak” (for Shakespeare) in the “Cutter” system,  and “m1” represents “first Shakespeare play, alphabetically, that starts with an “m”.
  6. Where “G241” represents “Garr” (for Garrick) in the “Cutter” system.
  7. Where “F993” represents “FUSE” (for Fuseli) in the Cutter system.
  8. But not for much longer: the Folger has added an art and manuscript cataloger to the staff.

Comments

This entry made fascinating reading. It was a joy to look at the illustrations. I had no idea that the Folger had Fuseli’s drawings–what a rare find! Thanks to Erin Blake, scholars will now find all these visuals more readily.

shormishtha panja — February 1, 2013