Project Description
Documentary Focus:
Our project focuses on the children’s book illustrations of Arthur Rackham. Many consider Rakham to be the most popular and influential illustrator from the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Children’s Book illustration which spanned the Victorian and Edwardian eras of English literary history.
Archival Concepts and Practices:
The archive we constructed for this project is unusual in its scope and practice for several reasons. Firstly, our archive catalogs works of creative art, which requires special attention and care in order to express and focus on presenting the unique qualities exhibited by the medium. Secondly, our illustrations come from literature, requiring us to catalog the books from which our artwork comes from.
Creative art is not a traditional subject for archival collecting, but nevertheless there are examples of art being succesfully archived in such as way as preserves its creative qualities. Art can be difficult to define, as its nuances wander and change from medium to medium (Carbone 35). However, the second special quality of our archive made this problem far easier to solve. Rackham created his art specially for use as illustrations in books. Therefore, we could both express the provenance of the artwork and preserve the way in which the artwork was originally presented by sorting the artwork by book in which they appear.
Our archive is considered a "research archive". We do not have the original artwork on hand, therefore our focus is not on preservation. Instead, our archive is an easily-expandable catalog of reference for our intended audience of educators and art historians. Carrying this project onward would mean encompassing all of Rackham's work in an accessible format which focuses on original order (Millar 39, 40).
There is an aspect of our archive which also seriously challenges the traditional set up of archival collections. This would be the inclusion of the artwork created by several of Rackham's peers. Part of the research aspect of our archive was a heavy focus on the historial context surrounding Rackham's work, especially the Golden Age of Children's Illustrations around the turn of the 20th century, of which Rackham is the most well-known artist. The focus of the archive is on Rackham's works, so while these extra artworks are credited to their artist, they are not included as part of the actual collection or given the same amount of descriptive metadata. This practice somewhat resembles the merging of historical institutions such as museums and archives in order to maximize the information expressed by our archive (Millar 34). This allows us to archive Rackham's work while relating the narrative of its creation by presenting extra materials, stories, and related artworks, to create a comprehensive research archive.
Criteria for Record Selection:
When we initially selected our source material, we were looking specifically at a collection of children’s books housed by special collections. This collection, the Lee Walp collection, was where we intended to gather the most information and content for our site. When we arrived at the Special Collections, we were told by the staff who had been setting up the room for us, that the books that we wanted to use would be protected by copyright so we couldn’t use them. This was one of the first roadblocks that our group reached. After consulting with Juli McLoone, she suggested that we consider other options for our historical children’s book illustrations. She recommended looking into Arthur Rackham’s illustrations due to the fact that they are open access and the library already has a vast collection of Rackham’s work. We agreed that this was a better solution and thanks to Juli, we were able to obtain a variety of books with useful illustrations. Over the course of several sessions, we visited the special collections room and took photographs of the illustrations while the books were being held on book cradles. We selected which illustrations we wanted out of the books by considering them from a historical perspective. For example, one of Rackham’s most famous works was his illustrated edition of "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland", which was a pivotal work of children’s literature during the 19th century to present, so we thought it would be useful to depict some of those illustrations on our site. Additionally, we sought to include a significant portion of Rackham’s work while at the same time depicting themes that he drew upon for his artistic style.
Target User Group:
Our primary user group comprises art historians and other secondary-level art educators. Art historians need good historical reference sources from which they can draw information and inspiration for their research and teaching. They need these sources to be seamlessly accessible with as little hassle as possible. They also need access to high quality images that are not restricted by copyrights. Our site provides such images as well as both biographical and historical information that our users can use to contextualize these illustrations, potentially using them in lectures or research relating to the evolution of childhood in the Western world, the ‘Golden Age’ of Children’s Book Illustration, the history of popular media, among other topics. In addition to secondary-level art historians and researchers, high school art or history teachers might also use our archive to form lesson plans. While the style of writing we chose to use caters to a higher reading level, middle school and even elementary school teachers might utilize our images and captions to form lesson plans as well. Lastly, professional illustrators might use our archive as inspiration even if the intense focus on historical context might not perfectly suit their needs.
Perspectives:
The primary perspective being offered by our collection is the voice of Arthur Rackham himself. His perspective is seen through the art that he created over the course of his life for a variety of children’s literature. His art over time reflects how the world around him influenced his art and changed as time progressed. The perspective of professional historians are represented through secondary sources that describe what was happening historically during his lifespan, and the voices of professional illustrators are also present, as they made contributions to the historical material on the “Golden Age of Illustration” and biographies of Arthur Rackham.
There are many perspectives missing from the records. First and foremost, no non-white artists, writers, or characters are represented in any of the records. Considering the historical era and geographical location that Rackham was operating in, this is not necessarily surprising, though it is incredibly disappointing. In our duration of examining Rackham’s work, we did not encounter any characters of color and there is little information indicating his interest in representing or working with non-white individuals. There are also no perspectives from those who existed anywhere below what is thought of (in American terms) as the middle class. The books that Rackham was illustrating were meant for children who had substantial access to education, not for those who were working, supporting families, or not attending school, as often happened at the time.