Asian and African studies blog

The start of Genesis in the Armenian Bible donated by Baroness Zouche. (Copied by Yovhannēs Lehts'i, 1648). (Or 8833, f 3r)

In the run-up to Easter, we had a little surprise. By “we” I mean my family, not the Library. Late in March, two pigeons showed up to scope out our flower box. Then they brought twigs. Then they built a nest. Finally, one Monday, coming back from a weekend away, we noticed two unattended white eggs. One of the adults soon returned and stayed put. Pigeons take turns incubating their eggs, which means that one of the two parents was always there eyeing us suspiciously. Eventually, the eggs hatched and now two beautiful little pigeons (or squabs, to use the technical term) have their breakfast and dinner along with us – separated, naturally, by several layers of glass.

Eggs are, of course, associated with Easter. In this blog, however, I’m going to look at what comes after the egg: the bird. In the last week and a half of Lent, as our little soon-to-be-feather friends grew, I saw birds everywhere I looked. Some were even in the manuscripts.

The beginning of readings for the Saturday of Light, starting a midnight on Good Friday. (Nitria, Egypt. 1274 CE) (Add MS 5997, f 260r)

The first fowl incident came while helping a researcher in Canada locate a passage relating to the Saturday of Light (سبت النور) or Holy Saturday in Add MS 5997, a Bohairic Copto-Arabic Lectionary completed in 1274 CE. A lectionary is a collection of readings from Scripture tied to specific dates and events throughout the year. The practice isn’t unique to Christianity; Jews also make use of Parashat ha-Shavua (פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ), or weekly readings from the Torah, although these are not compiled into a separate book. As I learned recently, Copts have a variety of different lectionaries. Some might be for the whole year, others for Lent. Add MS 5997 is one intended just for the Easter period (كتاب البصخة المقدسة), containing explanations at the start of each selection informing readers when the passages should be read and where they come from.

A detail of the triple arch beginning the text for the Saturday of Light and the fowl motif on the right. (Nitria, Egypt. 1274 CE) (Add MS 5997, f 260r)

Lo and behold, at the bottom of folio 260r is the start of the Reading for the beginning Holy Saturday and with it, a long-necked bird with a black head and red comb, looking shyly at the margin above. This feathered friend caught my eye – once I had confirmed that I had the passage I need – and so too did dozen of their mates and siblings scattered across the manuscript. As Maria Cramer explains, birds and indeed animals of various types - dogs and gazelles among them - have featured in Coptic manuscripts from the first millennium onwards. And this continues on a long tradition from Ancient Egyptian artwork, which is itself heavily imbued with imagery from the animal kingdom. 

While the presence of birds was a welcome surprise – especially given our recent guests – it also rang a bell. Fowl, of course, feature in manuscripts in many other cultures. Whether in margins and letters, or as images for literary or historical accounts, which illustrator or illuminator didn’t love birds? But birds also play a special role in manuscripts from a nation in communion with the Copts: Armenian ones. Here, the use of birds to form capital letters is so common as to have its own name, t’rch’nagir (թռչնագիր), or bird-letter.

Where better to see the tradition than in one of the most stunning examples of this art, the Armenian Old and New Testaments copied in 1646 CE and donated to the Library by Darea Curzon, the 16^th Baroness Zouche (Or 8833)? While the 13^th-century Copto-Arabic Easter Lectionary features feathery friends with personality, the Armenian masterpiece brings them to us in their finery. The most impressing example, by far, is the start of Genesis. Here, a glorious frontispiece features the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus, the four Apostles (including John with his associated eagle), and four elegant gold-and-navy peacocks. But below this panoply of visual sensations is the first word of the Old Testament, featuring an angel killing a dragon as the letter ini (Ի), followed by the rest of the word skězpanē (Սկըզբանէ; in the beginning) with each letter spelled out by intricate, lavish birds.

The Classical Armenian word for "beginning" fashioned from birds. (Copied by Yovhannēs Lehts'i, 1648). (Or 8833, f 3r)

Father Vrej Nersessian, our former Lead Curator of the Christian Orient, provided a detailed explanation of the significance of various birds. In doing so, he relies on the analysis conducted by Catholicos Nersēs IV the Gracious: “The Bible has for Nersēs Šnorhali a paradigmatic value. It traces the parameters within which all history is to be understood.” As such, it should not be a surprise that the birds appearing in Biblical manuscript illustration and illumination are themselves steeped in meaning. And, when it comes to the decoration of the Canon Tables, which provide internal correspondences between the four Apostles’ accounts about Jesus’ life, as well as those that are unique: “Through the visual pleasures of the Canon Tables one is supposed to ascend to the spiritual enjoyment of the Gospels themselves.” So then, to what heights are these winged friends carrying us? 

Canon Tables from the Armenian Bible donated by Baroness Zouche. (Copied by Yovhannēs Lehts'i, 1648). (Or 8833, ff 462r and 466 r) 

The discussion here is quite complicated, but to summarize: the eagle represents Christ, although it can also be the sign of the Apostle John; the cock is the advent of Christ; doves are the gift of the Holy Spirit; partridges are the sex workers who feature in Jesus’ story; fishing birds are symbols of the Apostles; and peacocks are the “purity of angelic spirits.” Monkeys and lions, Father Vrej informs us, are later additions coming from Western European sources.

A detail of a page of the Gospels showing a marginal avian decoration. (Copied by Yovhannēs Lehts'i, 1648). (Or 8833, f 699r)

Given this rich collection of different symbols and allusions, it should be no surprise that we find peacocks, roosters and, yes, even monkeys and lions, in the Canon Table menagerie. And, of course, other birds embellishing the margins. These are harder to identify, but it might just be that I’m not much of a birder.

The frontispiece of the Gospel of John featuring the Apostle below two birds. (Monastery of Yaspisunkal, Arjish, now Erciş, Türkiye. 1281 CE) (Or 2679, f 222v). 

Or 8833 is a high point of illustration and illumination. But birds and their various stylizations can be found in other manuscripts as well, sometimes less elegant or intricate, but still eye-catching in their own way. The two Bible manuscripts Or 2679 and Or 2680, both acquired from Reverend S. Baronian in 1883, provide us with a few interesting examples. The former contains a delightful frontispiece to the Gospel of John where the Apostle, presumably seated with pen and paper in hand, is under two gormless long-tailed birds. Throughout the manuscript, these cartoonish, elongated fowl can be found in the margins of pages, their tail feathers and crowns so crenellated they look almost like ferns.

The start of the Gospel of Matthew with "harpies" and human-as-letter. (Copied by Astuadzatur, 1317 CE) (Or 2780, f 10r)

In many ways, however, the birds – whatever their species – quickly fade from memory as soon as you encounter another inhabitant of the pages of both Or 2679 and Or 2680. These are fantastical creatures that marry the body of a bird and the head of a man, which Conybeare identifies as harpies. I think this is likely an unfair assumption. In the latter manuscript, an early 13^th-century copy of the Bible, two sit in the frontispiece above the start of the Gospel of Matthew, their bobs immaculate, looking suspiciously at the gutter and margin. In Or 2679, by contrast, the bird’s crown is never unequivocally converted from feathers to metalwork, providing a delightful ambiguity between what is human and what belongs to our flying friends. As with the full birds, the half-man, half-bird creatures in Or 2679 have expressions that often dance between stupor and wonder, leaving this birdwatching newbie to ponder their meaning vis-à-vis the Biblical text.

A detail of marginal decoration featuring a half-man, half-bird creature. (Monastery of Yaspisunkal, Arjish, now Erciş, Türkiye. 1281 CE) (Or 2679, f 222v). 

This Easter season, whether you celebrate or not, I hope that this blog has brought a little bit of curiosity about our feathered neighbours as well as the rich art found of Armenian and Coptic manuscripts. While you bite into your creme egg, take a moment to ponder the wonders of avian world and how it inspired artists and creators for millennium.

Dr. Michael Erdman, Head, Middle East and Central Asia 🐦

I’d like to thank Émile Tadros for his patience in guiding me through Add MS 5997, and to the Coptic clergy from the Diocese of London for sharing their accumulated wisdom and experience.

Works consulted

Conybeare, Frederick Cornwallis, A catalogue of the Armenian manuscripts in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1913).

Cramer, Maria, Koptische Buchmalerei: Illuminationen in Manuskripten des christlich-koptischen Ägypten vom 4. bis 19. Jahrhundert (Recklinghausen: A. Bongers, 1964).

Cramer, Maria, 'Studien zu koptischen Pascha-Büchern: Der Ritus der Karwoche in der koptischen Kirche,' Oriens Christianus (September 1963), Vol. 47, pp. 118-128.

Crum, Walter Ewing, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1905).

Nersessian, Vrej, A catalogue of the Armenian manuscripts in the British Library acquired since the year 1913 and of collections in other libraries in the United Kingdom (London: The British Library, 2012).

The frontispiece of the first sub' Sultan Baybars' Qur'an (Ibn al-Waḥīd, Cairo, 705 AH/1304-05 CE). (Add MS 22406 f 2v)

Why don’t you know where this manuscript came from?!? Even if the words don’t exit the lips of some researchers, you can occasionally feel them burning into your soul, transmitted by the frustrated gaze of an inquirer hungry to know who else might have read a book, benefitted from its wisdom, admired its beauty. While we would all love to have such information, sadly, it’s rarely at our fingertips. Once upon a time, record-keeping did not touch on provenance, meaning that creating a fuller picture of the origin of some manuscripts in our holdings requires research elsewhere. Such is the case for a few of our best-known works, the seven volumes of the Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an among them.

The Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an, copied in 704-05 AH (1304-06 CE) by Ibn al-Waḥīd for Baybars Jashankir, has been expertly described by our former Head of Middle East and Central Asia, Dr. Colin Baker, most recently in a post on the Asian and African Studies blog. While the digitized version of the Qur’an will not be accessible through the links he provided because of the cyber attack we suffered in October 2023, you can still view them on Archive.org. Information abounds about the art historical aspects of the work, but very little is known about how it ended up in the British Museum’s collection. A brief note at the back of the volume states that it was purchased from the book dealer T & W Boone on 12 June 1858, but that’s about it.

In May 2024, I had the great opportunity to meet Dr. Noha Abou-Khatwa of the American University in Cairo. She visited the Library to view the asbā’ themselves just after we re-opened access to restricted manuscripts. She shared some of her deep knowledge about the manuscript with me, which is why I returned to her in December to see if she’d learned anything more about the Qur’an’s history. She said that she presumed it had remained in its intended home, the Al-Ḥākim Mosque (مسجد الحاكم), for most of its life. She also pointed me to a recent chapter by Dr. Alison Ohta that mentions an inscription in Add MS 22412, the seventh sub’. (Ohta 2023, page 144 note 45) Ohta was wrong about the location (it’s in Add MS 22406, the first sub’), but right about the content. The brief pencil note says that the manuscript was “stated to have been brought from Cairo by an English Clergyman.” The signature beside it isn’t legible, so I was left stumped.

A letter from Reverend Benjamin Webb to Mountstuart Elphinstone. (Benjamin Webb, Brasted Rectory, 1 February 1854.) (MSS EUR F88/168/20 f 48r)

But I have options other researchers don’t. Namely, I can go into our storage basements, where I decided to see if there were Arabic manuscripts purchased from a named individual immediately around the Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an. I had some luck when I found, almost immediately before the first sub’, nine Arabic and Persian volumes acquired from Rev. Benjamin Webb on 8 May 1858. Webb – described as a “Clergyman” on Wikipedia – was well-connected and active as an academic, but I could find no record of his ever having been to Egypt. When I called up some of his letters held in the India Office Records, I discovered that in 1854, when his father-in-law William Hodge Mill died, Webb was left to sort out his affairs. Mill was the first Principal of Bishop’s College in Kolkata and his library included some 70-odd “Arabic + Persian MSS.” (MSS EUR/F88/168 f. 48r) Here, I thought, was a breakthrough: maybe Mill bought the Qur’an in Egypt on his way back from India?

The answer might lay in Webb’s journals. So off I went to the Bodleian, in Oxford, to consult these. I have often thought myself clever for making personal notes in Turkish or Arabic. Now that I have tortured myself going through Webb’s half-English, half-Latin notes about his daily schedule, I will never do that again. These notebooks had little to offer me, except the brief remark that Webb visited the British Museum on 29 April 1858 to show some of his manuscripts to Sir Frederic Madden, a famed English paleographer and Keeper of Manuscripts at the BM between 1837 and 1866. (Bodleian MS Eng Misc.e.412, f 18r) Madden’s journal was also at the Bodleian, so I placed an order, went for lunch, and came back an hour and a half later with little hope I’d find something useful.

I was wrong. Where Webb was terse and bilingual, Madden was expansive (and only wrote in English). He didn’t just note absolutely everything, he also imposed a system of internal references between the daily entries in his journal. That’s how I found the entry from May 1858 in which he states that “Boone […?] a volume of a magnificent Koran written A.D. 1306 in letters of gold, in large folio. It is said to belong to a clergyman who purchased it at Cairo. I should much like to buy it at a moderate price.” (Bodleian MS Eng Hist.c.171, p. 195) Just above the word “Cairo” is a note to see page 300, referring to 24 August 1858. In the main text, Madden writes: “Inquired respecting the fine Coran bought of him + was now told that it belonged to an artist, whose name was not known, but that a clerk of Christie’s named Wood had negotiated for him. I shall [request?] more information when Mr. B the […?] returns.*” The asterisk leads us to the bottom of the page, where Madden adds: “It did not belong to an artist, but the Rev. Francis Frith, who purchased it a ruined mosque in Egypt, it is believed, in Cairo. He is now gone to the White Nile.” (Bodleian MS Eng Hist.c.171, p. 300; emphasis Madden’s) Eureka! We have a name!

A self-portrait of Francis Frith in Ottoman costume. (Francis Frith, printed by Paul Pretsch, 1857).
© Public Domain, provided by the Albertina Museum through Europeana.

But now the question is: just who was this Francis Frith? If you’ve followed the link before continuing with my story, you’ll see that he was no Man of the Cloth. In fact, Francis or Frances Junior was born on 7 October 1822 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and was an exceptionally successful photographer and businessman. His fame came from the mission he and his wife Mary Ann Rosling set for themselves in 1860: to photograph every town and village in Great Britain. This is largely the reason why Frith’s work can be found in institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery, likely linked in the metadata to the company he founded, Francis Frith & Co. Frith died in 1898, having left his mark on British photography and photographic publishing. The company he founded only closed in 1971, its archive eventually being bought, preserved, and scanned, to become the Francis Frith Collection. Francis’ impact has also been immortalized as part of the BBC documentary Britain’s First Photo Album .

Wait a minute – what about Egypt? Rewind to the mid-1850s, when Frith was just getting on his feet as a photographer. In 1856, the bachelor Frith set out for Egypt and West Asia, making three trips that covered Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. His photographs of these travels are clearly identified as being part of the Orientalist movement. Many of them cemented the visual conceptualization – now supposedly made factual through the science of photography – of a decadent, languid, declining Orient. He seems to have been keen to photograph ruins as well as some of the natural wonders of the region, with a heavy dose of sites linked to Biblical narratives. This last part should not be a surprise, as Frith became a Quaker minister (is this what “Reverand Francis Frith” meant?) of a rather unorthodox sort. The first mention of his ministry, according to the Friends’ Quarterly Examiner, is 1872, after which he got into a spot of trouble with the publication of the controversial pamphlet A Reasonable Faith.

"Cairo from the East," one of Frith's photos of the Egyptian capital. 
© Public Domain, provided by the Rijksmuseum through Europeana.

Frith, according to Caroline Williams, was an avid reader of published works about Egypt in the early 1850s and particularly motivated by the Orientalist paintings of David Roberts. He did, however, believe he could do better by bringing realistic photographic representations of Egypt back to English viewers. And so, between September 1856 and June 1857, and again between November 1857 and May 1858, he travelled across Egypt, Nubia, Palestine and Syria. He did a third trip in late 1859-1860, this time going down the Nile to Ethiopia and then back up again through Sinai into Gaza. Williams provides a masterful explanation of the Frith’s importance for Orientalist photography and the challenges he faced in enacting it given the technology at his disposal and the specificities of Egyptian buildings and scenery. But perhaps we’ve gone too far. What about the manuscripts?

The answer lies in a beautiful publication of the Frith Foundation marrying Frith’s own photographs and texts, with those of his contemporaries editors Sophia Lane Poole and her son Reginald Poole, and Egyptologist Richard Lunn, who provided his own modern photographs of Egypt. Here, on pages 40-41, as if hiding in plain sight, comes the clearest statement yet about Frith’s initial transaction for Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an:

“I spent a summer in Cairo, and its neighbourhood… spent intervals of six weeks, in alternate fits of storm and calm, bargaining with a mysterious priest who visited me by night, and at length accepted one sixth part of what he first asked, for a splendid, illuminated copy of the Koran, seven hundred years old, in seven huge volumes, written in gold letters an inch high (now in the British Museum; perhaps the finest copy in Europe).” (Lunn 2005, pp. 40-41)

There can be no doubt that this was, and is, Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an. We therefore know, given the description, that Frith likely acquired it in 1857.

"The Mosque of El-Hakim" as found in the Lane and Poole's mammoth collection of Frith photographs taken across North-East Africa and West Asia. (Lane and Poole, Cairo, Sinai, Jerusalem and the Pyramids of Egypt) (London: James S. Virtue, 1860). 

And the priest? We now have so many versions of who bought what where from whom as to make the truth seem ever elusive. I think Frith’s account is possible, but excessively improbable. To paraphrase Noir fiction: of all the Europeans in all the tents in Cairo, he had to pick Frith? Surely, Umm al-Dunya had no shortage of art-hungry, rich Europeans who might pay more than a 35-year old, relatively novice photographer. To be serious, however, let’s return to Abou-Khatwa’s supposition that the Qur’an remained in the Mosque of al-Ḥākim. We know that Frith was at the Mosque in 1857 because Sophia Lane Poole and Reginald Poole’s Cairo, Sinai, Jerusalem, and the pyramids of Egypt : a series of sixty photographic views, published in 1860, contains not one but two of Frith’s photographs of the mosque. And Frith’s Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described by Francis Frith contains one of these views of the Mosque, along with the same text found in Lane and Poole’s publication. I think it most likely that, if the manuscript was indeed kept there, Frith began his negotiations at the Mosque and they continued until he successfully acquired the seven volumes. The story of the furtive visits might be based on some nugget of truth, but I suspect that it was intended as an embellishment to increase the romanticism of Frith’s account, a surefire way to improve the appeal of any Orientalist text.

But who was this mysterious priest, or, more appropriately, counterparty? How did they have access to the manuscript and why were they willing to sell it at a bargain price? The answers to these questions, sadly, aren’t found in any of the sources I’ve mentioned here. They likely lie elsewhere, either in Frith’s personal papers, possibly at the Francis Frith Collection, or in Cairo, at the Mosque itself. Perhaps this short foray into the provenance of the Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an will spur some other curious soul to follow up on those threads.

Dr. Michael Erdman, Head, Middle East and Central Asia

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Dr. Noha Abou-Khatwa for her guidance and immense knowledge on the Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an and all matters Mamluk.

Works Consulted

Frith, Francis, Egypt and Palestine photographed and described (London: James S. Virtue, 1858-59).

Lane Poole, Sophia and Poole, Reginald, Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: a series of twenty photographic views by Francis Frith with descriptions by Mrs. Poole and Reginald Stuart Poole (London: James S. Virtue, 1860).

Lunn, Richard, Francis Frith’s Egypt and the Holyland: The Pioneering Photographic Expeditions to the Middle East (London: The Francis Frith Collection, 2005).

Madden, Frederick. Journal, 1858. Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. hist. c. 171.

Ohta, Alison Aplin, ‘Mamluk Qurʾans: Splendor and Opulence of the Islamic Book,’ in Rettig, Simon and Sana Mirza (ed.), The word illuminated: form and function of Qur'anic manuscripts from the seventh to seventeenth centuries (Washington D.C.: The Smithsonian Scholarly Press, 2023), pp. 123-146.

Webb, Benjamin. Journal, 1858. MS. Eng. misc. e. 412.

Webb, Benjamin, Letter from Reverend Benjamin Webb at Brasted Rectory, to Mountstuart Elphinstone , 1 February 1854. British Library, Mss Eur F88/168/20.

Williams, Caroline, ‘A Nineteenth-Century Photographer: Francis Frith’ in Janet Starkey and Paul Starkey (ed.), Travellers in Egypt (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 168-178.

Frederick S. Harrop was one of the first foreign art teachers hired by the Thai government in the early twentieth century. He lived in Bangkok from 1913-30 and helped to reform Thai art education and graphic design in his role as Art Master, and later Headmaster, of Poh-Chang School of Art and Crafts, the first modern art school in Thailand. It was founded in 1913 by King Vajiravudh (Rama VI), who – like many other Thai royals - received his education in the UK and continued the modernisation efforts of his father, King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). When Harrop arrived in Bangkok, he must have been fascinated by the richness of colours and brilliant light of the tropics. He immediately took great interest in traditional Thai art, design and decorative styles and blended these with Western techniques. His preferred subjects were the traditional architecture of Thai temples, people and street scenes, as well as boats and river views.

Left: Wat Benchamabophit, Bangkok, watercolour, signed F. S. Harrop, c. 1925. British Library, FSHA 1165. Right: Doorway, Wat Pho, Bangkok, pencil, pen and ink on paper, signed F. S. Harrop, c.1920. British Library, FSHA 1338. ©William R. Harrop

Frederick Samuel Harrop, born on 27 March 1887 in Batsford, Stoke-on-Trent, started his career as an apprentice to Grimwades pottery manufacturers in Stoke-on-Trent. Aged 17 he was attending evening classes at Stoke School of Art, and two years later he was awarded an Applied Arts Scholarship to study at Hanley Municipal School of Art, Science and Technology. In 1909 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. Harrop developed his skills as a modeller draughtsman and designer through researching in the British Museum and the V&A, with its close relationship to the RCA. He explored various aspects of art education and took a Teacher’s Training course at the RCA. Study trips took him to the Netherlands, where he spent two months working with three other students of the RCA at the Palace of Peace in The Hague designing wall tiling that was fired in Delft.

F.S. Harrop (front row, 5th from right) with staff and students in front of Poh-Chang School, c. 1920. British Library, B 24.

In 1913, Harrop left the RCA without the full qualification certificate in order to take up a position as Assistant Art Teacher in Bangkok, and soon he rose to the position of Art Master at the School of Arts and Crafts (now known as Poh-Chang Academy of Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Rattanakosin). In this role, he introduced Thai students to Western art forms and techniques, such as watercolour sketching and painting, drawing, printing, book design, graphic and letterform design, while at the same time adopting traditional Thai art styles and techniques in his own works. In turn, his students often blended European and Thai art styles in their works.

Life study, pencil and watercolour on paper, signed F. S. Harrop, 1924. British Library, FSHA 1346. ©William R. Harrop

In 1917 Harrop married Edith Florence Keyes in Singapore and they had two sons, Roger born in Bangkok in 1918 and James born during a home visit to England in 1920. Edith Harrop produced water colours herself, and both were active members of the expatriate community in Bangkok.
From 1921 on Harrop was also Organising Art Master to the Ministry of Public Instruction in Bangkok, where his duties included the training of drawing teachers for schools under the Ministry. In the School of Arts and Crafts, Harrop initiated and ran classes in applied design for metal and woodworkers, process reproduction (including line, half-tone and three-colour work), lettering, woodcut and lino-block printing, and modelling. He became Headmaster of the School of Arts and Crafts in 1922, and in the following years more courses were added, including photography, mother-of-pearl inlay, and gold-on-lacquer design.

Designs for posters by F. S. Harrop, c.1920, pencil, pen and ink on paper. Left: British Library, FSHA1181; right: British Library, FSHA1184. ©William R. Harrop

Harrop organised exhibitions at local, national and international levels, including a display and exhibition book for the planned Siamese Kingdom Exhibition 1926, which was cancelled due to King Vajiravudh’s death the previous year. In 1930 the family moved back to London where Harrop found teaching appointments with Willesden Polytechnic, the Paddington Art Institute and the Hammersmith School of Building and Arts and Craft. After his retirement in 1952, he launched a late career as a master studio potter that lasted until his death on 26 February 1969. Even in his later pottery works traces of Asian influences and Thai motifs intermingle with traditional English and Mediterranean motifs.

Plates produced for an exhibition book, edited by F. S. Harrop, on the occasion of the planned Siamese Kingdom Exhibition 1926. British Library, FSHA 0704.

A particularly strong sense of hybridity is visible in the commercial work Harrop produced during his time in Bangkok. As an established artist he was approached for various advertising commissions and for designing book covers, specifically for King Vajiravudh’s own publications. Harrop produced designs inspired by traditional Thai motifs, overlaid with an RCA-trained sense of layout, colouring and lettering. Harrop signed hand-drawn designs for printed works and art prints with “F.S. Harrop”, “F. Harrop”, “Harrop”, “FSH”, “FH”, “แฮรัป” (Haerap), “ฮ” (H), as well as “เพาะช่าง” (Pho-Chang) and “พ.ช.” (Pho. Cho., short for Pho-Chang). The latter two, if used as stand-alone signatures (not in combination with Harrop’s other signatures) may have been used for collaborative works with colleagues that involved larger passages of Thai and/or Chinese text, for commercial works that were formally ordered from the School of Arts and Crafts, or prints of photographs by other artists, e.g. as book illustrations.

Left: Front cover design for a magazine “Asia” with blank fields for date and price, c.1920. British Library, FSHA1198; right: front cover design for an exhibition catalogue of the Siam Art Club, c.1920. British Library, FSHA1217. ©William R. Harrop

Among the earlier commercial print designs by Frederick S. Harrop are programmes for events and theatre performances. Some of these are completely in the English language, others completely in Thai, but there are also bilingual Thai and English programmes, depending on which audiences were expected for such events.

Left: Programme front cover for a “Miniature Naval Engagement” at Dusit Park, 1917, print on paper. British Library, GMS310; right: Programme cover for “The Willow Pattern”, an operetta on 21st February 1920 in aid of the Bangkok Nursing Home, print on paper. British Library, FSHA0740. ©William R. Harrop

A significant part of Harrop’s print collection consists of commercial poster designs and printed posters which were commissioned by organisations and enterprises to advertise their products and services. Though often undated, they appear to have been created mainly from 1920 onwards, showing a significant development in Harrop’s artistic and linguistic approach. The earlier designs for programmes were mostly executed in a Western style, possibly because audiences were primarily members of the expatriate community and the Thai elite. The posters, however, were meant to attract the attention of wider, general audiences, and Harrop included traditional Thai patterns as well as bilingual or even trilingual text passages, combining English, Thai and Chinese texts.

Examples of Harrop’s poster designs. Left: design for Solar Eclipse event, dated 9 May 1929. British Library, FSHA1206; right: Poster design for the Red Cross with text in Thai and Chinese, first proof dated B.E. 2568 (1925). British Library, FSHA 1193. ©William R. Harrop

Harrop produced numerous cover designs for a variety of publications, especially books written and translated by King Vajiravudh who was keen to introduce modern, creative book designs of high quality that would help popularise reading as a leisure activity as well as book collecting. Harrop understood that book design had to be adapted to the needs of the emerging Thai book market as more books were produced in the Thai language. Front covers with colourful, extra-ordinary designs and intricate patterns that appealed to the Thai taste aimed to give potential readers an idea of the contents of books, but also to emphasize the high quality of the books and the status of the authors and publishing agencies. Harrop’s book designs often included text, either in one language or multiple languages. By 1922 he had developed a Thai letterform that could be seen as his “signature” letterform as it was used for books featuring his book cover designs, as well as plates and illustrations in books.

Left: Front cover design for “Lilit nitthra chakhrit” by King Chulalongkorn. British Library, FSHA 1722; right: printed front cover of the book “Lilit nitthra chakhrit”, published in 1922. British Library, Siam.200. ©William R. Harrop

Among Harrop’s most impressive commercial designs are some for business calendars that were popular annual gifts for customers. It was a smart way to make business brands visible to customers throughout the year, and lucky symbols or signs of the Thai zodiac were integrated. Harrop created calendars for Buddhist and Chinese calendar systems. The most remarkable designs are Harrop’s Buddhist calendars printed on silk. There are four altogether in the Harrop collection now held in the British Library, each of them combining intricate decorative Thai patterns, stunning letterform designs, painted scenes depicting Buddhist deities, animals of the zodiac, and additional images chosen by the patrons who commissioned the calendars.

Left: Printed calendar on silk for the year B.E. 2465 (1922) and detail on the right. British Library Or 17132/2. ©William R. Harrop

Harrop’s notes, invitations, photographs and handwritten dedications in book gifts indicate that he had contacts with King Vajiravudh (Rama VI), Prince Chakrabongse, Prince Damrong Rajanubhab as well as other European professionals who worked for the Siamese government: French archaeologist and historian George Cœdès (Chief Librarian of the National Library of Thailand), Welsh linguist Herbert Stanley O’Neill (Lecturer of English at Chulalongkorn University), German architect Karl Siegfried Döhring, Swiss artist Michael Rudolph Wening (court sculptor for King Vajiravudh), and possibly also Italian artist Carlo Rigoli and British Vice-Consul in Bangkok, Reginald Le May.

Phra Samut Chedi, Chao Phraya River, Samut Prakan. Oil painting, signed F. S. Harrop, 1929. British Library, FSHA 1362. ©William R. Harrop

Frederick S. Harrop’s collection was given to the British Library in 2023 (books and one manuscript) and 2024 (artworks and archive). It is a collection of great diversity and consists of Harrop’s own artworks and designs, works of students at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bangkok, research materials, books and archival files. 592 photographs, 81 watercolours and 55 oil paintings by Frederick S. Harrop, one watercolour by Edith Harrop, 11 sketchbooks, as well as 153 prints, drawings, blueprints, stencils and printing blocks are now held in the Library’s Visual Art collections. In addition, 38 books and periodicals, one palm leaf manuscript, commercial designs, printed works on silk and paper, drafts for speeches and publications, and numerous other archival files documenting Harrop’s work in Bangkok were added to the Thai collection. These materials will be made accessible (by appointment) in the Library’s Prints and Drawings Room as soon as cataloguing and conservation treatment (where necessary) have been completed.

Jana Igunma (Henry Ginsburg Curator for Thai, Lao and Cambodian) and William R. Harrop (London) 

This is a short version of the full article “Frederick S. Harrop (1887 – 1969) and the modernisation of Thai book and graphic design” in the SEALG Newsletter, Dec. 2024; pp. 87-116.
More posts in the series “Exploring Thai art”:
Exploring Thai art: James Low (published 2016) 
Exploring Thai art: Doris Duke (published 2016) 

The depiction of the Nativity in the Gospel of Luke. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 117r)

Many of us at the British Library are returning from continuous, or not-so-continuous, holiday breaks. For our colleagues and friends who belong to Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, however, the celebration is just about to begin. 7 January is the Gregorian date of Christmas feasts for many such denominations (6 January for the Armenian Apostolic Church, and 25 December for some Syriac Orthodox Churches). This is actually 25 December, but according to the Julian calendar. To mark this feast, I’ve put together some images of the Nativity and following events from two Coptic Bibles cared for by the Library, Or 1316 and Or 1317.

One of the joys of working with the Library’s collection is the opportunity to meet many different researchers and scholars. In the last two years, it is through such individuals that I have had the great pleasure of learning more about our Coptic and Christian Arabic manuscripts and their artwork. Dr. Miriam Hjälm of St. Ignatios College, for example, has been gracious in sharing with us her catalogue records of the Library’s Christian Arabic Bibles and theological tracts, soon to be published as a physical book (she wrote a blog about her project in 2020). Dr. Heather Badamo of UCSB, whose book Saint George Between Empires makes very clear the interaction of Christian artistic traditions across the Eastern Mediterranean, was very forthcoming in introducing me to the beautiful evidence of the Coptic Renaissance in our collection. And His Grace Archbishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church in London helped me to grasp – with great patience and understanding – the profound connections between forms of manuscripts, texts, colours, decorations and the foundational beliefs and practices of the Church. To them, and many others, I am exceptionally grateful for their support.

The Apostle Mark, founder of the Coptic Orthodox Church, pictured writing his Gospel in Arabic. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 67v)

As His Grace Archbishop Angaelos writes in Studies in Coptic Culture, ‘the Coptic Orthodox Church is one of the most ancient churches in the world, founded in the first century in Egypt by St. Mark the Apostle.’ As a religious institution with a long and venerable tradition, it is only to be expected that the visual, rhetorical and musical arts of the Coptic faithful bear witness to great creativity and change. Sometimes internal dynamics have induced these, and other times dialogue with external traditions has been a motor of change. In this post, I will turn to two illustrated Gospels that highlight the evolution of Coptic art during the Ottoman period, a time of increasing contact with Western European traditions.

Both Or 1316 and Or 1317 are Copto-Arabic New Testaments acquired by the British Museum in 1875 from Sir Charles A. Murray, the British Consul-General in Egypt between 1846 and 1853. Murray is a well-known figure for those who make use of the Library’s Arabic and Persian holdings. During his time in Cairo, he was particularly keen on collecting Christian materials, which, evidently, included Coptic and Copto-Arabic works.

The opening of the Gospel of Matthew with its frontispiece. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 3r)

Or 1316 is dated 1379 Anno Martyrum (the Coptic Church, having suffered a great number of martyrdoms under the reign of Emperor Diocletian, begins its calendar in 284 CE, the first year of his reign), or 1663 CE. The description of this work is far longer in Rieu’s Supplement to the Catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the British Museum than in Crum’s Catalogue of the Coptic manuscripts in the British Museum, where the latter describes the illustrations in the work as ‘gaudily coloured and gilded.’ From Rieu’s description, we learn that Abū’l-munā ibn Nasīm al-Naqqāsh not only copied the volume, but that he also drew the images based on European and Indian copies (‘من نسخ افرنجي وهندي’).

The richly embroidered cover of Or 1317. (Gospels. Egypt, 1814. Or 1317) 

Or 1317 is a later copy of the Gospels, completed on 13 Tot 1531 AM (22 September 1814 CE), containing a complete text of the New Testament. This work does not include the name of the copyist or the illustrator, but it does have beautifully embroidered covers featuring silver threads and gold frames, a reminder that decoration and embellishment of manuscripts need not be a matter for calligraphers and painters alone. Crum calls the illustrations here ‘rough,’ but he does highlight that the work contains ‘the signature of Peter, the 109^th patriarch.’

The dedication page, or waqf statement, found at the end of the manuscript. (Gospels. Egypt, 1814. Or 1317, f 410v) 

Both Or 1316 and Or 1317 contain information about their ownership in Egypt itself. The former was gifted by al-Mu’allim [Cantor] Luṭf Allāh Abū Yūsuf to the Church of Our Lady and St. George in 1449 AM (1733 CE), and above the illustrations we see short statements of the waqfiyah: “وقف على بيعة الست السيدة بحارة الروم السفلي” or “وقف على كنيسة الست السيدة وماري جرجس بحارة الروم عوض يا رب من له تعب”. Or 1317 ‘was gifted by Petrus Archiereus to the Patriarch’s seat’ in 1532 AM (1816 CE). Rieu’s transcription of the dedication fails to mention its continuation, which condemns anyone who removes the volume from its waqf – presumably Murray as well as the seller – to eternal exclusion from God’s grace (‘وكلمن اخرجه يكون محروم مقطوع بكلمة الله ولا يكون له خلاص لا في هذه الدنيا ولا في الاخرى’); a similar formula is found in Or 1316. Hany N. Takla of the St. Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society has explored why such dispersals might have occurred from the Monastery of St. Antony (including Or 1001, Or 1319 and Or 1325, the latter two acquired from Murray) in his chapter ‘The Manuscripts of the Monastery of St. Antony Preserved Abroad.’ Many of these reasons give us ample food for thought about the motivation for Or 1316 and Or 1317’s separation from their places of dedication.

But we are getting away from the main purpose of this post: images of the story of Jesus’ birth. Both volumes contain pictorial accounts of the Annunciation; Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth (the mother of John the Baptist); the visit of the Magi; and Jesus' presentation in the Temple. Unlike the printed Armenian Gospels featured two weeks ago, there are no images of Jesus’ circumcision. As the birth of Jesus is mentioned in both the Gospel of Matthew (1:16-2:23) and Luke (Chapters 1:26-2:40), multiple opportunities present themselves to any illustrator of the story.

The Archangel Gabriel visits the Virgin Mary with tidings of her impending miraculous pregnancy. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 114v)

Or 1316 starts with the above image of the Archangel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin in the Gospel of Luke. The Holy Messenger is informing her that she will bear the Son of God; the Holy Spirit, a dove, is bright and shining at the top of the composition. Rieu and Crum might not have thought such images worthy of praise for their artistry, but I find it filled with the light and joy represented by Gabriel’s message.

Gabriel visits Mary to inform her of Jesus' impending birth. (Gospels. Egypt, 1814. Or 1317, f 205v)

It's interesting to note that Mary is depicted in red robes in Or 1316, the earlier of the two manuscripts, while she wears her more familiar blue robes elsewhere in the volume. These are visible in the depiction of the Annunciation in Or 1317 (Gospel of Matthew). Here, similar to the earlier work, the Archangel bears flowers for the Virgin, who does not have a book open. As I've learned from Dr. Alin Suciu's informative posts, the portrayal of Mary reading during the Annunciation is a element of Western Christian imagery absent from most Orthodox iconography. The painter’s technique does not embrace the depiction of depth and facial expression common in Coptic icons, but they do manage to convey the positivity of the Annunciation, as well as the serenity with which Mary accepts this unfathomable news.

Mary embraces her cousin Elizabeth, both pregnant through Divine intervention. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 115r)

Both volumes depict Mary’s meeting with her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist and another female figure whose pregnancy, while not virginal, is announced by Gabriel. The episode is one in which Mary’s embrace of Elizabeth fills her with the Holy Spirit. Such good tidings are again communicated in the warmth of the hug in Or 1317 and Elizabeth’s kiss on Mary’s cheek in Or 1316. Although the illustration in the latter work is partially damaged, it’s very easy to see the composer’s use of grids and colour intensity rather than highlighting to denote depth.

Mary and her cousin Elizabeth embrace. (Gospels. Egypt, 1814. Or 1317, f 207r)

One of the women’s robes in this composition in Or 1317 is green and the other's is burgundy; while Mary's clothing in Or 1316 is shades of burgundy with gold highlights. Colours in Coptic iconography hold deeper meanings (as they do in most religious art). Traditionally, the use of green in Orthodox iconography denotes 'where life begins (for example, in the scenes of the Nativity of Jesus Christ and the Annunciation),' as explained on Russian Icon. Dr. Helen Moussa of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies, making use of the scholarship of 20th century painter Isaac Fannous, has provided a brief look at how such ideas continued or transformed for the neo-Coptic icon painters of the last century. While anachronistic to apply to Or 1316 and Or 1317, they do provide an interesting counterpoint to traditional interpretations. Blue is Mary’s colour, as it represents ‘the sky’ and alludes to Mary’s denomination as the ‘Second Heaven.’ ‘Red is the color of blood, … and of the humanity and glory of Christ.’ Green, however, has a complicated representation for neo-Coptic painters, signifying both evildoers (Satan, Judas) as well as life, largely vegetal, as explained above.

The arrival of the Magi in the Gospel of Matthew, along with servants. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 5r)

Or 1316 includes an image of the manger featuring Mary, Joseph and the baby Christ only (with, presumably, the shepherds in the far background, and animals close at hand) in the Gospel of Luke (at the start of this blog), while the Gospel of Matthew includes a more complex and richly coloured composition. Here, Mary, wearing green, with Joseph behind her, presents Baby Jesus as he grasps at one of the gifts borne by the Magi. Two of them have faces of silver and are followed by a servant (?) in green robes. On the far left of the scene are two armed servants of the Magi. The composition is fascinating for the contrast it provides with the one at the start of the post. Depth here is denoted with highlighting, as in icons, as well as with more intensive colours. But the architecture of the manger, the golden lamps, and the clothing of the personalities are all more reminiscent of West Asian works than Renaissance European ones (like the images in the Gospel of Luke). Was the ‘Indian’ source actually a West Asian manuscript?

Mary and Joseph, along with the Infant Jesus and the Midwife. (Gospels. Egypt, 1814. Or 1317, f 211v)

Or 1317 holds two images of births, but only one of these is of Jesus. The Gospel of Luke contains a pictorial account of John the Baptist’s birth and of his father, Zechariah, asking for something on which to write John’s name, thereby releasing Zechariah from his speechlessness (Luke 1:62-64). The Nativity itself is found two folios later. Here, the Magi do not feature, and it is just Mary (clothed in blue), Joseph, the Infant Jesus and the Midwife present at Jesus’ birth. Two angels peer down at the infant as a beam of light descends to him from a star. Although the Arabic text states that the family is in a manger (مذود), because of a lack of space in the inn (مبيت), a lack of any sort of architectural elements makes it difficult to determine where this scene might have taken place, were it not for the description.

Jesus presented to Simeon in the Temple. (Gospels. Egypt, 1814. Or 1317, f 212r)

Both works contain a painting of the presentation of Jesus in the temple. Or 1317 shows the scene with parents to the left and Saint Simeon reaching out to the Christ child on the right. The episode is identifiable not only by the text around it, but by also by the two turtle doves craning their necks in Joseph’s arms. Jesus looks somewhat larger than a 40-day old infant. What is evident, despite the minimalist detail of the faces, is Simeon’s peace and happiness, having been told by God that he would not die before meeting the Lord’s Messiah (Luke 2:25-34).

The presentation of Jesus, 'according to Moses' law,' before Simeon, a Priest, and two boys. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 118v)

In Or 1316, the composition is far more complex, with Mary back in burgundy and pink robes. Here she presents Jesus to a larger group, including Simeon as well as the Priest at the Temple flanked by two young men bearing tapers. It’s interesting to note that there are similarities to the depiction of the circumcision in the Armenian Gospels mentioned above, which included imagery and elements more familiar to Western European illustrations of the presentation/circumcision than Orthodox ones.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Salome flee for Egypt at the top of the page, while the bottom represents the massacre of the innocents. (Gospels. Egypt, 1663. Or 1316, f 5v)

In addition to Jesus’ presentation, Or 1316 provides us with one final illustration from Jesus' childhood: Mary (again in blue) and Jesus atop a donkey on the road from Bethlehem to Egypt, accompanied by Joseph and Salome, fleeing Herod’s threat to murder the newborn Saviour. This is once again from the Gospel of Matthew and the buildings in the background bear clear affinities with Byzantine-style churches. This would, of course, make sense: an anachronistic mapping of pre-Ottoman, or even pre-Mamluk Christian West Asia onto the life of Jesus. But it points, once again, to the idea that the artist’s source was not Indian, but rather from somewhere closer afield.

Those who are eagle-eyed might have noticed Arabic inscriptions on the images in Or 1316. It isn’t uncommon to see illustrated Gospel manuscripts from West Asia and Egypt where there are little crib notes to help the uninitiated identify images associated with the various actors in Gospel episodes. Although the Coptic text clearly has pride of place in the manuscripts, these guides were necessarily done in Arabic, which had largely replaced Coptic as a language of daily life by the second millennium.

Rieu and Crum might have been dismissive of the quality of the images, but such criticism is unfair. There are myriad reasons why these might not have been mirrors of the height of icon production or of the work of Italian Renaissance painters, the cost of artists and materials among them. But, in the end, they do their job. They communicate, in their own ways, the emotion and spiritual joy of the Nativity. And with it, we wish all those who celebrate كل سنة وانتم طيبون!

Dr. Michael Erdman, Head, Middle East and Central Asia

Further Reading

Angaelos, H.G., ‘The Coptic Orthodox Church: A Historical Perspective in the Modern-day World,’ in ed. Mariam Ayad, Studies in Coptic Culture: Transmission and Interaction (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2016), pp. xi-xii. (YP.2020.a.2464)

Armanios, Febe, Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). (YC.2011.a.5099)

Ayad, Mariam G., ed. Coptic Culture: Past, Present and Future (Stevenage, UK: Coptic Orthodox Church Centre, 2012). (YP.2013.b.294)

Ayad, Mariam G., ‘Introduction,’ in ed. Mariam Ayad, Studies in Coptic Culture: Transmission and Interaction (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2016), pp. 1-9. (YP.2020.a.2464)

Badamo, Heather, Saint George between empires: image and encounter in the medieval East (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023).

Farag, Lois M., ed., The Coptic Christian Heritage: History, Faith and Culture (New York: Routledge, 2014). (YC.2014.a.2834)

Guirguis, Magdi, An Armenian Artist in Ottoman Cairo: Yuhanna al-Armani and His Coptic Icons (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008). (m09/.10083)

Kashouh, Hikmat, The Arabic Versions of the Gospels: The Manuscripts and their Families (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011).

Moussa, Helene, ‘Coptic Icons: Expressions of Social Agency and Coptic Identity,’ in ed. Mariam Ayad, Studies in Coptic Culture: Transmission and Interaction (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2016), pp. 155-172. (YP.2020.a.2464)

Takla, Hany N., ‘The Manuscripts of the Monastery of St. Antony Preserved Abroad,’ in ed. Gawdat Gabra, Christianity and Monasticism in Alexandria and the Egyptian Deserts (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2020).

‘Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’ is a new single-case display in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery. It highlights artists, photographers, designers and arts activists from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and Iran who, through artists’ books and artist-led publications, zines, photobooks and print ephemera, have reworked the concept, materiality and function of passports and other bureaucratic documents.

(Left to right) Sorry for Not Attending by Jana Traboulsi (2013) (ORB.30/8742); Hususi Pasaport by Gözde İlkin (2009).
© Jana Traboulsi and Gözde İlkin

Jana Traboulsi’s Sorry for Not Attending (2013) first drew my attention to this theme when I visited the Beirut book-art atelier Plan BEY in 2018. Traboulsi, a Lebanese visual artist, graphic designer and educator, was invited to participate in the ‘No Souls for Sale’ festival at the Tate Modern in London in May 2010. Due to a visa system that restricts Lebanese citizens from travelling easily to the UK, she was unable to attend. In response, she produced an artist’s book entitled Sorry for Not Attending that uses the format of the passport as a critical commentary on not being able to attend one’s own exhibition. Reproducing passport pages, real excerpts of visa applications, maps, stamps, drawings and stickers, she highlights four places—Europe, the United States of America, Palestine, the Asteroid B612—where it is difficult or impossible for a Lebanese passport holder to travel.

Examining the design politics of the passport, Mahmoud Keshavarz writes: “[T]he passport is not neutral but a real and powerful device with its own specific history, design, and politics, mediating moments through which socially constructed power relations can be enacted and performed.” He notes that just as passports “mediate experiences of moving, residing, and, consequently, acting in the world” they can also be “remediated” through cultural and artistic works. He writes: “These works, through acknowledging the brutality of the passport as a system of control, deception, and regulation, try to open this banal booklet and redirect it as an object of thinking, imagination, and memory with the hope of reworking the hegemonic narrative prescribed to them.”

(Left to right) Jawāz Safarī lil-Qirāʼah [My Reading Passport] by al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts (c. 2000s) (ORB.30/9506); Leave to Remain: a Single Syrian Grain, Airbourn by Issam Kourbaj (2023) (ORB.30/9576).
© al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts and Issam Kourbaj

Thinking together with Keshavarz and Traboulsi’s Sorry for Not Attending, I began to notice other artists who have creatively embarked on a similar process of remediation, using passports and other bureaucratic documents to explore themes of state control, mobility, displacement, exile, memory and identity. A selection of these works, together with Sorry for Not Attending, are included in ‘Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’.

‘Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’ display installed in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery
© Daniel Lowe

Istanbul-based artist Gözde İlkin’s Hususi Pasaport (2009) reflects on political borders referencing the Turkish "Green Passport." Palestinian photographer and graphic designer Majdi Hadid, in his contribution for the Subjective Atlas of Palestine (2007), enumerates the many documents required to travel under Israeli occupation. Jawāz Safarī lil-Qirāʼah [My Reading Passport] (c. 2000s), produced by al-Jana Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, mimics a visa system as a tool to encourage reading and literacy for Palestinian children living as refugees in Lebanon. Cambridge-based artist Issam Kourbaj's Leave to Remain: a Single Syrian Grain, Airbourn (2023) draws on his own expired Syrian passport, while Adnan Farzat's Forgotten Moments (2020) uses a passport-like format to evoke his memories of Syria that are being slowly erased by time and conflict. Iranian-born artists Batool Showghi and Amak Mahmoodian in The Immigrant Book, No. 3 (2018) and Shenasnameh (2016) draw upon bureaucratic documents to show how identity is defined and fragmented.

Daniel Lowe, Curator, Arabic Collections

Further reading:

Gharbieh, Ahmad. “You Can’t Get There from Here: Notes on the New Lebanese Passport Design.” Journal Safar, vol. 3, 2017. (ZP.9.a.894)

Keshavarz, Mahmoud. The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. (YC.2019.a.5851 and ELD.DS.346541)

Keshavarz, Mahmoud, and Ayla Kekhia. “The Design Politics of Passports: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent.” Journal Safar, vol. 5, 2020. (ZP.9.a.894)

This blog post is written by Susan Harris, our Cataloguer of Photographs, working on the British Library’s Unlocking Hidden Collections project. This initiative aims to process, research and catalogue the Library’s hidden collections, making them more accessible to researchers and the public.

In May 2023, the descendants of amateur photographer Joseph Gaye (1852-1926) donated a collection of photographic material of his views of the Kathmandu Valley and India taken between 1888 and 1899 to the British Library. Joseph's descendant Mary-Margaret Gaye and her husband Doug Halverson spent many years researching Joseph's career in South Asia and identification of his views. We are most grateful to Mary-Margaret and Doug for making this collection available for researchers documenting the transformation of Kathmandu before the earthquake of 1934. Their publication is listed in the bibliography below.

Joseph Gaye was born in Northfleet, Kent, in 1852. At 18, he enlisted with the 4th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade and went to India as a rifleman in 1873. Gaye left the army after completing his 12-year enlistment term in 1882 to lead several Indian military bands. In 1888, he, with his wife, Mary Elizabeth Short, moved to Kathmandu, Nepal, where he served as bandmaster to the Royal Nepalese Army under Maharaja Bir Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana. In 1892, he became a bandmaster in turn to three viceroys of India (Marquess of Lansdowne, Earl of Elgin, and Lord Curzon of Kedleston) before returning to England in 1899. In 1905, Gaye and his four sons moved to Canada, where he died in 1926 in Lemberg, Canada. From 1888 to 1899, he produced photographs of Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, Burma and India; these were among his possessions, along with a large studio camera, at the time of his death.

The Joseph Gaye collection is an exciting addition to the British Library, containing 91 glass negatives, five cellulose negatives and 32 albumen prints, primarily of the Kathmandu Valley, with a few from India. The subjects vary from architecture and landscapes to street scenes and people, including portraits of his family. Gaye’s photographs provided a unique insight at a time when few foreigners were allowed into Nepal.

Here are a few highlights from the collection of Nepal’s architectural monuments, some that remain today and others that have disappeared due to natural disasters or urban development:

A crowd of curious onlookers gathered before a building on the southwest corner of the Hanuman Dhoka Darbar complex in Kathmandu Durbar Square (fig.1). The building, from 1847, was the original Gaddhi Baithak, a palace used for coronations and for meeting foreign heads of state. It was in the Newar style with influences from the Mughal architecture of northern India. A western façade, as seen in the photograph, was probably added later. Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana (1863-1929) of Nepal,  replaced it in 1908 with the neo-classical building that exists today.

Fig.1. A crowd in front of the western facade of the original Gaddhi Baithak, Basantapur Durbar Square, Kathmandu. Taken by Joseph Gaye, 1888-1892. Albumen Print, 155 x 105 mm. British Library, Photo 1424/3(17).

Patan Durbar Square, in the city of Lalitpur, is one of the three Durbar Squares in the Kathmandu Valley; it has been through two significant earthquakes in 1934 and 2015. Gaye capture the square before these earthquakes, looking south, towards a crowd of observers and a line of temples and statues (fig.2). John Alexander Dunn, an Officer of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), also took a photograph (fig.3) of the square, looking north, after the 1934 earthquake. The only recognizable landmarks still standing are the statue of Garuda, the Krishna Mandir and the Vishwanath Temple with the elephants in front.

Fig.2. View of the Patan Durbar Square, Lalitpur, looking south. From the left: Krisnhna Mandir Temple (Chayasim Deval), the Taleju Bell, the Harishankar Temple, King Yoga Narendra Malla’s Column, Narasimha Temple, Vishnu Temple, Char Narayan Temple, Garuda statue, the Krishna Mandir and the Vishvanath Temple. Taken by Joseph Gaye, 1888-1892. Albumen Print, 155 x 105 mm. British Library, Photo 1424/3(8).

Fig.3. Darbar Square, Patan, Nepal [after the 1934 earthquake]. Taken by J.A. Dunn, January 1934. Albumen Print, 83 x 111 mm. British Library, Photo 899/2(4).

Gaye captured a winding pathway on the eastern flank, leading up to Swayambhu, an ancient religious site of temples and shrines at the top of a hill in the Kathmandu Valley (fig.4). The photograph shows a pair of Buddha statues marking the beginning of the path, with small chaityas, or shrines, dotted along the route. A photograph (EAP838/1/1/5/154) taken approximately 30 years later from the Chitrakar collection by Dirgha Man and Ganesh Man Chitraker shows a stairway with refurbished Buddhas and chaityas at the entrance that has replaced the pathway. 

Fig.4. Steps up to Temples [Swayambhu Stupa, Kathmandu Valley]. Taken by Joseph Gaye, 1888-1892. Dry Plate Negative. British Library, Photo 1424/1(67).

Further reading:

British Library’s The Endangered Archives Programme

Gaye, Mary Margaret and Halverson, Doug, The Photography of Joseph Gaye: Nepal, India and Burma 1888-1899, (privately printed) Canada: Mary Margaret Gaye and Doug Halverson, 2023

Onta, Pratyoush. ‘A Suggestive History of the First Century of Photographic Consumption in Kathmandu’, Studies in Nepali History and Society, Vol. 3, No. 1 (June 1998), pp.181-212

Slusser, Mary Shepherd, Nepal Mandala: A Cultural Study of the Kathmandu Valley, Volume 1 Text, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982

Weise, Kai, ‘An outlook of Gaddhi Baithak’, The Himalayan Times, 2 April 2016 

By Susan M. Harris

When first published in 1783, The History of Sumatra by William Marsden represented the first systematic account of the island of Sumatra published in English or any other European language. The History (henceforth) was highly praised by contemporary scholars and writers and secured Marsden’s reputation as an author, linguist and collector, a reputation that continues to the present day.

Born in 1754 in County Wicklow, Ireland, Marsden was raised in a moderately wealthy family and at the age of 16 joined his elder brother in the service of the English East India Company (EIC henceforth) at Fort Marlborough, now Benkulu, in western Sumatra, Indonesia, as a writer. Marsden remained in Sumatra for 8 years, rising to the rank of Principle Secretary to the EIC Government but resigned from his post aged 24 and returned to London in December 1780, where he pursued a career as an author scholar and later as the First Secretary to the Admiralty (1804-1807).

During his time in Sumatra however, Marsden not only fulfilled his role for the EIC but became an avid collector and documented of the island’s languages, fauna and flora – all of which came to underpin the contents of the History with its chapters of ‘beasts’, ‘vegetables’, ‘medicinal shrubs’, ‘gold, tin and other metals’ and ‘languages’ to name just a few.  

The success of the 1783 first edition was such that a second edition quickly followed in 1784, at the same time in which Marsden was firmly establishing himself in London’s networks of science and learning, following his appointment as a fellow of the Royal Society (1783) and the Society of Antiquaries (1785). Marsden continued to write and publish following the second edition of the History, including a Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language (both 1812), a translation of The Travels of Marco Polo (1818) and Numismata Orientalia Illustrata (1823-5) one of the most influential early publications on Asian coinage produced in Britain and Europe. These works illustrated the broad range of subjects - from linguistics to coins to travel accounts that interested Marsden following his return from Sumatra. The History was also translated into German (1785) and French (1788) however Marsden was keen to prepare a new edition of the History, updated with new information and illustrations acquired from his friends and connections still in Sumatra. It would be this updated version, the third edition of 1811 with an additional 100 pages of text and 19 plates containing 27 engraved illustrations of the plants, animals, people, tools and landscapes of Sumatra. Of the 27 illustrations, twelve record different animals found in Sumatra that are described in the main text of the History. What is interesting is that all but one of the illustrations of animals in the History were based on watercolour paintings and pen and ink studies now held in the Visual Art collections of the British Library.

These original works include a study of a Sunda or Malayan pangolin, shown standing in profile on an outcrop of rock, with its coat of scales clearly delineated. This watercolour with pen and ink sketch was used as the basis for plate 10 of the History, and although the original painting is not signed, according to the engraving, the work was made by ‘W. Bell’ believed to have been Dr William Bell, a Company surgeon based in Sumatra in 1792.

Plate 10 from The History of Sumatra, 3^rd edition, 1811, showing a Sunda pangolin and the original watercolour with pen and ink sketch, NHD1/16, 1784-1808

The original paintings for other works labelled as being the work of ‘W. Bell’ in the History are also found in the Library’s collection of natural history drawings, including pen and ink studies of the skull of a serow, a mammal similar to a goat or antelope and a muntjac skull, also known as barking deer.

Plate 13 no.2 from The History of Sumatra, 3^rd edition, 1811, showing the skull of a ‘Kambin-utan and a Kijang’ alongside the original ink drawings; above NHD1/11; Below NHD1/10, 1784-1808

The details of bone, horns, fractures and teeth of both of these sketches has been carefully copied onto a single plate by the Flemish engraver Anthony Cardon (1772-1813) who engraved all of the animal illustrations in the History.

Whilst the work of ‘W. Bell’ is used for 6 of the animal illustrations in the History, a second artist’s work is also included. This artist is unnamed by Marsden in the History, their work simply signed ‘Sinensis del.’ indicating that the work was the creation of an artist from China. This includes a rather stunning double page engraving of a flying lemur hanging from the branch of a langsat tree, holding an infant on its body whilst two giant squirrels sit and climb on the other end of the branch eating the fruit of the tree.

The original painting for these engraving has at some point become divided into two pages – with the squirrels on one page and the lemur and young on another. However the tip of one of the squirrel’s tails continuing across onto the second page indicates that at one point these two separate pages were once joined or at least were meant to be viewed together as shown in the engraved illustration. The original painting is faithfully reproduced in reverse in the engraving, including the botanical details of the interior of the langsat fruit shown in the lower right of the page.

Plate 9 from The History of Sumatra, 3^rd edition, 1811, showing a flying lemur hanging from a branch with two giant squirrels other the other end, alongside the original watercolour paintings; left NHD2/285; right NHD1/18, 1784-1808

Other works by a Chinese artist include a detailed study of a long tailed porcupine and a pair of greater mousedeer (also known as greater chevrotain) that are both painted without any background or surrounding details. Nonspecific landscapes have however been added to the engraved plates in a style similar to those included in the original works by ‘W. Bell’.

Plate 13 no.1 from The History of Sumatra, 3^rd edition, 1811, showing a long tailed porcupine, alongside the original watercolour painting, NHD1/17, 1784-1808

Plate 12 no.1 from The History of Sumatra, 3^rd edition, 1811, showing a greater mouse deer, alongside the original watercolour painting, NHD1/18, 1784-1808

 A hand written pencil note on the painting of the greater mouse-deer indicates the small scale of these animals and states that they should not be shown too large on the resulting plate to ensure this diminutive nature is accurately reflected in the published work.

The majority of the animal illustrated in the History show mammals, however there is one image of a reptile – a study of a common flying dragon which is also stated to be the work of a Chinese artist in the History although no signature is found on the delicate watercolour on which this engraving was based. The original watercolour shows a dorsal and ventral view of the reptile, highlighting the different colouration on the top and bottom of the common flying dragon as well as the outspread skin that allows the lizard to glide through the air.

Plate 10 no.2 from The History of Sumatra, 3^rd edition, 1811, showing a ventral and dorsal view of a common flying dragon alongside the original watercolour painting, NHD1/26, 1784-1808

A third artist, Eudelin de Jonville, is also referenced in the History’s illustrative animal plates. Although little is known about de Jonville, EIC records show that he worked as a cinnamon surveyor in Ceylon, modern day Sri Lanka, between 1798 and 1800 when he travelled with Major-General MacDowall to the Court of Kandy, where he remained until around 1805. The one work by de Jonville in the History is a set of four studies of the beaks of different species of hornbill – two illustrating the great pied hornbill, one of a Malabar pied hornbill and finally one image of a rhinoceros hornbill. As with the previously mentioned engravings, the original pencil sketches of these studies is in the Visual Arts natural history collections,  each with a scale in inches added to illustration to provide the accurate measurement of each species.  Although also unsigned the original pencil sketches is accompanied by a letter written in French by de Jonville to Marsden describing the hornbill of Sri Lanka, strengthening the attribution of this work to the artistry of de Jonville.

Plate 15 from The History of Sumatra, 3^rd edition, 1811, showing the skulls of three species of hornbill alongside the pencil sketches, NHD1/5, 1784-1808

The original paintings described above are all part of a larger collection of natural history studies collected by Marsden following his return from Sumatra in 1780. These include watercolour and pen and ink studies of fish, shells, a buffalo and several birds alongside the animals discussed above. In total 35 paintings acquired by Marsden are now in the Visual Art collections following their donation by Marsden’s widow to the EIC library after his death in 1836. The collections of the EIC library and that of the India Office Library have subsequently been transferred to the British Library, where they are now available to view in the Library’s reading rooms.

By Cam Sharp Jones, Visual Arts Curator

Further reading:

Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library, 1962.

John Bastin, The British in West Sumatra (1685-1825): a selection of documents, mainly from the East India Company records preserved in the India Office Library, Commonwealth Relations Office, London., Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1965

Diana J. Carroll, "William Marsden, The Scholar Behind The History of Sumatra." Indonesia and the Malay World 47 (2019): 66-89.

William Marsden, The History of Sumatra: Containing an Account of the Government, Laws, Customs, and Manners of the Native Inhabitants, with a Description of the Natural Productions, and a Relation of the Ancient Political State of That Island. By William Marsden,... The Third Edition, with Corrections, Additions, and Plates. ed. 1811.

William Marsden, with introduction by John Bastin, The history of Sumatra, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986

Annabel Teh Gallop, Early Views of Indonesia: Drawings from the British Library, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.

Animals amaze, fascinate and delight us!

In the British Library's new exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound (21 April - 29 August 2023)  you can see how documenting the animals world has resulted in some of humankind's most awe-inspiring art, science and sound recordings. It can take years of research to unlock the secrets of a single species. Did you know that the first photograph of a live giant squid was published in 2005? That bats were first described as birds, and sharks referred to as dogs.

From an Ancient Greek papyrus detailing the mating habits of dogs to the earliest photographs of Antarctic animals and the mournful song of the last living Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, recorded in 1983 and declared extinct in 2000, this is the first major exhibition to explore the different ways in which animals have been written about, visualised and recorded.

The exhibition is arranged into four distinctive environments and visitors will journey through darkness, water, land and air - to encounter striking artworks, handwritten manuscripts, sound recording and printed publications that speak to contemporary debates around discovery, knowledge, conservation, climate change and extinction. Each zone also includes a bespoke, atmospheric soundscape created using recordings from the Library's sound archive.

Some of the highlights includes: 

An illustration of a fruit bat, painted at Barrackpore, India. 1804-7, British Library, NHD3/517.

An image of a 'monkfish' from Pierre Belon's De aquatilibus (Of aquatic species), Paris, 1553. British Library, 446.a.6. 

Illustration of the defects of a horse from Kitab al-baytarah (Book on Veterinary Medicine) by Abu Muhammad Ahmad ibn Atiq al-Azdi, 13th century. British Library, Or 1523, ff. 62v-63r.

An education record for children: The Hip-po-pot-a-mus. Talking Book Corporation, 1918-29. British Library, 9CS0029512.

A section of the Chuju zui (Illustrations of Animals and Insects) showing dragonflies and moths, Japan, 1851. British Library, Or 1312. 

There is a season of in-person and online events inspired by the exhibition, such asa Late at the Library with musician, composer and producer Cosmo Sheldrake hosted by musician, author and broadcaster Cerys Matthews and Animal Magic: A Night of Wild Enchantment where five speakers, including wildlife cameraman, ornithologist and Strictly Come Dancing winner Hamza Yassin and birder, environmentalist and diversity activist, Mya-Rose Craig, each have 15 minutes to tell a story. A selection of these works are included in an outdoor exhibitionaround Kings Cross.

A richly illustrated publication written by exhibition curators Malini Roy, Cam Sharp Jones and Cheryl Tipp can be purchased through the British Library's shop. The publication is supplemented with interactive QR technology allows readers to listen to sound recordings.

The exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through The Paper Project initiative and PONANT. With thanks to The American Trust for the British Library and The B.H. Breslauer Fund of the American Trust for the British Library. Audio soundscapes created by Greg Green with support from the Unlocking our Sound Heritage project, made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Scientific advice provided by ZSL (the Zoological Society of London).