Deadline for applications: 31 January 2020
Conference date and venue: 14-15 July 2020 | The Hub, Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria
Alfred Wainwright (1907-91) is best known for his seven Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. Published between 1955-66 these handwritten, hand-drawn works of art have become the definitive guides to walking in the English Lake District.
The 2020 CPHC/Print Networks Conference will take place in Appleby-in-Westmoreland, on the edge of Wainwright’s Lakeland Fells. It is fitting, therefore, that the event should take as its theme ‘printing for tourists.’ The history of travel, transport and tourism is often graphically captured in the transient paper oddments which it has generated. This conference will look at the tickets, notices, leaflets, labels, folders, billheads and other throwaways, alongside books both physical and virtual, that have come to represent tourists and tourism across the ages.
The theme may be interpreted widely and may include but is not limited to such things as:
Guide books and travel guides;
The publicity of visitor attractions;
Prints and postcards;
Labels, suitcase tags and bumper stickers;
Travel information: maps, timetables, and tickets for trains and bus or voyages by sea;
The printed ephemera of travelling by car: highway codes, tax disks, AA/RAC documentation;
Hotel literature: menu cards, laundry labels, door hangers
Souvenirs printed on ceramics, enamels, plastic, tin, confectionary or any other substrate.
… and a host of other related ephemera
While it is envisaged that most papers might concentrate on tourism within Great Britain, the Anglophone world will not be excluded. It could, for example, be tourism in Italy which has been advertised in Britain or tourism in Britain which has been advertised in France.
Papers should emphasis the design, production, distribution and consumption of ‘printing for travel’ in relation to the British Isles across all periods of print from early modern to the present. Papers may include the technology, typography and design; the people, printers, publishers and distribution networks involved; pricing and sales; and the buyers and readers.
How to apply: Proposals for papers of 20 minutes are welcome. Abstracts of 300 words should be accompanied by a brief biography and sent to david.osbaldestin@bcu.ac.uk by 31 January 2020. It is understood that papers offered to the conference will be original work and will not have been previously delivered to any similar conference or published elsewhere.
Publication: Papers will be considered for publication in either Publishing History or a future volume of the CPHC series, Printing History and Culture published by Peter Lang Ltd.
Postgraduate fellowship: covering the cost of attending the conference and assistance towards travel within the UK, is offered to a student whose research falls within the parameters of the conference brief, and who wishes to present a paper at the conference. Abstracts should be accompanied by a summary of the research being undertaken and a letter of recommendation from a supervisor. Applications for the postgraduate fellowship should be submitted by 31 January 2020 and sent to: david.osbaldestin@bcu.ac.uk
The venue: Appleby-in-Westmoreland is an attractive market town and ancient royal borough situated in the Eden Valley, midway between the North Pennines and English Lake District and offering access to the Yorkshire Dales. A town perhaps more generally famed for its annual Gypsy Horse Fair. It was the home of Lady Anne Clifford, Jack (‘before I could say…’) Robinson and birthplace of Richard More the seventeenth-century London Bookseller. William Camden spoke well of its main street and it boasts one of England’s 1,000 best churches complete with the Clifford memorial and a chained 1632 ‘Book of Martyrs.’ A short break in this lovely area could well be combined with the conference.
Print Networks committee: Caroline Archer-Parré; Catherine Armstrong; Maureen Bell; Giles Bergel; Ruth Connolly; Julia Cunningham; John Hinks; Elaine Jackson; Barry McKay; David Osbaldestin; Lisa Peters