The V&A are advertising 8, 3–6-month long placements on a variety of topics for funded students. Deadline 23rd June. Please links below and topics listed:
1) 19th - Century British Ceramic Transfer Prints and Designs
This project is for a PhD student to catalogue a portion of the AAPD’s important collection of 19th-century British ceramic transfer prints and designs. This is a collection of 8,000 prints and designs from Staffordshire ceramic manufactories, an incredibly rich resource for the study of 19th-century transferware ceramics, which has never been catalogued or photographed.
2) Royal Photographic Society Archive
The Royal Photographic Society collection contains an estimated 270,000 photographs; 10,000 items of technology, including cameras; a library of some 27,000 books and journals; and around 5,000 other archival items. It charts the invention and development of this multifaceted medium over the last two centuries. With the completion of the Photography Centre, the V&A’s next priority in photography is to unlock the international significance and vast potential of the RPS collection through an ambitious and well-planned and managed workflow of digitisation and conservation concentrating mainly on the objects in the RPS collection.
This placement is separate to the wider project but runs parallel to it. It focusses on the RPS archive, a rich and relatively untapped research resource which includes minute books, correspondence, press cuttings, reports and other documents recording the history and activities of the Society from its foundation in 1853. Current research surrounding the archive relates to the early history of the RPS, the development of colour techniques, and women photographing architecture.
3) Jewish Dealers and the V&A Ceramics Collections
This placement focuses on exploring the contributions of Jewish art and antique dealers to forming the V&A’s internationally important ceramics collection.
Building on the research objectives of the AHRC-funded project ‘Jewish Country Houses – Objects, Networks, People’ (2019-2024), the student will undertake primary source research using the archives, accession registers and close examination of museum objects, to identify and map the networks of Jewish dealers who contributed to building the collections of European earthenwares (Italian maiolica, French faience, Dutch Delft and German stoneware). The student will use preliminary findings to direct their research into the networks of Jewish dealers, either exploring the impact within the wider trade of historic ceramics of a small number of prolific dealers (e.g. Siegfried Bing, Alfred Spero, Durlacher Brothers) or investigating the larger network of lesser-known Jewish dealers and providing biographical and business information.
4) Transcription of Henry Cole’s Diaries
In 1868 Henry Cole left London, where he ran both the Department of Science and Art and the South Kensington Museum, for a three-month trip in Italy. There he aimed to investigate historical techniques of architectural mosaic and allied crafts, which might be revived to the benefit of contemporary British design and education. Cole’s handwritten diary of this expedition is held today in the NAL: Notes of a journey to Palermo and back … . It contains also sketches, prices of objects acquired, and observations on matters such as terracotta, maiolica, Cosmati work and sgraffito. Cole draws up lists of objects to be acquired - or reproduced - for the Museum, to inspire artists, attract the public and inform students of the Mosaic class at the School of Design.
The aim of this PhD placement is to digitise, transcribe and index this important, so far unresearched source. The student will then be able to conduct research to contextualise this source and to develop public facing outputs, to be agreed depending on the length of the placement as well as the interests and skills they bring and/or would like to develop. Placement candidates will expect to acquire the following skills and knowledge from this placement.
5) Women Artists in V&A Paintings and Drawings Collection
The V&A’s paintings and drawings collection is rich in works by women artists. Many are found in our national collections of portrait miniatures, watercolours and pastels, as well as oil paintings and drawings. However, our historical holdings made by women have never previously been researched in depth. The placement student will choose an area of the pre-1900 paintings and drawings collection stored at South Kensington (drawings, watercolours, pastels and portrait miniatures). This could be the work of a specific artist well-represented in our collection, such as Angelica Kauffman or Rosalba Carriera, or a period or medium in which women artists were active, for example, Portrait Miniatures 1780-1830, or 19th century Watercolours. We welcome other approaches, for example, by genre or former owner. The student will catalogue and photograph relevant objects, undertake wider research into our holdings of women artists and present their findings to the V&A research community, as well as to the wider public via online content.
6) Investigation into Museum Object Photography
This project will investigate different background and lighting choices during the object digitisation process at the V&A and how they affect perception and understanding of and engagement with the object.
Working closely with the Head of Photography and Digitisation, the student will identify relevant user groups and photography styles, investigate suitable methods and methodologies, and carry out the first steps of this audience research project.
Outputs will therefore include a conceptualisation of different user groups of photographs of museum objects, a methodology and justification of how, why, and which photographs are chosen for this research, a methodology of how perception and understanding of and engagement with object images can be investigated and an analysis of the gathered data of the audience research. These outputs can be presented in various forms such as journal paper submission, a blog post, or an internal policy document.
7) Provenance of V&A South Asian Collections
The project is based in the Asia Department/VARI and addresses the growing interest in the V&A’s South Asian Collections. Specifically, it aims to uncover new information about the provenance of items which entered the collection between the arrival of the East India Company holdings in 1879 and the Partition of India in 1947.
The student will review V&A archival records to identify the acquisition source and subsequently carry out research to uncover more information about them. In doing so, the project will make a significant contribution to the V&A’s provenance research efforts and the wider history of collecting. At every stage of the project, the student will be supported by the placement supervisors and curators in the Asia Department, and they will have opportunity to share their findings within and beyond the museum.
8) Research into V&A’s Collection of Pugin Drawings
The V&A has recently acquired 700 design drawings by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852), the leading figure in the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival, for furniture, metalwork and stained glass manufactured by John Hardman & Co. of Birmingham. They span private, public, ecclesiastical and secular projects from the early 1830s to 1851. As well as providing the opportunity to establish new factual details about Pugin’s work, they present research potential about themes such as design process, collaboration, and drawing as communication.
This is an exceptional opportunity to conduct primary and secondary research on Pugin and be involved in related curatorial activities. The placement will focus on researching and cataloguing the drawings for Explore the Collections, including their place in Pugin’s oeuvre and their connections with other drawings and archival material by Pugin held at the museum and elsewhere. The student will also be part of the curatorial team preparing a display of the drawings (to be held at the museum in 2024/2025; date tbc). The display will showcase Pugin’s draughtsmanship and design process, highlight the role of drawing in his working relationship with Hardman & Co., and bring together specific designs with corresponding furniture and metalwork from the V&A collection.