In all art history fields based on printed material, research conventionally focuses on the images, and other information that was printed. The objects used to produce that information (including cut woodblocks, engraved metal plates, and lithographic stones) have been neglected. Many hundreds of thousands of these historical printing surfaces survive today in the East as in the West.

As relics of historical crafts and industry, they fall outside the modern disciplines, and the vast majority are even inaccessible to researchers because they are uncatalogued and often considered ‘uncatalogue-able’. However, as individual objects and as an untapped category of cultural heritage, these artefacts of printing offer a great deal of information that the finished prints, books, fabrics, and other printed materials do not.

The proposed panel will respond to the need for a multidisciplinary introduction to what in image-based fields are called ‘print matrices’ – ‘printing surfaces’ in text-based fields.

Following from the conference Blocks Plates Stones (London, 2017) the monographic issue of Memofonte journal (2017) and the volume Printing things (2023), the first facilitated discussion of the use of such objects in research, this panel will represent the state of research in this new and developing field. It will bring together object-based research, collection-level surveys, historical printing practices, ethical considerations of their storage and use (or nonuse) today, methods for multiplying the originals (eg dabs, stereos, electros), and methodological studies. By doing so, it will facilitate their introduction into historical research across the disciplines.

Round table "Matrixes collections" (off site)

• Alessia ALBERTI, Francesca MARIANO - Les matrices d'Antonio Piccinni (1846-1920) à la Raccolta Bertarelli : autour des expérimentations entre eau-forte et héliogravure à la fin du XIXe siècle
• Rémi JIMENES, Anna BAYDOVA - La collection de bois gravés du Musée de Tessé (Le Mans) : un cas exemplaire de la pérennité de l’usage des planches gravées dans l'imprimerie provinciale à la fin de l'ancien régime ?
• Erwan DUROZOI - Les matrices de Léopold Survage : enjeux matériels et éditoriaux
• Maud LEJEUNE - Ce que nous apprend l'analyse des matrices lyonnaises d’illustration de la Bible du XVIe siècle
• Yarmi MONZON - Les katagami en Europe : des pochoirs devenus objets de collection
• Stephane ROY, Karine BOMEL - Reproduire l’estampe ancienne au 20e siècle : les matrices de la Société pour l’étude de la gravure française (1911-1949)
• Louis TEYSSEDOU - Patrimonialisation : les blocs d'impression Bonvalet
• Hélène ZANIN - La collection des matrices de la graveuse Jeanne Bardey (1872-1954).

Round table off site, at Musée Gadagne.
Free entry on registration: contact ilaria.andreoli@inha.fr