Celebrating the life, work and legacy of Matthew Boulton
Click the image to download the PDF
Conference Programme
‘Where Genius and the Arts Preside’
Matthew Boulton and the Soho Manufactory 1809-2009
DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION FORM >
Birmingham, 3-5 July 2009
Friday, 3 July
10.00 – 12.30 pm: registration, tea, coffee, foyer, Arts Building, University of
Birmingham
12 .30 – 1.30 pm: welcome; keynote lecture by Peter Jones, University of
Birmingham, ‘Matthew Boulton: Enlightenment Man’
1.30 – 2.30 pm: buffet luncheon
2.30 –4.00 pm: SESSION ONE
Panel A Assessments
Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles, ‘The
Boulton-Watt Relationship’
Ben Russell, Science Museum, London, ‘“Do you want the
dust?” Matthew Boulton and the Long Shadow of James Watt’
Malcolm Dick, University of Birmingham, ‘The Death of
Matthew Boulton 1809: Ceremony, Controversy and Commemoration’
Panel B Coining for Nations
George Selgin, University of Georgia, ‘Competition, Monopoly
and Great Britain’s “Big Problem of Small Change”’
David Symons, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery,
Matthew Boulton and the Gold Coinage of 1773-1776’
Richard Doty, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, ‘Soho goes
Global: New Mints, New Coins and the Limits of Success’
4.00 – 4.30 pm: tea, coffee
4.30 – 6.00 pm: SESSION TWO
Panel C Employer and Entrepreneur
John Griffiths, Linnaean Society, ‘Matthew Boulton:
Enlightened Employer?’
Joseph Melling, University of Exeter, ‘Dark Satanic Millwrights:
Foremen at the Soho Foundry’
Roger Williams, independent scholar, ‘Matthew Boulton and
James Watt: Empowering the World’
Panel D Sites of Calculation
George Demidowicz, Coventry City Council, ‘The Layout
and Archaeology of the Soho Manufactory and Soho Mint’
Valerie Loggie, AHRC doctoral student, ‘Portraying an
Industrialist’
Andrew Lound, The Society for the History of Astronomy,
‘Stars at Soho: Matthew Boulton’s Lost Observatories’
6.00 – 7.00 pm: drinks reception at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, campus of
the University of Birmingham
7.00 – 8.00 pm: viewing of the ‘The Art of Making Money’ exhibition at
the Barber Institute of Fine Arts
8.00 – conference dinner (venue tba)
Saturday, 4 July
9.00 – 9.30 am: late registration
9.30 – 11.00 am: SESSION THREE
Panel E The Medium is the Message
Richard Clay, University of Birmingham, ‘Matthew Boulton and
the Art of Making Money’
Carolyn Downs, University of Salford, ‘Messages for the
Masses: Trade Tokens and Medals as Mass Media for Radical
Ideas’
Catherine Eagleton, British Museum, ‘Collecting Boulton:
Sarah Sophia Banks and her Coins and Medals’
Panel F Visitors and Spies
Dmitri Gouzévitch, Centre d’études des mondes russe,
caucasien et est-européen, EHESS, Paris, ‘Russian Visitors to
Soho and the Transfer of Steam Technologies at the End of the
Eighteenth Century’
Göran Rydén, Uppsala University, ‘Swedish Views on Urban
and Industrial Development in Eighteenth-Century
Birmingham’
Irina Gouzévitch, Centre Maurice Halbwachs, EHESS, Paris,
‘Matthew Boulton and Augustin de Betancourt: Enlightened
Entrepreneur versus “Philosophical Pirate”, 1788-1809’
11.00 – 11.30 am: tea, coffee
11.30 – 12.30 pm: keynote lecture by Jennifer Tann, University of Birmingham,
‘Matthew Boulton: Creative Pragmatist’
12.30 – 2.00 pm: luncheon in Birmingham city centre, by individual arrangement
2.00 – 3.30 pm: SESSION FOUR (nota this session will take place on the
premises of Birmingham City University, Institute of Art and
Design, Margaret Street, Birmingham)
Panel G Patron of the Arts
Nicholas Goodison, independent scholar, ‘Matthew Boulton
and Neo-Classicism’
Olga Baird, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, ‘In Matthew Boulton’s
Orbit: the Wolverhampton Artist Joseph Barney’
Barbara Fogarty, MPhil. student, ‘The “Mechanical Paintings”
of Matthew Boulton and Francis Eginton’
Panel H Metals
Chris Evans, University of Glamorgan, ‘Matthew Boulton and
the Meaning of Steel in the Eighteenth Century’
Peter Northover and Nick Wilcox, University of Oxford,
‘Matthew Boulton’s Copper’
Sue Tungate, AHRC doctoral student, ‘The Soho Mint: Copper
to Customer’
3.30 – 5.00 pm: tea, coffee in the Edwardian Tea Room, Birmingham Museums
and Art Gallery
visit to ‘Matthew Boulton: Selling What all the World Desires’
exhibition, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
7.30 – 9. 00 pm: concert: ‘Hark! I hear Musick! An Evening with Matthew
Boulton and Friends’, the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra, Baroque Ensemble, Birmingham Cathedral
dinner in Birmingham city centre, by individual arrangement
Sunday, 5 July
9.00 – 10.00 am: keynote lecture by David Miller, University of New South
Wales, ‘Was Matthew Boulton a Scientist? Operating between
the Abstract and the Entrepreneurial’
10.00 – 10.30 am: tea, coffee
10.30 – 12 noon: SESSION FIVE
Panel I Steam, Science and Technology
Jim Andrew, Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum,
‘Boulton, Watt, Wilkinson: the Birth of the Improved Steam
Engine’
Debbie Rudder, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, ‘Ideas
Embodied in the Whitbread Engine: a Tribute to Matthew
Boulton’
Panel J Silver and Plated Wares
Ken Quickenden, Birmingham City University, ‘Early Boulton
and Fothergill Silver, 1763-1773’
Gordon Crosskey, Royal Northern College of Music, ‘Matthew
Boulton and the Production of Sheffield Plate’
Sally Baggott, The Birmingham Assay Office, ‘ Real
Knowledge and Occult Misteries: Matthew Boulton and the
Establishment of the Birmingham Assay Office’
12 noon – 12.45 pm: buffet luncheon
12.45 – 2.15 pm: SESSION SIX
Panel K Trade in an Age of War and Revolution
Liliane Pérez, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris,
‘Matthew Boulton’s Jewish Partners: Oppenheimer,
Baumgartner and Hyman’
Paul Naegel, Centre François Viète, Nantes, ‘Boulton & Watt
and their first Engine Sale to France, 1778-1781’
Dan Christensen, Roskilde University, ‘Big Business in a Time
of War: Matthew Boulton, the Kingdom of Denmark and the
British Bombardment of Copenhagen, 1807’
Panel L Networks of Innovation
Maurizio Valsania, University of Turin, ‘Thomas Jefferson:
Looking at Industrial England’
Martin Clagett, College of William and Mary, ‘William Small:
a Spark of Revolution’
2.15 – 2.45 pm: concluding remarks
2.45 – 5.00 pm: proposed visits:
Bus tour of Boulton’s Birmingham
Soho House, Handsworth, Birmingham
Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum
Soho Foundry (in the hydrogen fuel cell barge ‘Ross Barlow’)
5.00 pm: conference ends
Keynote lectures: 50 minutes; panel papers: 20 minutes
DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION FORM >
|
