The Collection Podcast University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections

So far, all the items in the collection podcast have been selected by host, Chloe Medghalchi. But what happens when six members of the Center for Research Collections to choose one item fitting of a special collection? Find out what items they chose, and what exactly a ‘gentleman’s collection’ entails in our final episode of The Collection Podcast.

Throughout the podcast we've been looking at items in the collection, but this episode will discuss new items. Future items! We'll be discussing items that have been newly acquired or are in the process of being added to the ever-growing university collection.

The objects in the University of Edinburgh’s Research Collection have many interesting stories to tell. But few are actually linked to a real story or a real person. We’ll be looking at three objects that are ‘based on a true story’: Adrien de Vries's Cain and Abel, Smugglerius, and a nurse’s scrapbook.

What happens when artwork is called ‘fake’? Last week, we discussed items that are fakes and forgeries, made with the intent of passing, but the term ‘fake’ is problematic when it comes to art. More often than not, it’s a question of attribution. We will be looking at several items from the University’s Torrie Collection: the Giambolognia Anatomical Figure of a Horse, Jan Lieven’s A Wooded Walk, and Hercules Seghers’s Landscape. We will also discuss the importance of a name, a signature, and how we discern the true value of an artwork.

Within a collection of 35 kilometers of material, there are bound to be a few fakes. We’ll be looking at several items that are forgeries, made with the intent of fooling people: a letter discussing the Piltdown Man Skull, two doctored photographs, and a triple manual harpsichord. By asking, ‘why fake something?’ we reveal quite about the time in which these items were created, and what we considered valuable.