RECONFIGURING EPHEMERAL HERITAGE: A HISTORICAL AND MATERIAL ANALYSIS OF THE ARMSTRONG WOODBLOCK COLLECTION (1600-1910S)

This paper traces the transnational history of the Armstrong Woodblock Collection (around 3000 items) at the Huntington Library in California, USA, highlighting its dual role as both industrial relic and cultural palimpsest. Collected in England by James Tarbotton Armstrong (1849–1933) during the late Victorian print era, the collection—purchased by Henry E. Huntington in 1917 alongside his renowned British art collection—represents a significant yet often overlooked chapter in Anglo-American heritage development. Through a decade of cataloguing these matrices from the 17th to 20th centuries, this study demonstrates how 19th-century British collectors turned outdated printing tools into historical documents, a preservation approach later adopted by American institutions as tangible evidence of pre-industrial craftsmanship. The interdisciplinary study investigates the woodblock ... continue reading->

Keywords: Woodblock; Printing History; Huntington Library; James Tarbotton Armstrong; Henry Edward Huntington; Collecting History