Artworks, Digitisation, Book Launch and Bayly Prize

Recently catalogued artworks

This week I have spent some time cataloguing our visual material. Those who have visited our Reading Room would probably have consulted our physical catalogue entitled Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Engravings and Busts in the Collection of the Royal Asiatic Society by Raymond Head. The illustrated catalogue was published in 1991 and it remains a useful finding aid to discover the Society’s rich and diverse visual material. However, more than three decades have passed since the publication of the catalogue and the Society’s collection of visual material has undergone some change – some of the paintings included in Head’s catalogue are no longer in our possession, while new acquisitions have been made over the years.

For this reason, we have been re-cataloguing our visual material in our online Library catalogue Koha to provide an up-to-date finding aid of our collection. Part of this work includes enhancing the details in the Head catalogue and transferring them to the online catalogue. Recently, our volunteer Umarah has been carrying out this work on the Unwin collection (Head Cat. No. 38), a series of watercolours and drawings of Myanmar, India and Egypt made by Arthur Hamilton Unwin and his wife Francis Unwin in the late 19th century. Umarah has been researching into individual drawings of the collection, and we hope to be able to share more about it in a future blogpost once it is searchable in our online catalogue. So stay tuned!

The new artwork catalogues recently made available on Koha include works that have long been in our backlog. A particularly intriguing (and also perplexing) one is a pen and ink drawing (108) donated by Sir William Colebrooke (1787–1870). It depicts three figures in indigenous costume, two holding a bow and an arrow; three reindeer; a bird, possibly a thunderbird, the mythological bird-like spirit in North American indigenous culture; two crowns and a sailing vessel. The context in which the drawing was made is unclear. An entry dated 3 April 1852 in our Donations Register records this as ‘a North American Indian drawing, or picture writing’, without giving further information on its content. With a subject matter on North American culture, this drawing appears to fall outside the scope of the Society’s areas of interest, but it was done in such a stylised way which makes it an interesting work to study. Sir William Colebrooke was the Governor of Colony of New Brunswick from 1841 to 1848, so this drawing might have come into his possession through his official role in North America. If anyone could shed some light on the symbolism of the drawing, we would be most grateful!

Also added to the online catalogue are several prints and drawings, including two recently donated engravings of the Chinese goddess Pusa from the early 18th century (097); an engraving of Ranjit Singh, the founder the Sikh Empire (109); and of the cavern of Makoo near Mount Ararat in Turkey (110). Three watercolours paintings depicting flora and fauna in Southeast Asia have also been added (115.001, 115.002 and 115.003).

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Digitisation of Malay manuscripts

On Tuesday, 29 July, the Society signed a digitisation agreement with UniSZA (Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Terengganu, Malaysia). The signing ceremony was conducted over Zoom and attended by our Director Alison Ohta and Professor Dato’ Dr Fadzli Bin Adam, Vice Chancellor of UniSZA, and other guests. This marked an official step in the collaboration between the two institutions to digitise eleven Malay manuscripts in the Society’s holdings. We are grateful for the support provided by UniSZA in this collaboration as we work to promote wider access to our manuscript treasures. The digitised manuscripts are now available for viewing in our Digital Library here, and more information about the collection can be found in a previous blogpost here.

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Book Launch

After a month of break in our event calendar we are making a brief return with a book launch next Monday, 4 August at 6.30pm (BST). This is to celebrate the launch of the essay volume The Medieval Mediterranean between Islam and Christianity (The American University in Cairo Press, 2025), which explores various aspects of pan-Mediterranean Christian-Islamic encounters in material culture and art, from textiles to precious oils, and from metalwork to ceramics. The event will feature Sami De Giosa, co-editor of the book, with an introduction by Dr Mariam Rosser-Owen. More information of the event can be found here.

As usual, the event will be conducted both in-person and online. If you would like to join us over Zoom, please email mb@royalasiaticsociety.org. We hope to see you there!

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2025 Bayly Prize

We end this week’s blogpost with a reminder on the 2025 Bayly Prize, which is currently accepting nominations. The award of £2,500 will be given to a distinguished thesis in an Asian subject falling within the scope of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society or the Journal of Modern Asian Studies. For details of eligibility and how to apply, please visit this page: https://royalasiaticsociety.org/the-bayly-prize-applications-and-nominations/

Nominations for the prize will close in two months, on Friday 26 September 2025. So please do get your application in or share this with anyone who might be interested!

James Liu