Susannah Lyon-Whaley

Autumn skies outside = the perfect time to read 2nd-year @uoyenglishrl.bsky.social student Eva Newell's blog post on cinnamon 🍁 What does Hailey Beiber's cinnamon girl make-up trend have to do with Voltaire's El Dorado? blogs.york.ac.uk/student-salo... @laurenworking.bsky.social #StudentSalon

It looks so atmospheric and alive somehow!

This is tonight at 8pm UK time! Please send an email if you'd like to join!

Again and again, the response @laurenworking.bsky.social and I received from #StudentSalon workshops was how much handling objects meant.
As Rachel Hogue, MA student at @cecs-york.bsky.social says: 'Objects of the past, after all, aren’t just for looking.'

blogs.york.ac.uk/student-salo...

Back into research after attending Attingham Trust's 'New Perspectives in Country Houses' course, and channelling Jane (photo from the amazing Austen/Turner exhibition at Harewood House, in collaboration with @cecs-york.bsky.social @jenniebatchelor.bsky.social @chloewigstonsmith.bsky.social )

Bugs in salons?! Recent University of York graduate Mumia Douse-Bah's blog explores the colonial context of bugs and recounts a flea on a salon attendee's breast that spurred a 'poetic frenzy' 🐛🐜
@uoyenglishrl.bsky.social @laurenworking.bsky.social #StudentSalon

blogs.york.ac.uk/student-salo...

We have some thought-provoking student blog posts for the #StudentSalon project - this one on trade beads is by Daisy Glassett-King, a third year student in @uoyenglishrl.bsky.social blogs.york.ac.uk/student-salo...

The #StudentSalon project website is live! It's been incredible working with @laurenworking.bsky.social and students over the last few months to put together this cabinet of things to help explore 17th/18th-century salon culture from a global/decolonial perspective
blogs.york.ac.uk/student-salo...

Over the summer, students worked with me & @susannah-lw.bsky.social on the #StudentSalon project, where they helped us assemble a cabinet of 17th & 18th century objects. Our webpage is now live and full of incredible, student-led resources - please check it out!

blogs.york.ac.uk/student-salo...

Being supplied for her - half of me keeps wondering if she's one of the dogs.
It sounds like hot cross buns!

I have the same with Fanny who keeps getting biscuits 😅

Sending you the details! 😀

Anyone is welcome to join the Women and Flowers research network - we have a Whatsapp group and an optional monthly meeting!

Emily Cumming Harris, Kiekie (Freycinetia banksii), nikau (Rhopalostylis sapida), five finger (Pseudopanax arboreum) and karaka (Corynocarpus laevigata) in fruit, 1879

Michele and Catherine will be speaking on Monday 29 September @8pm UK (8am on 30 September NZ time). Zoom link available by DM or email womenandflowersnetwork@gmail.com. Groundwork features Emily Cumming Harris, a (no longer) forgotten 19th-century NZ botanical artist and poet

Book cover for Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris

If flowers are your thing - @zarakesterton.bsky.social, Tori Champion and I run a growing network on Women and Flowers. This month Michele Leggott and @deleifd.bsky.social are speaking about their beautiful book Groundwork. Details below or email womenandflowersnetwork@gmail.com to join us!🌷

Cover page of programme for the Women’s Worlds symposium.

Off to an exciting and fascinating start to a day on Women’s Worlds, on global spaces in 17th and 18th century Britain. Thank you to @susannah-lw.bsky.social & @laurenworking.bsky.social for bringing together so many interesting perspectives and research from universities, museums & heritage sites.

Thanks to Thin Ice Press and @georginaemw.bsky.social @wordsmith.bsky.social for an enlightening three days of material thinking! If I have learned anything it is that there is there is no end to matter and 'digressions are sunshine'!

Cabinet assembly day for our #StudentSalon @uoyenglishrl.bsky.social! With @susannah-lw.bsky.social and our marvellous student partners Mumia, Rachel, and Daisy.

Congratulations @eilishgregory.bsky.social and Michael Questier for putting together a great volume!

What did empire and global goods have to do with literary sociability and 17th/18th-century salon culture? Watch this space for what our students find!

A Queen's Book of Flowers - The Royal Studies Podcast In this episode, host Victoria Barlow is joined by guest Susannah Lyon-Whaley to discuss the royal links with early 17th century gardening practices and the A Queen's Book of Flowers exhibition runnin...

Just to keep up the queen and flowers theme ... a podcast too! 🌻 Thank you @royalstudies.bsky.social
www.buzzsprout.com/1934722/epis...

Check out my short article in the June issue of BBC History exploring how 17th-century women found out about new plants growing overseas 🌺🌷🌻
pocketmags.com/bbc-history-...

susannahlyon-whale.wixsite.com/queensbookof...

My exhibition A Queen's Book of Flowers is now on at the Thin Ice Press in York 🌺🌻 Featuring Henrietta Maria and John Parkinson's Paradisi in Sole (1629), women and foreign plants. Today, an accompanying workshop making bookmarks!

An afternoon at Thin Ice Press for @yorkfestofideas.bsky.social, with a chance to hear more about Marie Curie postdoc @susannah-lw.bsky.social’s work on 17th century women, botany, print. With a little print resurrection of the potato of Canada…

What a treat to meet the lovely Anna Thornton from AUP in person at RSA!

Rare medieval rolled manuscript found in York Bar Convent archive Fewer than a dozen of the documents have ever been discovered, York's Bar Covent says.

An amazing find at York's Bar Convent. (Top tip: the cafe is also excellent!)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

That is the coolest cover!! Congratulations!!

A 17th century Dutch painting of pink roses, carnations, cornflowers, and narcissus. The text reads: Call for Papers. Plants and People: the cultivation and propagation of botanical knowledge among non-professional communities, c.1600–1800. University of Cambridge, 8–9 July 2025.

Text reads: This interdisciplinary conference will examine botanical knowledge exchange among early modern individuals at the periphery of professional science. We will focus on women, domestic workers, artisans, merchants, and enslaved and indigenous naturalists who used plant knowledge in their everyday life, yet did not (or could not) derive a living primarily from botany.    Over the course of this conference, and a subsequent publication, we intend to address the following questions: What kinds of people and spaces fostered botanical knowledge outside of traditional institutions of learning? What role did embodied experience play in the acquisition of botanical knowledge? What did the social networks of these practitioners look like, and how did this overlap with or differ from the networks of professional scientists? How was the knowledge of these non-professional practitioners valued (or devalued) by their contemporaries? Reflecting the creative nature of our subject matter, we welcome applications for papers in formats other than traditional presentations. Furthermore, the conference will include a practical workshop with the artist and natural dye expert Nabil Ali. We hope that our creative workshop will feed into participants’ practice and inform their contributions to our proposed publication.   This conference will be held in person from 8–9 July at the University of Cambridge. Lunch and refreshments will be included. We aim to offer grants of £150 to contribute towards the cost of travel and accommodation for speakers coming from outside of Cambridge and the surrounding area. Please let us know in your application whether you would like to be considered for a travel grant.   Please send an abstract of max. 300 words and a short biography to the conference organisers, Lucy Havard (lh655@cam.ac.uk) and Zara Kesterton (zlk21@cam.ac.uk) by Friday 14 March 2025.

We are delighted to announce our #CfP for 'Plants and People: the cultivation and propagation of botanical knowledge among non-professional communities, c.1600–1800'! Please email your abstracts (300 words) and bios to @zarakesterton.bsky.social @lucyjhavard.bsky.social, by 14 March 🪴

Print Matters summer school: Thin Ice Press — Thin Ice Press What does it mean to think about matter and materiality through the medium of letterpress printing?  We invite scholars of matter, materiality and/or material culture (broadly conceived) in any ...

**Print Matters summer school**
Applications now open! Deadline 12th Feb
3 days of practical printing sessions, trips, and seminar discussions based at York's Thin Ice Press
www.thinicepress.org/events/print...