Senate House Library and the Institute of English Studies present: Revolutions in Print Technologies 

Join Jamie Holman for three micro-conversations with Michael Durrant, co-curator of The English Print Revolution: Caxton and Beyond exhibition at Senate House Library, Cynthia Johnston (Institute of English Studies) and Ben Maggs (Maggs).  

The conversations will explore different revolutions in print technology reflecting on the current Senate House Library exhibition and Jamie's creative interventions as focal points. 

Further Details  
Developed during a residency in Lahore, Factory Weather reworks Morris’s original text through a series of contemporary translations. Each iteration relocates the fairy tale narrative between Lancashire and Lahore, moving fluidly across place, language and context. The work employs an ongoing process of both A.I. and human translation into Urdu, Punjabi and Pothwari, presented alongside a modern English vernacular in printed and performative forms. 

This newly commissioned edition, produced as part of an IES Practitioner in Residence programme at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, disrupts the nostalgia often associated with Morris’s work. Instead, it positions craft traditions as living, contested and open to reinvention.  

Jamie Holman’s work explores the cultural and material legacies of industry in the North of England. His practice examines labour, language and class through both historical and contemporary perspectives. Often developed through research and residency, Holman’s projects draw connections between place, production and identity, foregrounding the social histories embedded within landscape, architecture and the communities and cultures associated with place. 

Dr Michael Durrant is Lecturer in Book History and Programme Convenor for the MA/MRes in the History of the Book at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. His research focuses on early modern print culture, with interests in early modern printers, paratexts, and the material and social lives of books. He is the author of The Dreadful Name of Henry Hills: The Lives and Afterlives of a Seventeenth-Century Printer (Manchester University Press, 2026) and has published on early modern material texts, book use, textual transmission, and literary culture. He is co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Book Studies and has worked closely with libraries, archives, and museums on research, teaching, and public engagement. 

Dr Cynthia Johnston is Senior Lecturer in the History of the Book. She has published on both medieval and industrialist book production and collecting and is currently Research Lead for the Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery’s NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) project (2023-26). She is the editor of Cambridge University Press’s Elements series on ‘Book Collecting’. 

Ben Maggs holds a master's degree in book history from the Institute of English Studies and previously studied for an undergraduate degree in archaeology, before a brief stint working as a chef. These experiences share the common themes of working by hand and the study of shared cultural history, which led him to a particular interest in the form of the book and the lives of the people who make them. His areas of specialism include fine binding, private printing and artists' books, with a strong knowledge of the English Arts and Crafts movement and a close relationship with contemporary printers and book artists. 

On display will be Holman’s new book and film, Factory Weather, inspired by William Morris’s Tale of King Florus and the Fair Jehane. 

This event is part of Firsts: London's Rare Book Fair, and will take place in the Talks Space on the top floor of Saatchi Gallery.

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