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Erin Blake

is currently the Senior Cataloger responsible for art and manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. From 2000 to 2014, Erin served as the Folger's Curator of Art and Special Collections. In 2014, she became Head of Collection Information Services. After a four-year tour of duty in senior management, she happily returned to working hands-on with the collection in 2018. In addition to her Folger work, Erin teaches The History of Printed Book Illustration in the West at Rare Book School, and is a member of the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee.
Copperplate illustrations and the question of quality
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Copperplate illustrations and the question of quality

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Erin Blake

While looking at early modern book illustration in the undergraduate seminar on Friday, we got to talking about the false assumption that copperplate illustrations always indicate better-quality publications, while woodcuts are inherently lowly. True, the raw material is more expensive:…

Sue Doggett's The Tempest, a unique artists' book
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Sue Doggett's The Tempest, a unique artists' book

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Erin Blake

Conventional wisdom sets up two distinct experiences of Shakespeare’s plays: readers encountering a text, and audiences encountering a performance. The Folger recently acquired a 1995 version of The Tempest by London book artist Sue Doggett that complicates the distinction. Readers…

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