Archival material
The Classical Art Research Centre's resources are founded on the Beazley Archive – the photographs and notes of Professor Sir John Beazley. Beazley himself possessed archives of other scholars which came to CARC by the same route, some of which have been itemized separately below. Other important collections have been added at different points. The main collections are summarized below.
Apart from the elements of the Beazley Archive devoted to Greek vase-painting and gems, most of the archives have not been digitized or fully inventoried. This remains a long-term aim of the Centre. Researchers are welcome to study any material at our study-room in Oxford and, as far as resources permit, we are happy to take informal photographs and scans of individual documents for remote researchers.
Sir John Beazley Archive
Papers, photographs, books and engraved gem replicas of Prof Sir John Davidson Beazley (1885-1970), Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford.
Personal papers of Lady (Marie) Beazley (1885-1967) (née Bloomfield; previous married name Ezra), mother of Mary Beazley and mother-in-law of the poet Louis MacNeice.
The Archive principally comprises a vast collection of mounted photographs of mainly Attic figure-decorated pottery from the sixth to fourth centuries BC, which was augmented by physical additions between 1970s and 2000s. Around 90% of the ca. 100,000 photographs have been digitized and are included in the Beazley Archive Pottery Database (BAPD).
The Archive also includes some of Beazley's books, some tens of thousands of loose-leaf notes and tracings, his notebooks between around 1907 and 1930, about 1,500 finely worked drawings, and numerous personal and research papers.
The majority of Beazley's notebooks and other boxed documents are summarized in an available handlist.
We have much of Beazley's (mostly incoming) correspondence, principally on Greek vase studies, throughout his life. A list of correspondents is available, but may exclude some names represented in other parts of the Archive.
W. Llewellyn Brown Archive
Papers of the Oxford archaeologist William Llewellyn Brown (1924-1958), Reader in Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Mostly Etruscan subjects.
Stanley Casson Archive
Partial inventory available here
Includes correspondence with the sculptor Charles d'Orville Pilkington Jackson and the Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie.
Note that further Casson material is in the care of New College, Oxford.
Papers and photographs of Thomas James Dunbabin (1911-55), Reader in Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford.
Gem impressions and replicas
CARC holds one of the world's largest collections of impressions and replicas of ancient and neoclassical engraved gems, which are further detailed on our gem pages and the Gems Database.
The collection comprises around 40,000 pieces, including many eighteenth-century sets of gem impressions designed for collectors and connoisseurs. Most of this material came via Sir John Beazley. It has been augmented in recent years by impressions in various media by gem scholars, including around 7,000 impressions made by Sir John Boardman. Among the highlights are impressions of the Poniatowski gems, Phlipp Daniel Lippert's Dactyliotheca, the collection of electrotypes and impressions of the geologist Nevil Story-Maskelyne, and collections of impressions made by Federico Dolce, Bartolommeo and Pietro Paoletti, and James and William Tassie.
Henig Archive
Sundry correspondence and gem impressions donated by Rev Prof Martin Henig.
See further under gems.
Paul Jacobsthal correspondence and photographs
A variety of correspondence, photographs, and other documents from the German refugee Prof Paul Ferdinand Jacobsthal (1880-1957), professor at Marburg University prior to 1935 and subsequently lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford.
Summary handlist available here.
More substantial Jacobsthal archives are held in the School of Archaeology of the University of Oxford.
Elfriede (Kezia) Knauer Archive
Papers, photographs and slides of Dr Elfriede (Kezia) Regina Knauer (1926-2010). Inventory available.
The material covers Greek vase-painting (especially the Triptolemos Painter), the Silk Road and clothing/textile history, and miscellaneous topics in art history and classical archaeology.
Norbert Kunisch Archive
Papers and photographs of Norbert Kunisch (1934-2018), head of the antiquities collection, Ruhr-Universität Bochum), including material on the painter Makron.
Notebook and manuscripts of Nicolas Plaoutine
Antiquarian and later photographs
About 30,000 photographs from various sources, including mounted photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture, GMA Richter's published photographs of Archaic Greek sculpture, and about 12,000 images of ancient gems in various collections, taken by R.L. Wilkins for Sir John Boardman.
Miscellaneous photographs of Greek pottery
Individual documents of note
Two volumes the Karlbeck Syndicate – hand-produced volumes of Chinese antiquities acquired through the Syndicate in the 1930s.
Bocchi manuscripts: bound volume of drawings, manuscripts and some printed material (about 100 drawings in total) related to vases and other materials in the region of Adria. Ca. early nineteenth century and entitled Antichità discoperte a Adria, XX1, No. 22 [?]. Various hands, but perhaps principally the work of F.G. Bocchi.
Published and unpublished manuscript poems (ca. 1948) by the poet and cartoonist Haro Hodson (1923-2021), including an unpublished poem relating to Siegfried Sassoon's home at Heytesbury, written on an envelope addressed to Sir John Beazley.
Numerous other miscellaneous items of note.
Library and offprint collections
We hold a small library of books and offprints related to classical art, principally to Greek vase-painting. This includes items from Beazley's library, works acquired from other parts of the University, and donated items.
A mostly complete inventory is available.
Nostell Priory papers
The 'lost' Nicholson sculptures
Ten late nineteenth-century photographs documenting the 'lost' Roman sculptures of Sir Charles Nicholson at The Grange, Totteridge. The sculptures have now been rediscovered.
Administrative archives of the Beazley Archive
Correspondence and administrative documentation from the earlier years of the Beazley Archive/Classical Art Research Centre, ca. 1970-2000.
