Skip to content
Dorich House Museum
Events
Wednesday 2 April 2025

Russian ‘Lubok’ Print Workshop

A woman in a black apron uses a roller to apply ink to a printing block she is holding. Various printing tools, inks, and papers are arranged on the table, with large windows behind them showing a brick wall and green lawn.

The morning workshop will be a practical demonstration of a type of folk print known as “lubok”, with Helen Higgins, Head of Learning at the Courtauld Institute of Art.  The workshop will be followed by a tour of the museum’s Russian art collection and an afternoon symposium focusing on the history of printmaking in the Russian Empire including the activities of western and Russian printmakers in Russia and the west; patronage of printmaking by imperial rulers; print connoisseurship; and transnational connections and knowledge transfer in the printed medium.  In conjunction withe symposium, the museum will launch a virtual exhibition of prints on the ArtUK platform, curated by Lauren Warner-Treloar.

Three ticket options are available:

  • Morning Workshop (with lunch) 10:00-13:00: £30
  • Afternoon Symposium (with drinks reception) 13:00-19:00: £20
  • Online Symposium 13:00-18:00: £5

Bookings through Eventbrite.

Any profit from this event will go towards the conservation and care of the print collection.  This event is supported by the Association for Art History, Association of Print Scholars, Dorich House Museum, Techne, UKRI-Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Visual & Material Culture Research Centre at Kingston School of Art.

Timetable

9:30-10:00 Arrivals.

10:00-11:50 Lubok: Approaches to Printmaking Workshop, with Helen Higgins, Courtauld Institute of Art

11:50-13:00 Lunch.

12:00-12:20 A Tour of the Russian Collection with Louise Hardiman, Kingston University

13:00-17:00 Afternoon Symposium.

  • Through the Glass Darkly: Hidden Histories in the Hare-Gordine Print Collectionwith Lauren Warner-Treloar, Kingston University
  • Portraits and Projections of Power in Russia across the “Long Eighteenth Century” with Paul Keenan, LSE
  • The International Mobility of Printing Skills: Tracing Printed Colour across Early Modern Europe, with Elizabeth Savage (Online Presenter), University of London
  • Disentangling Entangled Histories of Imperial Russian Prints, with Galina Mardilovich, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

Louise Hardiman specialises in Russian, Ukrainian, and Soviet visual culture. Her PhD (University of Cambridge, 2014) examined the activities of women artists and mediators in the context of British-Russian cultural exchange, and she is currently writing a book that extends this research. Hardiman’s publications include Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art: New Perspectives (2017), Courtly Gifts and Cultural Diplomacy: Art, Material Culture and British-Russian Relations (2023), and two books of translated folk tales by Elena Polenova (Why the Bear has no Tail (2014) and The Story of Synko-Filipko (2019). In recent years she has been a consultant to Dorich House Museum on projects to catalogue Russian art in the Hare-Gordine.  For 2024-25, she is a Visiting Researcher at Kingston University and a Panel Tutor for the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge.

Helen Higgins, Head of Learning, Courtauld Institute of Art

Helen is a printmaker, art historian and curator specialising in printmaking and drawing practices. Following a BA in Fine Art, she completed an MA in History of Art, where her research focused on ‘Exhibitions of Riposte 1937-1942: A British Response to the denunciation and attacks on modern art in Soviet Russia and Germany in 1931-1937’. (Courtauld Institute of Art, 2013). Helen has undertaken artist residencies and projects involving interventions within museum and gallery collections, catalogued numerous prints and drawings collections and worked within curatorial and learning departments at the Hayward Gallery, Tate Modern and The Courtauld.

More events