Alchemy – the art of turning base metals into gold and prolonging life with the famously elusive elixir of life – was the topic of Anke’s PhD at Cambridge. She returned to Cambridge as the Munby Fellow at Cambridge University Library in 2013/14 to compile a bibliography that would make, she hoped, the life of current and future historians of science easier: Alchemy in Cambridge: An Annotated Catalogue of Alchemical Texts and Illustrations in Cambridge Repositories (published in Nuncius (Brill) in 2015).
Anke’s focus on capturing not just texts but also illustrations in her bibliography was met by Cambridge University Library’s initiative to include one of their most beautiful alchemical manuscripts (with an introduction by Anke) in their astounding Digital Library, as well as collaborating with Anke on an installation for the seminal alchemy exhibition at the Landesmuseum Halle in 2017.
The work in question is now commonly known as the ‘Crowning of Nature’ (or Latin ‘Coronatio naturae’), preserved in Cambridge University Library MS Gg.1.8, and it became clear that its sequence of images – viewed one after the other in quick succession – ‘animates’ the process of making the philosophers’ stone almost like a flip-book: the visual alchemical metaphors show the experiment from the raw materials to their final perfection. Eggs and dragons, birds and elements change before the viewer’s eyes, symbolising different materials, methods, and processes – an unusual and mesmerising manifestation of alchemical knowledge. The effect – first observed by Anke and made visible for the exhibition by the Landesmuseum and CUL’s digital wizards – is rather mesmerising:
Incidentally, Anke was one in the early cohorts of scholars that enjoyed the benefit of a Gates Cambridge scholarship, founded in 2000 thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ‘to build a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others’. Her endeavour then was to promote understanding of history and appreciation of cultural heritage for a better future – a mission she continues to pursue through Type & Forme today, working closely with institutions and collectors.
To learn more about us and what we do, see our series of A History of Type & Forme in Objects, which is added to over time.