Did medieval people buy each other Christmas gifts? New Year's Day was the main gifting day, but little is known about everyday people's present giving. Our project on London's customs records has uncovered a wealth of affordable items imported around this time: gloves and hats to toys and rattles🧵

🎄New bonus Christmas Blog Post at @materialwills.bsky.social ! 🎄 @lsangha.bsky.social collected the names of our most Christmassy testators, featuring: - Mr Christmas 🎅 - John Turkey 🦃 - Christopher Pudding 🍪 #History #SkyStorians #EarlyModern @uoearchhist.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social

🎄CHRISTMAS BLOG POST!🎄 A silly gift for you all: I dug through The National Archive wills looking for Christmassy names. There were a lot, inc: Mr 🎅 Christopher 🍮 ❄️ Green Thomas 🦃 Theophilia 🛷 sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... 📜 #EarlyModern 🗃️ @leverhulme.ac.uk @uoearchhist.bsky.social

🚨FAB PROJECT NEWS🚨 We are delighted to report that we have been awarded a free study break at a Landmark Trust property as part of their Landmark Futures scheme! The whole team will spend a week in Bath at the handsome Georgian building, Elton House. More here: sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

December's 'Will of the Month' post is live over at @materialwills.bsky.social 👇 Featuring parrots, Spanish wine, Venetian carpets & a commissioned altarpiece featuring the testator 🧔‍♂️🖼️ @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social @cemsexeter.bsky.social #history #SkyStorians #EarlyModern

🎅December Will of the Month!🎅 This merchant from the Republic of Ragusa made reference to the altarpiece he commissioned ✝️ 300 silk stockings🧦400 pairs of stirrups🐴, and a parrot 🦜. #EarlyModern 🗃️ sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social

📜 December's 'Will of the Month' post has got it all: - 300 pairs of stockings 🧦 - A Parrot 🦜 - An elaborate altar painting ⛪🖼️ - 360 Jars of Wine 🍷 Read on to find out more about the life & trade of a Ragusan merchant in Stuart London 👇 #skystorians #history #EarlyModern @uoearchhist.bsky.social

A very strong showing of Christmas jumpers and festive backgrounds all round! 🎄🧑‍🎄☃️

Found the 'people named after birds' page of the will register

❓Question please for #Skystorians - has anyone come across examples of people being baptised in punch bowls in 17th and 18th-century England? We've found one in a will ... 🗃️

📜 Catch up on everything the @materialwills.bsky.social team have been up to with this latest project update 👇 #EarlyModern #DigitalHumanities #History #CitizenScience @uoearchhist.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk @transkribus.bsky.social @zooniverse.bsky.social

📢The wills team have been very busy of late!📢 Here's a little update on our progress over recent months - our volunteers completed Zooniverse and the database is on it's way... #EarlyModern #DigitalHumanities #Transkribus 🗃️ @uoearchhist.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk

📜 There's a new 'Project Progress Update' blog post over on the @materialwills.bsky.social blog! 📜 Read on for more about our research progress, featuring @zooniverse.bsky.social news & updates about our database 👇 #skystorians #history #citizenscience @leverhulme.ac.uk @transkribus.bsky.social

slightly obsessed about the end of this lady's effigy tomb with the voluminous folds of her dress and petite heeled shoes

We are delighted to welcome Dr Kate Gibson (Manchester) on Wednesday 12 November, 3.30-5pm in Forum Seminar Room 10 and on Teams for the following CEMS seminar: 'Fostering and Adoption in Eighteenth-Century Britain'. Full description attached. Please join us! @lsangha.bsky.social

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

This is the first recording of any of Chris Hoban's wills inspired music! For lucky people in Devon, Chris will be performing ALL the wills songs at Topsham Folk Club on 18 January, with support from Miranda Sykes. Grab your ticket now 👇 #Exeter #Devon 🗃️ #Events wegottickets.com/event/680386

Alice Walter's will might be familiar if you read our project blog, as it was our Will of the Month in October 2024. Read @emilymayvine.bsky.social's post, and see a transcription of the whole will here: #EarlyModern 🗃️ sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

📜WILLS ON THE RADIO!📜 The brilliant Chris Hoban was on local radio talking about the wills project and playing some songs! This one is perhaps my favourite: based on the will of London widow Alice Walter, proved September 1665. TNA PROB 11/317/428. #EarlyModern 🗃️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXwB...

And here we all are, not being at all self-conscious about having our photo taken and enjoying Harry's visualisation of our bequests.

And we continue to share full transcriptions and blog posts about interesting wills! 📜 In case you missed it, last week we published our latest 'Will of the Month' post 👇 #skystorians #history #EarlyModern 🧵3/4 bsky.app/profile/mate...

Our Zooniverse volunteers reached this fantastic milestone while the project team were in Exeter, and meeting to discuss next steps for the transcriptions and the database. We were delighted to reach this milestone, and discussed how valuable all the Zooniverse contributions have been. 🧵3/4

You can find out more on our Zooniverse 'Talkboards' - which we'll continue to monitor. We hope to be able to share preliminary results in the near future, and BlueSky will be one of the first places we'll update - so watch this space! 📜 www.zooniverse.org/projects/hjs... 🧵2/4

A round up of recent @materialwills.bsky.social project news below 👇 Including recent @zooniverse.bsky.social milestones, project meetings, and new blog posts! #earlymodern #history #skystorians @leverhulme.ac.uk @uoearchhist.bsky.social @cemsexeter.bsky.social

A new 'Will of the Month' post over on the @materialwills.bsky.social blog 👇 October's post looks at the poignant will of Margery Gadyng, a married woman who died in childbirth in 1540, who used her final words to make provisions for her children's future care. #skystorians #history #EarlyModern

A quick reminder that Dr Emily Vine @emilymayvine.bsky.social will be speaking TODAY on 'Birth, Death and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London' from 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm in the Wolfson Room (NB02 at the IHR) and online, via Zoom! ✨ www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

We wrote about a very poignant will for October's 'Will of the Month' post over at @materialwills.bsky.social Married women didn't usually make wills, but Margery Gadyng did - with her husband's permission. She left bequests of her 'hert’ ‘joie’, & ‘comfort’. #history #skystorians #earlymodern

So pleased to be on the list of American Historical Association prize winners. My book, Female Servants in Early Modern England, was awarded the Morris D. Forkosch Prize in British, British imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485. Congratulations to all the other awardees!

I'm pretty jealous of Jane - the cabinets are opened rarely to prevent light damage and to protect the delicate hinges. Jane's research focuses on global goods in our 25,000 wills - both imported objects and material culture that imitated them.

Birth! Death!! Domestic Religion!!! Come along (or join online) to hear @emilymayvine.bsky.social's talk at the @ihr.bsky.social next Thursday.

We’re also thrilled to introduce Emily Vine as one of our new convenors at SCB! Emily is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Exeter on the Leverhulme Project 'The Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1790’.

Join us next Thursday (30/10, 5.30 pm) for Dr Emily Vine’s (@emilymayvine.bsky.social) talk on ‘Birth, Death and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London’! You can sign up to join in-person (IHR Wolfson Room, NB02) or online via Zoom here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

A beautiful photograph taken by @materialwills.bsky.social PhD student Jane Tozer. Jane visited Ham House during their 'Open Cabinets' event - the cabinets are only opened 2x a year to protect interiors from light & hinges from wear. #history #skystorians #earlymodern @nationaltrust.org.uk

📢TODAY📢 Tune in to hear @bhamhistory.bsky.social and @emilymayvine.bsky.social discuss our unique methodology 👇 Weds 22 Oct, 5pm Zoom #EarlyModern 🗃️ #DigitalHumanities @cemsexeter.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social @dhlabexeter.bsky.social

Looking forward to this . . . @lsangha.bsky.social @materialwills.bsky.social @emilymayvine.bsky.social @transkribus.bsky.social @zooniverse.bsky.social

If you want to know more about our use of handwritten text recognition software (Transkribus) on the wills project, tune in on Zoom next week 👇 All welcome (not just postdocs!). #EarlyModern 🗃️ #DigitalHumanities #HTR #CitizenScience

Looking forward to speaking at this with @bhamhistory.bsky.social next week - on all things to do with Digitization & Citizen Science 📜💻 @emeccwarwick.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social @zooniverse.bsky.social @transkribus.bsky.social #history #citizenscience #skystorians #digitalhumanities

Pleased to see that an article I wrote w/ Rachel Rich, @adamcrymble.bsky.social and @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social is out! We look at George III's use of food for masculine self-fashioning. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A career highlight for me to join Chris Hoban and various musicians (a string quartet! a hurdy-gurdy man!) on Saturday to deliver an afternoon of history & music at Exeter Phoenix. It's so special to be able to share my #EarlyModern research with the public in such a powerful & meaningful way. 📜🎵🎻🗃️

Come along on Saturday to see me wave my arms around while Chris scratches his head in bemusement! A FREE performance of history & music inspired by #EarlyModern wills 📜🎵🗃️ 📍 #Exeter Phoenix Auditorium 📅 Sat 11 Oct 🕐 13.30 Tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stories-an... Photos: Steven Haywood.

One week to go until Lyndal Roper's talk at @ihr.bsky.social! Register for the hybrid event here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... And check out our other talks by @emilymayvine.bsky.social and @nailyas.bsky.social here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Many congratulations to my colleagues in the Forms of Labour project team on the publication of their new monograph! 🗃️👏🎉 Brilliantly, The Experience of Work in #EarlyModern England is available open access: www.cambridge.org/core/books/e... news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

📢 Free @materialwills.bsky.social event - this Saturday 11 October! 📢 #skystorians #history #earlymodern

📢REMINDER: CEMS SEMINAR TOMORROW📢 Can't wait to hear @emilymayvine.bsky.social discuss her new monograph: Dr Emily Vine (Exeter), 'Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in early modern London'. 📅Weds 8 Oct, 2.30-4pm. 📍Exeter Uni, Forum Seminar Room 5 / Teams. #EarlyModern 🗃️ DM me for the link!

Who did what in early modern England? New #OpenAccess book, 'The Experience of Work in Early Modern England' by @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, @hkrobb.bsky.social & @aucointaylor.bsky.social, based on thousands of #EarlyModern court depositions 🗃️ Read it: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

3. Catch up on our latest 'Will of the Month' blog post! September's post was written by Dylan Cox, a 3rd year Exeter History student 📜 You can catch up on all of our 'Will of the Month' posts - over 20! - on our website 💻 @uoearchhist.bsky.social #history sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... 🧵3/3

2. Read our Autumn Newsletter! 📰 We've recently circulated our latest project update - with details of what we've been up to over the last 6 months! 📜🎨🎵 Download the pdf or plain version from our news page: sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social #skystorians 🧵2/3

📢 A round up of our recent news 📢 1. UPCOMING 'WILLS PROJECT' EVENT: Join @lsangha.bsky.social and musician Chris Hoban for a FREE performance of history & music inspired by #EarlyModern wills 📜🎵 📍Exeter Phoenix 📅Sat 11 Oct 🕐13.30 Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/stories-an... 🧵1/3

Catch up on the @materialwills.bsky.social news below 👇 Featuring an upcoming free event in Exeter📜🎵 And links to our latest newsletter and blogposts 📰💻 #history #skystorians #EarlyModern

@ihr.bsky.social and @ies-sas.bsky.social are partnering with @thelondonarchives.bsky.social to run a new series of public lectures, featuring the chance to see the original records first hand. First lecture by @patrickwallis.bsky.social on "Apprenticeship and the Rise of London", Weds 15th October!