Bedford Fellowship
Scheme overview
The Bedford Fellowship is a short-term postdoctoral fellowship which requires a researcher to make use of and promote the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History in University of Leeds Libraries. The scheme enables you to visit the University of Leeds and receive support in working with this collection.
The Bedford Fellow will make use of the John Evan Bedford Library of Furniture History held within the Brotherton Library and may consult material from the complementary Art and Antiques Market Collections. The scheme is co-delivered by Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute and Cultural Collections and Galleries, University of Leeds Libraries.
John Bedford assembled his library over a period of 45 years and gifted it in 2019 to the University of Leeds. The focus of the library is 17th-20th century furniture history, particularly British, and its intersection with other subjects, for example, garden design and history, topography, metalwork in relation to furnishings, textiles, interior design, the English home, architecture, and the Grand Tour. The library comprises some 5,500 printed items and extensive archival material, including the research notes of the furniture historians Edward T. Joy and Pauline Agius.
There is a detailed catalogue of the collection which we advise potential applicants to review.
The John Evan Bedford Library includes rare books of ornament, furniture and metalwork pattern books and trade catalogues, Birmingham trade directories (1770-1900) and cabinet-makers’ books of prices, a trade card collection of more than 500 items dating from c.1680-c.1999, a significant cabinet-makers’ archive, and an extensive collection of modern (post-1850) reference works.
It has strengths in the following thematic areas: British, French, and German furniture designers of 17th-20th centuries; the Birmingham metalware trades and traders; London furniture makers and associated trades and traders; early (17th-18th century) drawing books and books of ornament; cottage and country house architecture, and landscape gardening; early scientific manuals and handbooks on building, carpentry, and the industrial arts; 19th century Great Exhibitions in Europe; upholstery, textiles and associated crafts; 17th and 18th-century printers and engravers.
The 2025 Bedford Fellowship will be advertised in Spring 2025, with a deadline for applications of 30 June 2025. We will include a link to the advertisement from this page when it is available.
Previous Bedford Fellows
2024: Ruby Rutter conducted a project 'Buying Happiness: Emotion and Design in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Advertising Ephemera'. Ruby looked at the incredible collection of trade cards and advertising ephemera from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bestowed to the university by John Bedford, to identify how these cards incorporated design elements that engaged potential customers emotionally. Her research shed light on the history of fairy lights.
2023: Hannah Kašpar undertook research into trade cards within the Bedford Collection, finding that a high proportion were concerned with the upholstery trade and exploring how design ideas moved across international networks.
2022: The expansive research of Hillary Taylor uncovered the wide-ranging uses of billheads, as well as contributions of Jewish immigrants to the British furniture industry.