Gaster Amulets on Manchester Digital Collections

10 Oct 2023

The John Rylands Research Institute and Library announces the launch of a new digital collection

This new digital collection is of extraordinary objects from our Gaster Amulets collection and is on Manchester Digital Collections (MDC).  This diverse collection includes beadwork, metalwork, textile objects, and paper and parchment manuscripts. The majority of these items were created for mostly protective purposes, especially against the evil eye, and for the protection of newborns and their mothers.

The photography was led by Senior Photographer Jamie Robinson and involved advanced imaging techniques, including 3D imaging and, for the first time, state of the art X-ray scanning in collaboration with NXCT, the University’s National X-ray Computed Tomography Centre. The objects were digitised and catalogued as part of a project led by Professor Philip Alexander and curator Dr Zsófia Buda, and thanks to generous external funding. The cataloguing was undertaken by Dr Gal Sofer (Lecturer, Department of the Arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) and the collection was supported by MDC operational teams across Imaging, Collection Care, Digital and Special Collections Metadata and Digital Development.