Project partners
Ingrid Furniss, Associate Professor and Chair of Art
Paul Miller, Visual Resource Curator
Janna Avon, Digital Initiatives Librarian
James Griffin, Co-Director of Digital Scholarship Services, through June 2017
Eric Luhrs, Director of Digital Scholarship Services, through October 2016
Project description
DSS supports Dr. Furniss’s digital research collection of works of art depicting musical instruments, particularly lutes. First appearing in the Near East in the 3rd millennium BCE, lutes spread broadly throughout the ancient world. The Silk Road, a series of trade routes stretching from Rome to China, was one of the key conduits for the transmission of lutes, beginning in the 1st or 2nd century CE. The research collection consists of more than 3,000 images. Image collection and cataloging are underway for a digital project looking at the evolution of lutes in the Near East and Central Asia and the transmission of these instruments to China.