This is a comment on the seminar series currently running between Stanford and Bard Graduate Center. [Link] [Link]

This week – George Kubler’s extraordinary “Shape of time” from 1962, and the philosophy and archaeology of R.G.Collingwood [Link]. Both crossed (disciplinary) borders in looking at how we connect things and history.

A key question (of pragmatography) for me – can there be a manual of antiquarian practice, of design practice? How do you write and represent what they do, so as to share, learn, acquire the skills

(Pragmatography – representing, writing about things and things done)

Cook books are a wonderfully rich genre now – especially after Julia Child’s and Elizabeth David’s pioneering writing. But a cook book doesn’t make you a great cook. You have to do it.

Collingwood fascinates me because he was both philosopher and archaeologist/antiquarian.

Collingwood – National Portrait Gallery, London