Featured Events
Past Events
Past Brienne Collection events 2015 – 2020
Sun, 16 February 2020. 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM CET.
Free public event: Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered. Join us for a trunkful of fascination as we celebrate the Brienne Collection in this special public event. The Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered project has been researching this 300-year-old postmaster’s trunk and its contents for the last five years, using new technologies to discover old stories. The afternoon will feature presentations of cutting-edge research on undelivered letters, a hands-on demonstration of letterlocking, live music from the time, and more.
This event is possible thanks to the generous support from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and Sound and Vision The Hague.
Registration is free and includes coffee/tea and a closing reception courtesy of Sound and Vision The Hague. Space is limited; register now to guarantee your place. Late registrations might not be able to be accommodated.
To register at EVENTBRITE, click here.
Beeld en Geluid/Sound and Vision, Zeestraat 82, 2518 AD The Hague, the Netherlands
2015 – 2018
12 June 2018, ACSGA colloquium, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Lecture by Dr Nadine Akkerman and Dr David van der Linden: "The Postmasters' Piggy-Bank: Exploring Undelivered Letters from the Golden Age."
1 June 2017, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, Research and Technical Studies Speciality Group Session (USA)
Presentation by Jana Dambrogio and Dr David Mills: "Revealing the text and folds in 17th-century locked letters."
9 April 2017, National Archives, The Hague (The Netherlands)
Presentation by Dr David van der Linden on the Signed, Sealed, and Undelivered Project.
5 November 2016, Walloon Church Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Lecture by Dr David van der Linden: "Lettres signées, scellées, mais non remises à leur destinataire: L’histoire extraordinaire d’une malle de poste du XVIIe siècle."
29 June 2016, University College Dublin (Ireland)
Keynote lecture by Dr David van der Linden: "Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered: Ordinary Voices from an Extraordinary Archive," part of the 11th biennial conference of the Association for Low Countries Studies.
8 June 2016, University of Groningen (The Netherlands)
Presentation of the Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered project and letterlocking workshop given by Dr David van der Linden, as part of the international conference "Paper Princes: The Politics of Paper in the Early Modern World" (8–11 June).
2–22 May 2016, Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Exhibitionon privacy in the early modern period. Hosted by the DWDD Pop-Up Museum in Amsterdam's Allard Pierson Museum, visitors discovered the lost art of letterlocking. The exhibit showcased some of the most beautiful letters from the Brienne Collection and instructional videos that on how to seal and secure a letter from the seventeenth century.
14 April 2016, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, MA (USA)
Letterlocking Workshop: Unlocking the secrets of the De Brienne Postal Archive. Teaching participants how to fold and secure correspondence using the same techniques found on some of the letters in the trunk. Workshop led by Jana Dambrogio and Dr Daniel Starza Smith.
13 April 2016, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, MA (USA)
A morning session of presentations by the Signed Sealed, & Undelivered team about their research on the 17th-century postal chest filled with an extraordinary archive: 2600 “locked” letters, none of which were ever delivered.
7-9 April 2016, University of Plymouth (UK)
"The research potential of a postmaster's chest: An introduction to the Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered project," presentation by Dr Nadine Akkerman at the AHRC Network Conference "Gender, Power and Materiality in Early Modern Europe."
18 March 2016, University of York (UK)
Letterlocking workshop led by Jana Dambrogio and Dr Daniel Starza Smith at the International Conference "Epistolary cultures: Letters and letter-writing in early modern Europe."
7 March 2016, University of Leicester (UK)
"Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered" presentation by Dr Daniel Starza Smith
1 December 2015, University of Oxford (UK)
"Signed, Sealed, & Undelivered" presentation by Dr Daniel Starza Smith, University of Oxford Graduate English Forum.
7 November 2015, Château de Versailles (France)
"Perméabilité ou étanchéité des foyers artistiques ? Paris et l’étranger," presentation on musicians' letters in the Brienne collection by Dr Rebekah Ahrendt at the international conference "Les foyers artistiques à la fin du règne de Louis XIV (1682–1715): Musique et formes spectaculaires."
Updates added: 15 February 2025
