What’s on at the Portico Library

Exhibition

Infamous: Opium, Silk, Tea and the Mission

1 February - 8 June 2024

The Portico Library is delighted to announce that Iris Yau 丘靜雯 FRSA FHEA (University of the Arts London) is curating an exhibition on British trade (including trade wars) with China in the nineteenth century. The exhibition will showcase some of our key historic books on voyages to China as well as objects illustrating the trade in silk, opium and tea. The exhibition includes loans from Bolton Library and Museum Services and Silk Museum, Macclesfield.

Image courtesy:

Economic Botany Collection; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 71993.

Upcoming exhibition

• June 2024: Exhibition teaser on the theme of English Folklore

• July 2024: ‘Weird As Folk’ exhibition

Online Activities

Upcoming Events

Abbi Parcell: PhD Writer in Residence

Check out Abbi’s blog on her research at the Portico Library here

Abbi (BA MA PGCE) is a queer, butch, autistic writer and poet based in Manchester.

My whole life has been a protest. My body has also been a battleground and dingy back room. Nevertheless, it's never belonged to me. We have arrived at a time where lesbian- focused spaces have faded like a droplet into water. It is time. Time for us to establish our history, our connections, our own bodies and how radical it always has been for us to simply breathe.

Abbi will be joining the Portico Library as a writer in residence from May onwards, to support their PhD in creative writing. The piece of auto fiction they are working on is titled “Story of Them” and focuses on testimony within queer lineages. Abbi will be queering and challenging the Portico collection via community engagement and a blog documenting creative process.