Contours features items from the James Ford Bell Library in dialog with research and the modern world. The Bell’s collection focuses on trade and cultural exchange across the globe before ca. 1800 CE, in myriad complex and fascinating ways: small and personal as well as large and corporate.

About the photo
The familiar contours of the globe and the unfamiliar perspectives of the premodern world collide on this creation by Vincenzo Coronelli from 1697.

The James Ford Bell Library’s premier rare materials collection focuses on trade and cultural exchange worldwide, mainly from a European perspective. The collection includes books, maps, manuscripts, pamphlets, broadsides and other printed materials, ranging from receipts for rope to complex works on comparative religion.