Cambridge Saffron is an online exhibition resulting from the work of Kasia Boddy & Bonnie Lander Johnson. This project was supported by the Materiality strand of the Research & Collections Programme- the precursor to CCC. Working with colleagues in the University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Botanic Garden herbarium, and a range of college libraries and archives, the convenors have investigated the Cambridge collections in order to develop existing scholarship on the long history of the local and global saffron industry, focusing particularly on cultural practices that developed around saffron use, its material properties (its colour, flavour, and medicinal properties), literary and visual representations, and the religious and political meaning attributed to this expensive commodity, from the Protestant campaign against the ‘saffroned’ ‘staine’ of Catholicism in seventeenth-century Ireland to the ‘saffronising’ of Hindu Nationalism in India today. As well as the online exhibition, this year-long project also resulted in a CRASSH symposium.
To learn more about this fascinating crop, and why it is so important to Cambridge and the surrounding region, please explore the online exhibition here
