'Stars, Sieves and Stories' - a Digital Exhibition

'Stars, Sieves and Stories' is an interactive exhibition about early modern divination. It was first organised by Dr Martha McGill, Imogen Knox and Francesca Farnell, and hosted at Coventry Central Library in March 2022 as part of the Resonate Festival. A digital version was prepared by Martha McGill and Imogen Knox, and went live in June 2024.

The exhibition draws on the organisers' research on supernatural beliefs in Britain between 1500 and 1750. It examines a range of methods that people used to tease out the secrets of the universe, including astrology, spirit conjuration, rolling dice, palm-reading, scrying, dangling a sieve from a pair of shears, and unearthing stalks of kale. Both the in-person and digital versions allow visitors to try out many methods themselves. The exhibition also includes numerous stories about the early modern men and women who used divinatory methods, revealing their anxieties about health, money, romance, politics, and strange owls landing on their shoulders. Optionally, the exhibition can be explored via a 'choose your own adventure' story looking at life paths for a seventeenth-century woman.

The exhibition has been generously supported by the University of Warwick and the British Academy.