Printed curtain fabric designed by Shirley Craven for Hull Traders Ltd. One of 12 recipients of a CoID Design Centre Award in 1964. Catalogue number: DCA-30-7-1964-5-1. Design Council Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives.

The University of Brighton Design Archives, in collaboration with Newham College of Further Education, is organizing a study day at the Fashion and Textiles Museum on Wednesday 16 May 2012.

The study day coincides with the exhibition ‘Designing Women’ that features the work of Jacqueline Groag, Lucienne Day and Marian Mahler. It aims to consider the designs displayed in the exhibition in the context of their production, focusing particularly on the professional identity of women designers in the middle of the twentieth century. The study day will showcase the work of researchers, from established scholars to those at the start of their research careers, and will include responses from designers of the time. The programme includes a tour of the exhibition.

A limited number of funded places are available to students. Please send an expression of interest to designarchives@brighton.ac.uk if you wish to attend.

Speakers include:

Jill Seddon, University of Brighton
Researching ‘Women Designing’.

Ness Wood, Post-graduate, University of Brighton
Post-war Pattern: the Designs of the Year, 1957.

Leah Armstrong, AHRC Collaborative PhD candidate, University of Brighton/Chartered Society of Designers
Women designers and the design profession.

Jon Brown, PhD candidate, University of Brighton
The retail furnisher and furnishing fabrics: contract and domestic commissions.

Dr Lesley Whitworth, Deputy Curator, University of Brighton Design Archives
The Materials of Retail Display: the work of Natasha Kroll

Anna Buruma, Archivist, Liberty London
Printing Liberty – Liberty’s print business in the fifties

Liz Farrelly, AHRC Collaborative PhD candidate, University of Brighton/Design Museum
The Contentious Constance Spry

Discussion led by Dr Harriet Atkinson, Research Fellow, University of Brighton.