Karen Fraser MA History of Design and Material Culture graduate (2019) reflects on winning the Design History Society Annual Essay Prize 2020.

Family photographs in the author’s cousin’s home, Vancouver. Personal photograph by the author. 9 Feb. 2016.

In July, I submitted a revised version of my dissertation, “‘That link to life, so to speak’: Older Women’s Expressions of Keeping through Photographs and Jewellery”, to the Design History Society (DHS) postgraduate essay prize, relieved to have made up my mind for the final time about how the sentences should flow. The prize provided the motivation I needed to reduce my 20,000-word dissertation by half and incorporate the feedback I had received from my assessors. I also reflected on comments from other readers – relatives and friends who wanted to know what had consumed my attention for so many months – and edited my work with those in mind as well. I was partial to the section on photographs and ended up leaving out jewellery for my essay prize entry.

In my dissertation, I took an anthropological approach to material culture in later life, studying what women keep and use to construct their homes in seniors housing, formerly known as sheltered housing. I interviewed three residents of a block of flats in Hove and took photographs of some of the objects they spoke about. I listened back to our recorded conversations and pored over the transcripts to identify common objects that held meaning for the women. My supervisor, Louise Purbrick, encouraged me to focus on photographs to start with and then to consider another set of objects, such as jewellery. I became very interested in how these objects emerged in our conversations and how the material forms of photographs and rings embodied the women’s descriptions of their meaning. What was particularly striking to me was the power these objects had in communicating the presence of close family members, especially during a time in the women’s lives when loss was a common experience.

My interest in the movement of objects in families and what happens when people make decisions about what to keep, gift to someone else, or throw away stretches back to when I was living with an older cousin of mine and her husband in Vancouver, Canada. They were in their late seventies when I took up residence in one of the basement suites in their Arts and Crafts-style home. So many objects there held family history and were rich with personal and shared memory. When it came time for my cousins to move into a residence with more care, it became important to decide which objects would help them create a meaningful new space in which to live. I took part in this difficult, emotional experience and ended up being the recipient of many items. Later, engaging with anthropological theories related to gift exchange for my dissertation, I developed an understanding of how things circulate when we are sensitive to the ways that objects and people are interconnected.

Though my research interests have their roots in Canada, they really developed in Brighton. I am grateful to my landlady’s mother, who generously offered to be my first participant and share stories over tea in her flat. She connected me with the two other women in my study who also shared their stories with me. Now, I hear little clips from the interviews in my head when I look at everyday objects, especially photographs. I am currently teaching an undergraduate course for the first time, and as I experience the pressures of the job and facilitate classes from home, I find comfort in the meaning I know to be in the things that surround me.

Karen Fraser in the garden at Charleston. Photograph by Natalie Carman. 28 Aug. 2019.

I am also grateful to the students, academics, and staff on the MA History of Design and Material Culture programme at the University of Brighton. It was rewarding to work with people who are engaged in furthering our understanding of design history and material culture. The opportunities I had to share my work-in-progress, whether through informal conversations or at the Brighton Postgraduate Design History Society symposium, expanded my ideas and improved my work. Finally, it was wonderful to connect with members of the DHS on Zoom at their AGM in early September. I am thankful to the Society for facilitating this annual prize and generously supporting students.

Susanna Connolly won the Anne Clements Breakthrough Award in 2019-2020. She is currently in her Third Year of study on BA History of Art and Design.

Furniture: Japan. Two easy chairs with bamboo frames and woven or strip seating, 1949.
Design Council Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives

Earlier this year I was shocked and honoured to have won the Anne Clements Breakthrough Award. Having been unaware of the award beforehand, I was surprised to have received the news and have been asked to share my experience about it on this blog.

The Anne Clements Breakthrough Award is a £500 cash prize, generously donated by Anne Clements herself, who previously had a career in design history. It is given to well-performing second year students to provide motivation as the course enters a more challenging and rigorous stages. The Award also serves to celebrate the student’s progress and offer recognition of hard work.

The Award is organised through University of Brighton’s Philanthropy service and is part of a broader university-wide scheme to encourage students through their second year of study. A celebration ceremony is usually held in December to invite donors and students to meet each other and others across the university. Sadly, due to the current climate it is unknown if this year’s ceremony will be taking place.

Winning the Award has helped boost my confidence dramatically and made me feel more secure in my choice to pursue a career in the arts industry. I have been enjoying the course immensely so far and am very grateful for Anne Clements’s generosity in supporting careers in art and design history. I thoroughly enjoyed the second year of study as the course began to focus on the art movements of the 20th century. A key reason for me choosing the Art and Design History course at Brighton was its focus on modern art and I found the core module, Modernism, Ideology and the Avant Garde, fascinating. An aspect I really appreciated was how we explored Modernism across the globe and not solely about its impacts in Europe. I did my presentation on Modernism in Japan, specifically in advertising, a subject I doubt I would have come across had I not been on the course.

I plan to use the prize money to help continue my studies and pursue a Master’s degree. In these uncertain times, it has become increasingly important to demonstrate solidarity with the arts and education industries which have been especially vulnerable due to the current global crisis. I am inspired by Clements’s support to those in her field and am once more thankful for the opportunity to study a subject that interests me deeply.

Anne Roberts, winner of the History of Art and Design programme’s 2019-20 Dissertation Prize, reflects on her subject and its delivery under Covid conditions.

What did you do during lockdown? Perhaps you rediscovered a hobby, took up yoga or home-schooled your family? Amidst all the confusion in society I was still completing my University dissertation, for submission in May, as part of my BA in Fashion and Dress History. In the uncertain days of early lockdown, I had struggled to find motivation in what felt like Armageddon. It was a challenge to balance the demands of the ‘new normal’ with the ongoing rigour of academic drafting. For me and many of my friends, ‘getting it in’ suddenly meant something even more challenging than before, and under such circumstances I never dreamt that my dissertation might win a prize. My hurriedly changed surroundings in the countryside also seemed a world away from Brighton’s support network, and in the rush to lockdown I had left behind all of my primary source material and many of my research papers.

Figure 1. A selection of aprons made using Dorset Feather Stitch. C. 1950s. KOP Collection. Dorset County Museum, Dorchester. Personal photograph by the author. 8 July 2019.

However, after a few weeks of adjustment, my dissertation stopped being a torment and actually became a welcome form of lockdown solace, providing me with clear objectives and  a fixed submission date. Louise Purbrick’s blog post for the Centre for Design History described her realisation that world events had made her teaching appear more relevant, and I had the same sensation about my dissertation subject. Suddenly, in lockdown, so many women were starting to sew, discovering that embroidery could provide them with a pleasurable pastime at home. This neatly, if rather disconcertingly, reflected some of my own dissertation conclusions which asserted that upheaval and uncertainly could act as a catalyst for female creative endeavour.

My choice of subject had originally been inspired by my own curiosity about local references in my West Dorset village to something called Dorset Feather Stitch. Research in Dorset County Museum last summer led me to hundreds of examples of this beautiful embroidery, alongside many boxes of related leaflets, photographs and notebooks.  I remember being completely daunted by the sheer amount of ‘stuff’ that I had to try and make sense of in a very limited time frame. When I came back to Brighton in September 2019, I  consulted a wide range of primary source material, and relevant academic theories, to uncover and explain the origins of Dorset Feather Stitchery. To find out how the craft was developed, I studied the relevance of the Women’s Institute movement, embroidery as a gendered practice and the importance of Dorset as an imagined space to the women who lived there. As little had been written about the practice, I realised that I would not be able to reference anyone else’s research and that my conclusions would be my own.

Figure 2. Mary Welshman. Apron detail. C. 1950s. KOP Collection, Dorset County Museum, Dorchester. Acc.no. 2007.228. Box D. Personal Photograph by the author. 8 July 2019.

My dissertation, entitled Stitched in Place: The Origins and Development of Dorset Feather Stitch 1945-1970, argued that Dorset Feather Stitch was not just an enjoyable pastime, but also an expression of subtle feminism within a traditional rural society. The women who stitched it were inspired by its originator, Olive Pass, to engage in a practice that was defined by social purpose and female values, evidenced within the confines of a traditional rural society. My research discovered that Dorset Feather Stitch was indirectly influenced by both the Arts and Crafts movement and the Peasant Art movement, and that Pass had combined her interest in Balkan craftsmanship with English rural craft skills to create a new hybrid style of embroidery. Described in 1951 as a ‘revival’, Dorset Feather Stitch was actually a re-imagined tradition, developed solely by women for women, which combined a strong sense of social purpose with female intentionality and craft skill.

Figure 3. Detail of a photograph of Olive Pass and two of her daughters. Undated. KOP collection, Dorset County Museum, Dorchester. Archival photograph by the author. 24 June 2019.

I really enjoyed researching my dissertation and, now that the print shops have finally re-opened, I intend to give a copy of my findings to the Dorset County Museum. I hope that my research conclusions might encourage them to mount a permanent display of Dorset Feather Stitch, as it is a unique example of post-war creativity which can be identified with many of the individual Dorset women who created it.

I intend to return to Brighton to study for a History of Design and Material Culture MA and hope to further develop my academic research and writing skills.  Having found out that Dorset Feather Stitch was also practised in Africa, Canada, and New Zealand, I would like to research the reasons for the export of this uniquely English cultural practice. It might also be interesting to test my theories by interviewing some Dorset women, who remember being taught the work as teenagers.

Fig. 4. Some of the Women who made and sold Feather Stitchery in Dorchester in 1951. KOP Collection. Dorset County Museum, Dorchester. Archival photograph by the author. 24 June 2019.

In this Covid environment I shall have to adjust to Uni life happening online, but I am looking forward to a resumption of at least some kind of teaching normality. I can’t wait to get back into the library! As a result of my dissertation experience I am particularly interested in uncovering more stories of women’s lives through objects that may have been overlooked in museum collections.

Charlotte Andora Hylland, an Erasmus exchange student from University of Oslo, details her experience at the University of Brighton in the History of Art and Design programme.

As a Norwegian, it’s hard not to be fascinated by England, as samplings of British culture is so present in our own. Our second-grade teachers ask us “What’s the weather like today?” in the most English accent they can muster; our parents read Harry Potter to us on our bedside and Christmas isn’t really Christmas until the whole family has sat down together to watch Dinner for One. My own personal fascination with English royal history, as well as the faint hope that my Hogwarts letter had simply been lost in the post, made my choice to be an Erasmus exchange student in Brighton quite an easy one.

Poached eggs and tea: my very first English meal in Brighton.

I remember the feeling of standing on the train station about to board the train to Brighton. I was nervous, excited, terrified and quite frankly clueless. I had never been to the city before, I had no idea how Oyster cards work (and still don’t), and I didn’t know where the University was. This is one of the first things I learned about English people. They are always ready to help you! Norwegians are notoriously shy, held back and highly allergic to confrontation. We might consider someone asking us for the seat next to us on the bus to be a confrontational situation. We are private people who don’t generally talk to strangers. But I had no idea what bus to take to the University or where I could get groceries, and so I simply had to put the lid on my Scandinavian anxieties and ask. English people are rumoured to be very polite and, in this instance, I was not disappointed.

Before long, the hiccups began. First, I learned that the University of Brighton has to separate campuses. The City Campus and the Falmer Campus. Depending on the modules you sign up for, you either attend the City Campus in the city centre, or you attend the Falmer Campus on the countryside of Brighton, roughly 35 minutes away from the city by bus. My modules were Women’s Fashion from 1740-1914, The Cultural Politics of Dress and After Modernism: Postmodernism and Beyond, modules from the first and second year of the BA programme in History of Art and Design. This meant that I was to attend the City Campus. I had, however unknowingly, applied for student accommodation at Paddock Field Halls near the Falmer Campus. Furthermore, when I arrived at the accommodation office at Paddock Fields, there was no sign of my application for a room. After a few hours, they did find a room for me, and things were looking better. And then, later that evening, I got very ill. I was ill for days, which resulted in my not being able to attend activities for the exchange students to get to know each other.

Watching the waves on Brighton beach.

The reason I mention this, is that Dr. Annebella Pollen, Principal Lecturer in the History of Art and Design programme, as well as Bernie Happs, the programme administrator, made such an effort to make me feel welcome when I felt like the city and the exchange experience was rejecting me like a bad organ transplant. As I missed out on the activities for exchange students in Brighton, Annebella made sure some of the students got in touch to meet with me later on. When I confessed I wasn’t happy living in Paddock Field halls, she was very hands-on in finding me different accommodation. Any student who decides to exchange to the University of Brighton can rest assured that they will be well taken care of!

In Brighton, a lot of things are different from Oslo. I am not used to thanking the driver when I exit a bus, I am not used to be called “darling” or “love” by people I don’t know. I gradually got used to poached eggs, but I never quite got over my fear of sounding like the Norwegian Nobel Committee every time I opened my mouth. But the thing I find differs the most is the educational structure. To be frank, at the University of Oslo, students are responsible for themselves. You sign up for modules, buy the books, study independently and attend lectures in huge lecture halls. No one keeps track of you, and your learning outcome depends on you. I found the academic studies at the University of Brighton to be more seminar-based. In all three of my modules, our class would consist of roughly 10-15 students who had all read the recommended reading and came prepared to discuss it. My tutors at Brighton seemed genuinely interested in discussing and digesting the material together with the students, and have us think like actual historians, rather than have us memorize the material. In Norway I am used to being one of sometimes a hundred other students in a lecture hall where no one asks questions (because we are Norwegian). At the University of Brighton, you are not only encouraged to ask questions and participate, you are expected to and assessed on it. This was a challenge for me at first but I found that I learned so much more from this way of teaching.

Charlotte Andorra Hylland outside the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.

My time attending the University of Brighton was sadly cut short due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. I had to rush back to Oslo after only five weeks in Brighton. But in those five weeks I got to meet so many wonderful people and make so many friends for life. My roommate from Brighton and I still keep in touch and my tutors were such an inspiration especially as they took me to Brighton Museum to introduce me to some wonderful exhibitions. I am so sad I had to leave early. Still, I think the University did a great job, keeping the academic semester on track via the conference app “Microsoft Teams”. I was luckily able to finish all my modules.

I learned a lot from my stay in Brighton. I learned the value of reaching out to find people are there to help you. I’ve learned the joys of exposing myself to a different culture and making friends across borders. In all, I advise all students to consider taking the exchange experience.