Rachel Wooley, MA Curating Collections and Heritage, outlines important information acquired at a conservation session at Brighton Museum.

MA History of Design and Material Culture student Elina Ivanov inspecting a bug specimen through magnifying head gear. Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Photograph by Helen Mears, 5 March 2019.

As one of a group of (very keen) students on the MA Curating Collections and Heritage degree, I am currently taking a module entitled ‘Caring for Collections and Their Users’. In order to learn how to exercise best practice in preventative conservation (and therefore ‘Care for Collections’), we visited Gaye Conley, the Conservation Manager at Brighton Museum, in March 2019. She gave us a comprehensive guide to the Eight Agents of Deterioration, through which I will briskly but gracefully guide you.

Physical forces can include general wear and tear, continued use and excessive or negligent handling. Gaye informed us that even experts in the museum sector can damage objects because they trip on a power lead or forget to lift an object from its base.

Thieves and vandals are another factor to keep an eye on. Not every theft from a museum is a grand art heist. According to Gaye, if something is within reach and small enough to go in a pocket, it will probably go missing. Therefore there are two common solutions:

1. Alarms that are triggered either by movement or proximity
2. Nylon threads around the object (as a deterrent)

Museums also engage in extensive documentation, which covers every movement of every object, so that (in theory) a member of staff can locate any object at any time.

Concerning fire, don’t start one. If something is on fire, put it out as quickly as possible.

Leaks, mould, and flooding are unfortunately very common in museum storerooms and even exhibition spaces. Museums are often not fit for purpose, and with museum funding at an all-time low, patching up a roof or building a storeroom that isn’t in the basement isn’t always a possibility.

Gaye Conley explaining the issues of having a storeroom in the basement. Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Photograph by Helen Mears. 5 March 2019.

The issue of Integrated Pest Management (or IPM to the people in the biz) is deeper and more complex than you could possibly imagine. Here is a brief overview:

• There are four different types of pests (general pests, wood borers, keratin pests and cellulose pests). Each type has a different food source.
• There are three different types of commonly used traps (blunder traps, sticky traps and pheromone lures, which only attract male pests).
• If you have a pest problem, this means there’s a food source nearby. If you have loads of wood boring insects such as, for example, the Death Watch Beetle, that means they’re feeding on some wood. If you have mice, they’re probably eating human food.
• The practice of catching pests (particularly insects) is to give you some indication of how bad your pest problem is, and what you need to do about it. The goal of catching them is not primarily to kill them (although, if you catch a lot of White Shouldered House Moths next to your prize Hawaiian ceremonial cloak, you may then decide to freeze it or use an insecticide, which would obviously result in the moths’ untimely demise).

Pollutants can be anything from dust and sea salt to traffic pollution and pollen. Dust is a particular issue for museums. If it settles on an object for long enough, it can bond with the surface and cause permanent damage. It can also encourage some pests (the ones that want to eat dead skin).

Direct sunlight is damaging to objects, just as it is to your skin. Keeping objects away from windows is a good idea, but not always possible. Many heritage institutions have opted to put UV film on their windows, or block all of their windows out and instead use LED lights, which put out almost no heat and UV rays.

Finally, according to Gaye, temperature is less important than humidity. The ideal humidity is between 40 and 60RH (relative humidity). This has the power to completely halt the reproduction of certain pests, or even kill them, if the conditions are perfect.

Overall, the session was a hugely informative one, with a central focus on IPM (Integrated Pest Management). The highlight was inspecting bug ‘specimens’ captured in glass containers. It was also enormously helpful to witness preventative conservation techniques in practice within a museum, to put what we’d learned into a physical setting. Huge thanks to Gaye for welcoming us into the museum and for hosting such an informative session.

Photography PhD student, Epha Roe, reviews the University of Brighton symposium ‘Photography and Resistance’

Fig. 1 “A woman protests against the presence of soldiers in the townships, Soweto 1985”, Photograph by Paul Weinberg

I was fifteen when I first discovered photography. It was a last minute shift, not out of genuine interest, but because a close friend of mine had switched her choice from our mutually agreed-upon Drama and Theatre Studies, and I didn’t want to be potentially left alone at school. In the end we weren’t even put into the same group. But the choice had been made and has since ended up shaping the subsequent years of my life.

Fast-forward twelve long years to January 2019 and I find myself lucky enough to attend a two-day research symposium at the University of Brighton under the title ‘Photography and Resistance’, organised by visiting research fellow Kylie Thomas, and Uschi Klein. The symposium brought together photographers, artists and researchers from around the country and overseas, to discuss the varying ways in which photography (and other media) intersect with notions of resistance, in particular in relation to repressive regimes. It also connected researchers work on photographs taken during and after apartheid in South Africa, together with histories of photography in other locations.

A common thread throughout the speakers’ papers, as well as among discussions after, was whether the notion of resistance was implicit or explicit in its relation to photography. Indeed, whether or not resistance was an after effect, or might be contained within the action of taking a photograph. Further threads, however, seemed to demonstrate it as both.

Jordana Blejmar’s paper, ‘Spectral Topographies: Photography and Disappearance in Argentina’, explored the way in which the children of parents who were ‘disappeared’ during the 1976-83 military junta regime, used photography to reclaim their parents memory through constructed, fictional encounters. Using images of their parents translated through a mixture of photo-collage and projection, their photographs demonstrate a means of resistance both in the process and the result. Their images, effectively capturing the presence of absence, provide the potential of connection with other children of disappeared parents. Their photographs also act as visual invitations to activism.

Memory or remembrance as a tool of resistance was a theory reiterated by Patricia Prieto-Blanco, whose paper focussed on her co-author’s autograph book, inherited from her grandmother Viktorija; this was a product of Viktorija’s time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northeast Germany in the Second World War. Here the book is understood as a place of relational resistance, somewhere where both Viktorija and her friends wrote of their time within the camp. In it, Patricia argued, Viktorija’s writings ignore the present of their difficult conditions in favour of an idealised future. Rather than constructing the war, they obstruct it through the subject of the autograph book.

An analysis of the Austrian photographer Dora Kallmus, by Kylie Thomas, discussed the tensions between Kallmus’ pre-war society photographs and her post-war images of a Parisian abattoir. Kylie showed how the latter was a possible act of resistance, as an indirect visualisation of her sister’s death at the hands of the Nazis. Other investigations of photography and antisemitism were present in Gil Pasternak’s work on the ‘Landkentnish’ (Yiddish for “knowing the land”) movement of 1926-38. Gil explained how it sought to preserve Jewish heritage among the growing rise of Polish nationalism. This movement, among other things, used photography to document Jewish monuments and create archives of local Jewish cultural heritage, effectively imaging the significance of intersectional cultures and national belonging, using the Polish landscape as its backdrop. This imaging, Gil argued, allowed Jews to consider their heritage within the Polish landscape, and simultaneously allowed Polish people a way to consider the landscape with the presence of Jewish life.

These instances of resistance all challenged restrictive or repressive structures. These same themes were underlined by the work of Juliana Kasumu, especially in relation to the archive as a site of history. Through using her own creative work as an example, Kasumu highlighted the importance of intersectional thought, especially when considering colonial photographs, which are often considered to be objective representations rather than sites of exploitation.

After two days of wide-ranging thought, the argument that photography may contain the ability to resist forms of repression, both during and after traumatic events, seems only to ring true. As well as getting to hear the many speakers’ fascinating perspectives on resistance, it also allowed me some surprising time for self-reflection. My early self-portraits, for example, themselves a gateway into photography and as a safe mode of self-representation, were themselves, in hindsight, a reaction to an environment that was restrictive and repressive. And although I didn’t know it then, it was in that year of discovering photography and discovering myself that I also uncovered the power of resistance.

Further details of the symposium, including further details of speakers and papers can be found here: https://photographyandresistance.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/research-symposium/

MA History of Design and Material Culture student Tasha Cobb considers the intersections between clothes and memory.

Memory of Clothes exhibition poster

On 15 January 2019 Helen Barff and Suzy Joinson, an artist and a writer respectively, came to the University of Brighton to discuss their research into clothing and memory. This forms the basis for an exciting new podcast and exhibition at Worthing Museum and Art Gallery. The talk followed a seminar for students on the MA module History of Fashion and Dress: New Directions, led by Annebella Pollen, on the subject of interventions and creative responses to dress collections, in which we discussed recent research exploring dress, memory and oral/personal histories and considered the possibilities for including these ‘disruptive’ narratives in dress displays and exhibitions.

Suzy and Helen have been working with Worthing Museum’s outstanding collection of everyday dress, linking garments with the memories of local women. Their research comprises interviews and workshops with elderly residents of care homes in the town, where they encountered rich and often surprising stories about the women’s lives through the 20^th century. Being led by these oral histories, the researchers could explore how the clothing in Worthing’s collection spoke of, or ran counter to, memories of life in the town. Suzy and Helen brought selected garments to the workshops in order to test whether the pieces matched the women’s memories, or whether they sparked further recollections. For example, one resident was a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) during WWII and recalled feeling extremely proud and glamorous in her uniform. The Worthing collection has an exemplary selection of military uniforms, so Suzy and Helen were able to bring a WAAF beret to the session.

Figure 1: Helen Barff. Work in Progress. 2019. Cyanotype on fabric. 97 x 76 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

In the seminar Suzy and Helen discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by using oral history to inform a creative exhibit. The practical and ethical implications of interviewing the elderly were also fascinating. The researchers initially planned to ask participants to write their clothing memories on postcards which would be integrated into the exhibition space. However, many of the women were unable to write and preferred to talk, so they switched to an oral history methodology, capturing memories through audio recordings which Suzy is now developing into a podcast.

The nature of the topic meant that interviews could be long and rambling, encompassing numerous anecdotes and intimate details. As other researchers have noted, clothing elicits strong and very personal biographical memories.[i] Additionally, the elderly residents could struggle to remember specific details and especially chronologies of events, meaning there was much to be unravelled.

We listened to a recording of an interview between Suzy and Jackie, in her early 90s, in which Jackie recalls her time in the Women’s Land Army (WLA), characterised both by hard labour and new-found independence. She has strong memories of the uniforms and how these were intrinsic to the women’s identities as contributors to the war effort. Helen explained how she has been working with a cognitive psychologist, Catherine Loveday, who is researching the link between clothing and memory. In biographical memories, including those involving clothes, there is a ‘reminiscence bump’ whereby memories dating from a person’s young adulthood (roughly aged 17-25) are strongest. For the participants of this research, young adulthood coincided with WWII, so the project captured some fascinating stories from this period.

In ongoing research, Loveday is using brain scans to test memories associated with different objects. Findings suggest that clothing, along with music, elicit the strongest reactions. A correspondence already explored by numerous authors in fashion studies, material culture, psychology and beyond, there is no one explanation for clothing’s heightened significance to memory.[i] However clothing, more than simply housing the body, can be thought of as a ‘second skin’ through and with which the body experiences the world.[ii] As well as contributing to our sense of self, clothing is inherently sensory, involving not only touch but smell, sight and sound.[iii] Second-hand clothing often ‘stands in’ for an absent body, or else it seems uncannily invested with traces of its former wearer. This could be through physical traces, marks, tears and smells: as Bethan Bide notes, clothing ‘take[s] an imprint of the body’.[iv]

Figure 2: Helen Barff. Work in Progress (detail). 2019. Jesmonite, rope, concrete. 675 x 65 x 25 cm.

Image courtesy of the artist.

The idea of memory becoming embedded in clothing is key to Helen’s artistic practice. The central element of the upcoming exhibition are sculptural artworks created in response to the narratives explored in the research. Helen uses jesmonite to craft sculptural forms from second-hand clothing, filling garments with the substance to create an imprint from which the fabric is later removed. Helen’s work engages directly with the materiality of clothing, exploring how clothes ‘wear’ and how they physically mould to the body. Particularly intrigued by the intimacy of clothing and the relationships which it materialises (for example, mother and child), Helen explores boundaries- where does the person end and clothing begin?

Another issue which emerges through Helen’s work is the impossibility of re-creating or recovering a remembered object. Helen asked participants to describe a remembered garment, which she then attempted to rediscover by scouring charity shops. These second-hand items were then transformed by the artist, sometimes sewn together into new formations before using jesmonite to stretch and distort them, transforming them into sculpture. The result is a series of strange forms, resembling textiles but hard to the touch, and appearing somehow excessive and in unrecognisable shapes. The work speaks of the irretrievability of lost garments, and how even in personal memory these may be blurred or altered versions of the original objects. As Alison Slater writes, not only do material objects change, but our memories of dress also ‘wear’ with time.[iv]

Memory of Clothes opens on 23rd February at the Studio Gallery, Worthing Museum and Art Gallery. Suzy Joinson and Helen Barff will be running a special tour and Q&A session at the museum on 6 April 2019 at 2pm.

Figure 3: Helen Barff. Work in Progress (detail). 2019. Jesmonite, rope, concrete. 675 x 65 x 25 cm.

Image courtesy of the artist.

[i] See, for example, Carole Hunt, “Worn clothes and textiles as archives of memory,” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 5.2 (2014): 224-228; Robyn Gibson, “Introduction,” The Memory of Clothes, ed. Robyn Gibson (Rotterdam: Sense, 2015) xiii.

[ii] Lucia Ruggerone, “The Feeling of Being Dressed: Affect Studies and the Clothed Body,” Fashion Theory, 21.5 (2017): 585.

[iii] Marius Kwint, “Introduction: The Physical Past,” Material Memories: Design and Evocation, ed. Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward and Jeremy Aynsley (Oxford: Berg, 1999) 13.

[iv] Bethan Bide, “Signs of Wear: Encountering Memory in the Worn Materiality of a Museum Fashion Collection,” Fashion Theory, 21.4 (2017): 455.

[v] See, for example, Alison Slater, “Wearing in memory: materiality and oral histories of dress,” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 5.1 (2014).

[iv] Slater, “Wearing in Memory,” 136.

In the first of our new series highlighting research in University of Brighton Design Archives, third year History of Art and Design student Lizzie Collinson reviews Elizabeth Wilhide’s book Pattern Design

Fig. 1 Cover of Pattern Design with Anna Hayman’s ‘Palmprint’ pattern.

When one first looks at Pattern Design by Elizabeth Wilhide (Thames & Hudson, 2018), the use of Anna Hayman’s ‘Palmprint’ pattern on the cover (Fig. 1), gives a clue to the splendour inside. From the concise yet poetic introduction, Wilhide’s passion for patterns is evident, leaving a lasting impression on the reader as they continue on through this new publication. She notes patterns’ importance: ‘a pattern’s repeat may be so simple as a regular grid of evenly spaced dots, or as elaborate as a branching design whose diverse elements take time to tease out, where the play of foreground against background is as a complicated as a visual dance…Pattern gives pleasure’. As textile and pattern design is often an overlooked element of design history, her enthusiasm for this genre will undoubtedly influence her audience positively. Pattern Design will certainly interest social historians in addition to art historians, as Wilhide discusses the effects of industrialisation and mechanisation on wallpaper and textiles. The Industrial Revolution conjures images of soot-filled skies and mundane factory work, and so her recognition of the impact of improved technology on pattern production reveals an often overlooked side of this industrialisation.

Fig. 2 Marianne Straub, 1972. From the Design Council Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives.

Wilhide draws on many collections, including the University of Brighton’s Design Archives (Figs. 2 and 3), in order to create an encyclopaedic guide of over 1,500 patterns, from eighteenth-century India, to modern day Cath Kidston.  Divided into five main chapters – ‘Flora’, ‘Fauna’, ‘Geometric’, ‘Pictorial’ and ‘Abstract’ – the reader, whether an academic or merely someone with an interest in pattern design, is able easily to locate and learn about whatever pattern they choose. The inclusion of non-Western techniques and patterns helps to deconstruct the Western-nature of art and design history discourse that many have become complacent to – the use of an eighteenth-century Sarasa Indian textile produced for the Japanese market is especially interesting, as normally the study of art history focuses on the West’s influence on the non-Western and vice versa, ignoring the interaction between distinctly different ‘non-Western’ nations and cultures.

Fig. 3 Barbara Brown, 1973. From the Design Council Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives

In addition to specific styles, designs and techniques, art movements such as Art Nouveau and Chinoiserie are described, alongside relevant artists such as William Morris. As a result, Pattern Design is exceedingly accessible, choosing to focus on the skilful artistry and rich history, rather than using the theoretical  language that art and design books and journals tend to fall into to, consequently shrinking their possible audience. The effects of pattern design on societal systems and hierarchies do not go unnoticed by Wilhide. She commends women such as Enid Marx and Sarah Campbell for their works’ influence on contemporary design.

The thematic rather than chronological ordering allows comparisons to be made between the past and present; this approach is rather refreshing considering the chronological categorisation art and design historians are more than accustomed to, particularly in gallery and museum spaces. Pattern Design is, deliberately, primarily visual and neatly ordered so that one can dip in and out at leisure. Although it is clearly factual, it is a highly pleasurable read.

Elizabeth Wilhide’s Pattern Design was published by Thames & Hudson in 2018. Find out more about the University of Brighton Design Archives here.

PhD student Elli Michaela Young introduces her research project

Fig. 1 Barrington and Teresa Young, Whitfield Town, Kingston Jamaica, circa 1950. Photographer unknown.

Jamaicans have often engaged with fashion and textiles in complex ways in order to navigate their complex social landscape. Yet Jamaica’s contribution to global fashion and textile histories and to fashion has often been overlooked, and in some cases forgotten. My PhD project, entitled ‘Fashioning Jamaica 1950-1975’, seeks to uncover hidden histories in order to tell a story about the ways that fashion and textiles have been used in the construction of Jamaican identities, both internally and externally. Part of this looks at how Jamaicans used fashion to navigate their colonial landscape. Another element looks at how the Jamaican government used fashion and textiles to construct an identity for a global fashion market in postcolonial Jamaica. I have encountered numerous difficulties researching under-represented areas such as fashion and textiles in Jamaica, which has meant I have had to redesign my project. Documents relating to the industry have not been kept, documented or have been destroyed, both in Jamaica and outside, making it difficult to fully document their contribution to global fashion. This has resulted in one of my most important research activities becoming identifying and collecting photographs that relate Jamaican fashion and Jamaican designers. This is not always an easy task and particularly when those images are held in archives outside of the UK; either in Jamaica and North America, or stored in personal family photo albums.

Fig. 2 Barrington Young, passport photograph, circa 1947.

For my project I am drawing on photography, oral histories, and life stories to help me tell the story of Jamaicans’ relationship with fashion. I was fortunate to have a father with an interest in photography and so have a collection of photographs that I have been able to use for my project. Photography was not easily accessible to many Jamaicans during the 1940s and 50s, but photography was an important part of constructing his identity. Many Jamaicans would often have their photographs taken in studios, but my father (figure 1) took photography out of the studio, carefully staging each image in specific locations. The only image I have of my father taken in a studio is his passport photograph (figure 2) taken when he was approximately 18 years of age. Barrington was not the only person in his family to use photography in this way. Figure 3 is of Barrington’s sister, Gloria Young, who was a freehand dressmaker and made all of her own clothes. She made the clothes she wears in this image. Freehand dressmaking was a popular practice in colonial Jamaica. It is a practice that allowed dressmakers creative license, allowing them to create individual one-off designs. An individuality that, for some Jamaicans, was an important part of constructing their identities. Figure 4 is of his sister Theresa, taken in the garden of the family home. The way Barrington and his sisters engaged with photography suggests they had an understanding of the power of photography in documenting their lives and controlling the way they were seen and would be remembered, particularly as these photographs are the only record of their lives during this period.

Fig.3 Gloria Young, Kingston, Jamaica, circa 1950.

As a Design Star student, I have been fortunate to receive funding for research trips to Jamaica (both from Design Star and the Design History Society), which have allowed me to visit a number of archives in Jamaica. The National Library of Jamaica and The Gleaner Archive in Kingston have been especially important to my project. Researching in locations like Jamaica is a good experience: often you may not find what you are looking for, which can disappoint, but you will find material you didn’t expect that makes you think about your research in a very different way.  What I, as British researcher, thinks of as important is not necessarily viewed in the same way as those who are Jamaican and documenting their own history, a position that has forced me to rethink my approach and to rethink entire sections of my project. Researching in Jamaica has taught me to be open to challenges, to adapt and be willing to make changes to my research in order to allow Jamaicans to speak for themselves.

Fig.4 Theresa Young, Whitfield Town, Kingston, Jamaica, circa 1950.

BA (Hons) History of Art and Design student Graham Walton on a trip to Brighton’s Embassy Court

Fig. 1 Embassy Court from the south east

Returning for our second year, I was pleased to hear that a course visit was planned to Modernist icon Embassy Court, a building I have always wanted to visit.

On arrival, we were shown into the foyer where an original mural has recently been repainted. This brightly-coloured mural is more or less the same as the original, painted when the building was new, but with odd additions such as the offshore Rampion Wind Farm, recently built off the Sussex coast.

Fig. 2 The original mural in the entrance to Embassy Court.

We were given a very informative history and tour by one of the residents. The building was designed by the famous modernist architect Wells Coates and built in 1934- 35. This was a luxury block and rich and famous tenants rented flats at a high rent (rather than owning them). The flats employed a considerable number of servants, so owners could drive down from London and a liveried flunky open your door and take your bags to your flat, where a cocktail would await you. Illustrious tenants included Viscount Astor, Max Miller, Rex Harrison and Terence Rattigan.

Fig. 3 The rear of the building.

The architecture reflects the thinking of Le Corbusier, with the use of reinforced concrete and strong horizontal lines. We were fortunate enough to be shown around one of the larger three-bed flats, which sat on the corner of the fifth floor. The owners had retained much of the original style, especially with the curved door where you enter the lounge although there was naturally a modern bathroom and kitchen. The owner explained some of the politics and problems affecting the building. After the Second World War the building continued to be a high class, luxury block, many of the flats were sold off to individual owners. The servants and the ground floor bank branch were lost and there were renovations in the 1960s. The freehold changed hands and the building was not well maintained, the leasehold association commissioned architects to upgrade the building and the expected cost was £4 million. Nothing happened to the building and it deteriorated. There was a protracted court case between the leaseholders and a company which owned many of the flats. Eventually leaseholders managed to get control of the block in 2003 and a new refurbishment plan was announced involving Sir Terence Conran. A survey showed that the building had deteriorated, originally the building had a communal hot water system, however the iron pipes encased in concrete rotted causing seepage through the concrete. New electrical heating systems were installed and the leaseholders had to pay a considerable amount of money to upgrade their flats.

Fig. 4 An interior of a corner apartment.

According to the owner we met, currently the block is very well run and has a good contingency fund for maintenance. They had to keep the original Crittal metal windows (to comply with listed building requirements) and there is still much leakage through these windows especially in winter storms. We were taken to the top floor, where there was a store room with a fascinating pictorial history of the building and to the sundeck on the top floor. We were very fortunate in being able to visit this building on such a lovely sunny day and the view from the sundeck was magnificent. The thinking behind Embassy Court was that it was to resemble a luxury ocean liner and this concept is easily imagined from the sundeck.

I thoroughly enjoyed this visit and feel very privileged to be allowed to view one of the flats. Le Corbusier would have been very proud of this building!

Fig. 5 Enjoying our visit.

Fig. 6 Enjoying our visit.

Fig. 7 Are we on an ocean liner?

Fig. 8 Great views from Embassy Court towards Rampion Wind Farm

BA (Hons) History of Art & Design student Kitty Symington reports on a course visit to Tate Modern

This winter sees the Tate Modern holding an extensive exhibition through eleven rooms consisting of Albers’ work throughout her career, from her beginnings at the Bauhaus, to her experimental pictorial weavings, through to her metaphorical ideas about material and craft. It’s a well-deserved and beautiful commemoration to such a highly influential figure in the world of textile design and modern art, and the second year History of Art & Design students were lucky enough to visit it during our Modernism module. As we entered the first room of her stimulating exhibition we were immediately confronted with Anni Albers’ giant creature of a loom. As one of the leading innovators of the Bauhaus school of the early twentieth-century, she set out to combine the ancient technique of traditional hand weaving with the abstract language of Modern design.

Fig.1. Anni Albers, Black White Yellow ,1926, re-woven 1965, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation, Tate.

A design of Albers’ that particularly interested me was one she first produced in her early Bauhaus career in 1926; it is the large wall hanging called Black White Yellow (fig.1). Here, Albers used only black, white and yellow threads, despite the appearance of multiple hues in the piece. This technique – one that she continued to use throughout her life – consisted of using different combinations of each of the colours on the warp and the weft of the loom to produce a complicated but complementary language of a variation of colours.

Albers’ initial watercolour drawings displayed in the exhibition allowed us to understand the development of her ideas: from the complex mathematical preparations on paper, through to the incredible finished products hung on the walls. Her work is, arguably, easier to appreciate once we are aware of her extensive processes; personally, I admired Black White Yellow more after considering the intellectual methods behind its alluring designs.

Fig.2. Anni Albers, panel from Six Prayers, 1966-7, The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation, The Jewish Museum, New York.

After Black White Yellow, Anni produced a considerable collection of intricate experimental weavings. We were shown a vast sensual array of colours, textures, materials, free-flowing patterns and extravagant techniques involving the play of light and transparency. A project that was exceptionally striking was a piece called Six Prayers  from 1966-7. The Tate describes it as Albers’ most ambitious pictorial weaving, both for its metaphorical emphasis and its technical advance. Albers was commissioned by the Jewish Museum in New York to create this memorial piece to the six million Jews that died in the Holocaust. We learned that the six panels represented the six million and that, as Albers herself was from a Jewish family, the commission must have struck deep with her (fig.2 shows one panel of six). The form of the panels visually takes on the form of Torah scrolls; the complex woven patterns of the threads sculpting the delicate appearance of Hebrew scripture in a sombre manner.

Fig.3. Anni Albers, Intersecting, 1962, The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation, New York, Tate Modern, London.

This piece illustrates the incredible affect that Albers’ designs have had on their viewers throughout the twentieth-century, and certainly the Tate’s glorifying exhibition of her career provokes such feelings today. All-in-all this exhibition was an inspirational one, and one that teased the senses; possibly the only drawback of the Tate was that we were unable to touch the beautiful textures with our grubby fingertips.

Anni Albers continues at Tate Modern until 27th January 2019.

PhD student Jenny Roberts on working on the V&A’s forthcoming Mary Quant show

Ever since studying dress history for my BA in History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton I have dreamt of working at the V&A in the Fashion and Textile department. Many years later, as a PhD student, I finally achieved this ambition as part of a funded internship courtesy of my AHRC funders, Design Star and University of Brighton. It was everything I had hoped for and more. 

Fig. 1 Daily Mirror – Wednesday 17th March 1965, p.1

For six months I worked exclusively on researching and planning the Mary Quant exhibition, due to open on 6th April 2019. Jenny Lister, one of the exhibition’s curators, has been wanting to hold a Quant retrospective for many years. The previous lack of attention is astonishing considering her market presence from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s. Although the Museum of London held ‘Mary Quant’s London’ in 1973, a full assessment of her work is timely.  The V&A’s exhibition will trace the journey of the Mary Quant brand from her original shop to a worldwide market where her name featured on clothing, hosiery, hats, spectacle frames, umbrellas, jewellery and make-up homeware, home furnishings, carpets, paints and wallpapers, and beds. Mary Quant was even used to promote Hotpoint washing machines!

From the beginning of the exhibition process, the curators wanted to steer away from preconceptions of 1960s psychedelia and to articulate a more measured appraisal of Mary Quant’s work and output. It is this narrative which will surprise and interest visitors to the exhibition when it opens.

Fig. 2 J. C. Penney’s Catalogue 1966

The Mary Quant business began as a single boutique in Chelsea, London in 1955, which had transformed into a worldwide brand by the mid-sixties. Quant recalled in her autobiography that: ‘It was utterly impossible…to envisage that within seven years the business would go well over the million mark and the clothes I was to design would be in 150 shops in Britain, 320 stores throughout America and also on sale in France, Italy, Switzerland, Kenya, South Africa, Australia, Canada and, in fact, in just about every country in the western world’.[1]

Fig. 3 Wool Jersey dress V&A T.352-1974

In 1953 Mary Quant graduated with an Art Teacher’s Diploma from Goldsmiths College, where she met her future husband, Alexander Plunkett Greene.[2] Archie McNair, who made up the team, was a qualified lawyer and photographer and owned a café in Chelsea. His legal acumen was used to their advantage when negotiating branding deals. Together they invested £10,000, a substantial amount of money in 1955, opening a boutique shop in the Kings Road. Bazaar, as the shop was named, became renowned for its playful and amusing shop window displays and became a destination shop for a growing affluent younger market. Another Bazaar opened in Knightsbridge in 1957. In 1962 Mary Quant visited America and, as a result of this visit, she began considering mass production techniques in her designs. Her involvement with American department store J.C. Penney’s was marketed to the American audience emphasising Mary Quant’s pivotal role in ‘Swinging London’ at a time when London considered ‘cool’.

Fig. 4 Mary Quant pictured wearing a jersey dress from her own collection at Buckingham Palace with her OBE award, 1966. © Getty Images

In 1963 Mary Quant launched her more affordable range under the label ‘The Ginger Group’. This range of clothing incorporated some of the mass production techniques she had learnt from her travels to America and was reflected in the design and the fabrics chosen. A film clip reveals Mary Quant’s thoughts on what she considered the time-consuming and expensive nature of haute couture. She felt that “clothes should be made by mass-production when we live in a mass-production age.”[1]There were multiple derivations of a design, like for example her ‘Banana Split’ dress made in a black jersey fabric.

These jersey dresses were easy to wear and care for, available in a rainbow of colours as well as variations of the original design. The success of the Mary Quant brand was equally due to her and Alexander’s imaginative and playful marketing as much as it was due to the circles in which they mixed. For example, before he became the Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham was employed to dress Bazaar’s windows.[1] Crucially, whenever Mary Quant featured in articles or in public, she was dressed in her own designs. In 1966 Mary Quant received her OBE for services to the British fashion industry at Buckingham Palace. She was pictured in newspaper articles holding her award wearing one of her Ginger label jersey dresses. She implemented this marketing strategy even when advertising her collaborations with other manufacturers. In the advertisement for Mary Quant berets made by Kangol all the models wore jersey dresses from the Ginger Group label. Similarly, when her shoe range Quant Afoot was launched the models all wore her designs.

Fig. 5 Advert for Mary Quant’s collaboration with Kangol

I started my V&A internship when the museum had just taken delivery of the Plunkett Greene archive, which included private papers, marketing material, Daisy Dolls, Daisy Dolls’ outfits, fashion photographs and garments worn by and designed by Mary Quant. The first few weeks were spent on cold, November days in the Cloth Workers Guild at the V&A’s Blythe House photographing, dating and cataloging the previously unseen contents of the archive. From there we moved on to creating boards documenting the items held by various institutions throughout the world.

These boards were an essential visible aid in the formulation of the story of the exhibition. Thematic boards were then created and once the ‘story’ had been agreed consideration moved onto the restrictions imposed by the physical layout of the exhibition space and the display cases. One of the first problems facing all curators staging an exhibition in the V&A’s fashion galleries, is navigating display cases and available space. Without giving anything away, I feel that what is sometimes considered a problematic space has actually lent itself to the narrative of Mary Quant’s journey, from a single boutique shop to global brand.

Fig. 6 Mary Quant and models at the Quant Afoot footwear collection launch, 1967 (© PA Prints 2008)

The whole process of designing the exhibition was extremely collaborative. The team presented their ideas on the direction of the exhibition’s narrative not only to colleagues within the V&A, but also to external practitioners and academics. These meetings were constructive, with warm exchanges of ideas and knowledge. At the same time, part of the ‘Mary Quant Team’, as we had become known, researched contextual images, advertisements, stockists and articles featuring the designer in the National Arts Library’s magazine collections. Unusually, the curators Jenny Lister and Stephanie Wood decided to announce an earlier than usual call-out for the exhibition as they wanted to include stories of the impact Mary Quant had had on her generation. In particular they wanted to hear from debutantes, who had been some of Mary Quant’s early clients as this market has been overlooked in previous Mary Quant narratives. But crucially the curators wanted to understand the impact of Mary Quant’s design brand whether clothes, make-up, tights, hats or interior furnishings. The range and extent of her designs were far-reaching, and markets opened up in America, Australia, Europe and China.

My experience taught me a great deal about how to plan and carry out exhibitions. The process is similar to the PhD journey in that to begin with there is an enormous amount of what seems disparate material, which needs to be sifted through to assist in the telling of a story. This material is then edited down to form a focused narrative. Unfortunately, my internship ended before I could get heavily involved in the design of the exhibition space. Even so, I am excited to see the finished exhibition, knowing that I played a tiny part in a long over-due appraisal of the work of a designer who was responsible for disseminating the ‘London Look’ around the British Isles and across the world.

The V&A Mary Quant exhibition opens Saturday 6^thApril, 2019. The book that accompanies the exhibition, Mary Quant by Jenny Lister (London: V&A), will be published on 25^th March 2019.

Bibliography

Beatrice Behlen, A Fashionable History of the King’s Road. London: Unicorn, 2017. Print.

Breward, Christopher, Fashioning London: Clothing and the Modern Metropolis. London: Berg, 2004. Print.

— David Gilbert and Jenny Lister (eds), Swinging Sixties.London: V&A Publications, 2006. Print.

Booker, Christopher, The Neophiliacs: Revolution in English Life in the Fifties and Sixties. London: London: Collins, 1992. Print

Buckley, Cheryl & Hazel Clark, Fashion and everyday life: London and New York. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Print.

— and Hilary Fawcett, Fashioning the Feminine. Representation and Women’s Fashion from the Fin de Siecle to the Present. London:I.B.Tauris, 2002. Print.

Donnelly, Mark, Sixties Britain. London: Routledge 2005

Fogg, Marnie, Boutique: a ‘60s cultural phenomenon. London: Mitchell Beazley. Print.

Green, Felicity, “The mini-skirt makes its debut at Ascot….and it’s a winner”, Daily Mirror, 15 June 1966.

Kynaston, David, Austerity Britain 1945-51.London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Print.

McRobbie, Angela (ed.), Zoot Suits and Secondhand Dresses: Anthology of Fashion and Music. London: MacMillan. 1989.

Morris, Brian, An Introduction to Mary Quant’s London.London: London Museum, 1973.

O’Neill, Alistair, London – after a fashion. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2007. Print.

Quant, Mary. Quant by Quant: The Autobiography of Mary Quant. London: Headline, 2012

Wilson, Elizabeth, Adorned in dreams: fashion and modernity. London: Virago, 1985. Print

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/introducing-mary-quant

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2096184/Mary-Quant-swing-60s-gave-iconic-bob-cut–hallelujah–invented-waterproof-mascara.html

https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/0QKSHn4SqTdrLw

[1]Donnelly, Mark, Sixties Britain. London: Routledge, 2005. Print. p.92

[1]https://youtu.be/cyLa5WZ8VO4Accessed 10.10.18

[1]Ibid Locations 675-678

[2]Ibid Location 90