Wedding Dresses galore at the Fashion Museum

In February I was fortunate enough to take part in a one week CPD course at the Fashion Museum, Bath. Rosemary Harden, manager of the gallery, had designed four packing fortnights spread over one year. The idea was to allow museum professionals keen to develop their skills to spend one week in the museum, packing objects. The museum would benefit from some extra pairs of hands and we would gain experience and knowledge in the handling and packing of dress and costume. In teams of two, we were allocated a specific area of the collection. I was paired with the lovely Heather Audin, Curator at the Quilt Museum and Gallery, York. We headed into our packing room and were faced with this:

Courtesy Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council

Courtesy Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council

Plus boxes and boxes of veils, headbands, tiaras, trousseau, going-away outfits and yet more wedding dresses. It was gorgeous yet daunting. A substantial number of dresses were already packaged in store. Our task was to use the accession numbers to match up veils, dresses etc from the same bride and package them together - something that had not been done before. Then we had to package the remaining items into new boxes.

As well as offering us a chance to get to know a specific area of the collection, we also learnt about the museum's unique approach to packing. The museum prides itself on the accessibility of their collection. It is there for people to see and research, not to remain locked in store for decades. As a result dresses need to be packaged in way that makes them easily (and quickly) accessible to staff. The photograph below shows how the dresses are laid on a 'stretcher' of tissue that can be easily lifted out of the box.

Courtesy Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council

To those outside of museums and galleries this experience may not seem like much, but for individuals like me it was fantastic. The work was exhausting and physically hard - in total Heather and I packaged 79 boxes, most of which we had built ourselves. But you cannot beat hands on experience. I went into the course as a novice and can now confidently pack a late-18th Century wedding dress into a box! It is also through courses such as these that professionals from museums around the UK are able to share ideas and knowledge about collections management and practice. What particularly impressed me about the Fashion Museum was how a small team of people with a finite amount of space manage to host an ambitious exhibitions schedule, build a world-class collection (over 80,000 objects and counting) and allow consistent access to that collection for research purposes (whether you be studying 19th Century kimonos or would simply like to see your grandmother's wedding dress from the collection).

For more information about what is currently showing, click here. For the fashionistas out there,  Bath in Fashion is a festival of events and exhibitions taking place in the city.

Alford Heritage Museum featuring 'probably the best collection of mangles in the world'

On a dreich weekend in June I joined a few friends in Alford, Aberdeenshire. We were supposed to be camping at Woolfest in the Lakes but a lingering illness and torrential rain encouraged us to opt for a watertight cottage instead. Whilst there I discovered the Alford Heritage Centre. This is a museum like no other. An eclectic collection of 'stuff' from by gone years, the museum harks back to Victorian days when row after row of interesting objects were crammed alongside each other, vying for your attention. In some ways the centre is desperately in need of funding and refurbishment - goodness knows what conservation issues may be lurking. But I fear that any such intrusion would force the museum to let go of its unique character. There are no barriers, minimal interpretation, no 'enablers' to enable children to understand what they are seeing. Instead it is a visual feast that allows you to explore in your own time and in your own way. Enough talking, here come some pictures!

The Centre charges a very small entrance fee and is run entirely by volunteers. If you are in Alford for the weekend, you can also check out the Grampian Transport Museum, Alford Valley Railway and Haughton Country Park. The town also has lovely independent cafes and shops, and a fantastic haberdashers.

RBSMuseumLates

It's been all quiet on the blog as I am battling an illness at the moment - there's not much new research to blog about! However, before I got ill I was lucky enough to buy a ticket for the National Museum of Scotland's RBS Museum Lates Night in Wonderland. These occasional Friday evening events at the Museum are for adults only and are designed as an opportunity to experience the building and collections in a different way. It was a fantastic evening - I fully support children in museums but it was really special having a child-free opportunity to enjoy the galleries.

All of the photos are by my talented other half, Calum TW, and you can see more of his photography here and his graphic design work here.

The evening was truly magical. Highlights for us were drinking cocktails on a picnic blanket in the great hall (you can see us in the middle of the 8th picture!) and the silent disco in the Imagine gallery.

Designing Women and Designing Britain

A recent visit to London resulted in an overlap of exhibitions: Designing Women: Postwar British Textiles at the Fashion and Textile Museum and British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Both exhibitions made the case for Britain as a centre of excellence in design in the wake of the Second World War. This was explored further in relation to 'Spaces and Places' in a two day conference at the V&A.

With a background in museums and galleries, I am always interested in the design of an exhibition. The Designing Women exhibition was restrained and simple in its design and layout, allowing the textiles to speak for themselves and have room to breathe. I had encountered many of the designs in books, but nothing compares to seeing them in the flesh, printed on different types of fabrics and reproduced in multiple colour-ways.

 

 

The exhibition at the V&A had, not surprisingly, a large budget for design. I know that some people prefer to steer clear of exhibition design which is too striking due to a concern that the design will overpower the displays. My personal response to the British Design exhibition was that the design complemented the objects, creating a unified exhibition which also clearly demarcated the three distinct sections of the exhibition. The project was undertaken by Ben Kelly Design, with graphics by Graphic Thought Facility.

Ben Kelly Design

Ben Kelly Design

Ben Kelly Design

One of the speakers at the V&A conference was Christine Lalumia, a former curator at the Geffrye Museum. Her paper concerned the 1965 Living Room at the Geffrye Museum, one of a series of period rooms recreating homes from particular eras. As the curators decided how to put together a 'typical' living room of 1965, they had to consider whether to go for a 'modern' and 'contemporary' style, or a more traditional sitting room.

Living Room, 1965, Geffrye Museum

Lalumia spoke of how this brought up issues about access to, and interest in, modern interior design. The exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum displayed wonderful colours and edgy patterns, but how many members of the British public actually wanted to live with them? And how many could afford these textiles, or the cutting edge furniture which accompanied them? As Lalumia stated, many preferred a traditional interior, with older fashioned furniture and knick-knacks on the mantelpiece. Those who did interact with modernism were usually middle class, with an academic background.

To me, this relates to Dovecot activities of the 1950s, during which the so-called 'Contemporary Style' in fabrics and interiors was emerging in exhibitions and magazines. Dovecot hoped to compete within the domestic interior market with smaller, design-led tapestries. The problem was, who would want them? And, how could they compete, wither financially or stylistically, with mass produced textiles? The ultimate answer is that they couldn't. Tapestry suffered from an old-fashioned reputation, associated with the Arts and Crafts. It was also well outside the ordinary person's budget. It was in the 1960s, with the increase in opportunities for large-scale, architectural commissions that Dovecot's tapestries really came into their own.