FRAMING THE SHOP

Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has been recording its history for more than half a century, inadvertently charting the rise and fall of the British car industry as it goes

Sometimes a rich archive of forgotten motoring imagery is discovered in a loft, piled-up boxes of glass-plate negatives and curled black and white photos having been tucked into the eaves in a past life, waiting to be discovered. At other times collections are hidden in plain sight, their automotive content often overlooked, lost in the shadows cast by the main subject matter. Such is the case with the Sainsbury Archive, a treasure trove of historic material that has, since 2005, been stored at the Museum of London Docklands on the Isle of Dogs, charting the history of one of the country’s oldest supermarket chains.

Sainsbury’s has been a permanent fixture on the British high street since 1869, when the first branch was opened in Drury Lane, on the eastern boundary of Covent Garden – then, as now, the bustling hub of the capital. By 1969 the firm had become a household name across the country, and to mark its centenary year an archive was founded. The collection not only created a record of the company’s past, but also became an ever-evolving time capsule capturing rare snapshots of everyday life.

The archive has since grown to fill more than 700 linear metres of shelving, comprising everything from company uniforms and product packaging to film and audio tape. Historians and anthropologists will no doubt be in their element roaming the museum’s vaults, but so too will classic car fans. Through thousands of images of Sainsbury’s branch car parks and petrol stations, car buffs are offered an intriguing look at the past – not of headline-grabbing motor shows and famous races, but of day-to-day life