THE KEEPERS OF THE CLOTHES
WHY DO WE COLLECT? EVERY COLLECTION CONTAINS A MYRIAD OF STORIES – AS THE COSTUMES AND TEXTILES AMASSED BY THESE PIONEERING WOMEN REVEAL
Most of us have something: a stash of fabrics, perhaps, or buttons, or bits, which we just can’t throw away. Perhaps it’s something handed down to us; or something we picked up ourselves, falling in love with its pattern or texture. We choose to pick out, and then hang on to, things for an array of different reasons. A new exhibition, ‘ Unbound: Visionary Women
Collecting Textiles’ explores the lives of some of the women who collected, and whose finds are now in museums around the UK. It shows that behind every object, there are many stories.
Where does the desire to collect come from? With Olive Matthews (1887–1979) – who focused on dress from the 18th and early 19th century, and who donated her collection to Chertsey Museum in Runnymede (chertseymuseum.org) – it’s speculated that a bundle of things inherited
from her great-great-grandmother, including shoe buckles, 18th-century shoes and a prayerbook, triggered her interest. She was able to fund her collecting with an allowance (and encouragement) from her father.
LESSONS FROM THE PAST
For the more creatively minded, what we collect can be used to inspire future projects. Louisa Pesel (1870–1947)* rooted her needlework in the traditions of the past. British born, she was director of the Royal Hellenic School of Needlework and Lace in Athens for four years from 1903. There, she developed a love of Greek and Turkish embroidery and acquired many beautiful examples (now in the International Textile Collection, Leeds University, ulita.leeds. ac.uk). Her description of a Danish Hedebo embroidery panel reveals her attitude to collecting. According to Louisa, the Danes
Olive impressively never spent more than £5 on an item for her collection
“saw the work they were doing in various schools of embroidery. In each of them they have collected many specimens of their beautiful linen stitchery. ‘Hedebo’ it is called, and they are reviving work based on these wonderful old models… If other countries are doing this, should we not be wise to do so also?” This logic underpinned her approach – whenever, and wherever she taught, she used examples from her collection as the basis of her lessons. And to whoever, too – Louisa taught everyone from Belgian refugees to shell-shocked soldiers.
WINDOW TO ANOTHER WORLD
Edith Durham (1863–1944) had a very different story. She arrived in the Balkans in 1900, on a break from caring for her mother, and fell in love with the people, the places and the customs. Subsequently, the “grey months” spent in London were punctuated by yearly travels to the region. Edith used her collection to try and understand a different culture better. “It occurred to me that the vexed question of Balkan politics might be solved by studying the manners and customs of each district,” she said. As she travelled, she made sketches – Edith had studied art – and meticulous notes. Each object has its own label, hand-written by Edith. Some knitted red gloves from Montenegro, for example, are labelled: “Such as were worn by old men in the winter, although such elaborate ones were already becoming uncommon in 1907.” As that label suggests, it was a region on the cusp of change, and many such things were lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and subsequently the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s. Thanks to Edith, we can wonder at the exquisite craftsmanship of such objects as an Albanian gold embroidered Giubba, now in the collection of Halifax’s Bankfield Museum (museums.calderdale.gov.uk).
AN EYE FOR A BARGAIN
Likewise, we can look at an item such as the ornate 19th-century silk ‘Spencer’, once in the possession of Olive Matthews, and understand something about the past. Olive used to buy such items when they weren’t valued as much more than fancy dress. She picked up many pieces from Caledonian Road Market, impressively committed to never spending more than £5 on an item. Rather her collection ( like so many) was built on what she loved, and being able to see worth in it when no one else did. When she gave her collection to Chertsey Museum in 1969, it included more than 3,000 items.
RAISING THE STATUS
Of course, collecting is also treated by some as an investment. Just think of the art market, where paintings can change hands for mindboggling sums. With her commercial London gallery, Little Gallery, Muriel Rose was attempting to create such a market – and a status – for crafts, particularly to make it a profession for women, rather than the idea that it was
purely just a ‘hobby’. (She later founded the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham, Surrey, csc.uca.ac.uk). Muriel supported now wellknown ceramicists, such as Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie, and was key in the selling of traditional quilts, made in rural Wales and County Durham, to prestige clients. These beautiful designs were deemed chic enough to grace the rooms of the likes of Claridge’s.
MORE THAN OBJECTS
Collections may be put aside, or stored away, but they are not sealed off from our world. Edith’s collection was, for her, deeply rooted in the cultures that created them. She nursed during the Balkan Wars and was a spokesperson, back in Britain, for the people caught up in the conflict. Her actions meant she was heralded as a heroine in Albania. It was, “an awful responsibility to be fallen in love with by a whole nation,” she noted.
Currently, with minimalism back in fashion again, it’s worth remembering the joy that can come from surrounding ourselves with things that we love. The painter and designer Enid Marx collected British ‘folk art’ with her partner Margaret Lambert, displaying them around their home (now held at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, comptonverney.org.uk). It not only influenced her own designs, but helped preserve such things when no one else valued them. One of Enid’s earliest collections was of ribbons. “I never did anything with them except hoard them,” she confessed. Sometimes we just collect things just because we love them.