Welcome to Fashionable Yorkshire

From 1600s splendour to 1970s style, a new exhibition at Lotherton Hall is displaying wonderful dresses worn by Yorkshire women.  Visitors can discover what clothes meant to these women and what we can learn about society from their fashion choices.

Dress by Worth of Paris, worn by Mary Holden Illingworth in 1881

One of these women is Mary Holden Illingworth, daughter of Bradford wool magnate Sir Isaac Holden.  Mary obviously loved fashion and several of her luxurious and stylish outfits have survived.  The image above shows a dress she bought in 1881 for her daughter’s wedding.  It was created by the famous Parisian designer, Worth, and features an opulent fabric, fringing and a train.

Special Collections has loaned Mary’s book of travels and letters she wrote to her sister Maggie which include lots of detail about her interest in fashion.  Kay Eggleston blogged about padding mannequins so they were the right shape to fit the clothes on show.   Kay discusses how Mary’s figure changed during her life: from a slender young girl to the fuller-figured mother of five children who wore the Worth dress.  But, as Kay observes, always stylish!

Fashionable Yorkshire is on show 17 March-31 December 2017.  Find out more on the exhibition webpage.  This BBC news story and this from the Yorkshire Post include fantastic images of the costumes and their owners.

People Power: Fighting for Peace

2017 offers a very rare chance to see the original sketches of the ‘peace symbol’.  Special Collections and the Trustees of the Commonweal Collection are lending them to a major exhibition at the IWM, People Power: Fighting for Peace.

Sketch of nuclear disarmament symbol,by Gerald Holtom. Copyright: Commonweal Collection.

Artist Gerald Holtom created the symbol in 1958  for the first Aldermaston March (organised by the Direct Action Committee); it was later adopted by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and many other groups and campaigns working for peace, making it one of the most recognisable and powerful designs ever created.  Holtom’s original sketches are very fragile and so can rarely be shown to the public. This exhibition is a wonderful opportunity for us to display them to great numbers of people for the first time.

People Power explores 100 years of anti-war campaigning in Britain through 300 objects: banners, posters, flyers, leaflets, paintings, letters … Many have never been exhibited before. In addition to the sketches, we are lending a pencil drawing of Peace Pledge Union founder Dick Sheppard by activist and artist Peggy Smith and a range of letters and ephemera relating to the anti-nuclear campaigns of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

People Power is on show at the IWM London, 23 March-28 August 2017.  Find out more on the IWM’s website.

The Requisites of Novelty, Fashion and Elegance

This week at Fairfax House in York, an extraordinary scrapbook of historic fabrics will go on show for the first time.

The fabrics were originally featured in Ackermann’s Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions, and politics, a well-known early 19th century periodical which is an incredible source for study of that period.  They were gathered into a scrapbook entitled British Patterns of Manufacture, for the benefit of students at Bradford Technical College.

The scrapbook will be on show in a major exhibition at Fairfax House which explores the growth of shopping as a leisure pastime in Georgian England.  Consuming Passions will run from 28 May-31 December 2015 and will look at the ways Georgian middle and upper class people decorated themselves and their homes in the latest fashion.  The vivid and colourful patterns depicted in the scrapbook are a fascinating part of this exuberant and luxurious world.

Explore further …

• Opening hours and other information about Consuming Passions can be found on the Fairfax House website.
• I wrote about the scrapbook and other versions of Ackermann’s in our 100 Objects exhibition, Number 36: Fabrics and Fashion Plates.

Rediscovered: J.B. Priestley in the Yorkshire Post

Last weekend the Yorkshire Post published a really interesting piece about J.B. Priestley’s First World War experiences.  The article, by Steve McClarence, uses objects from Priestley’s Archive to tell the story: his shoulder-badge, his photographs, his letters, and above all Priestley’s unforgettable writings about the War in Margin Released and English Journey.  You can see the archive objects for yourself in our current exhibition at the Bradford Industrial Museum.

 

 

JB Priestley: soldier, writer, painter …

J.B. Priestley: Soldier, Writer, Painter.
Curated by the J.B. Priestley Society
Bradford Industrial Museum. 
19 April – 17 August 2014

This summer we bring a unique opportunity to see some different sides to  J.B. Priestley.   You knew he was a writer (we hope).  He was also a …

Soldier …
Aged just 19, “Jack” Priestley joined the British Army in September 1914.  The next five years changed his life forever and that of his home city of Bradford.  The Industrial Museum has a major exhibition about Bradford’s Home Front which our display complements.  We are showing Jack’s letters home and the photographs and memorabilia that travelled with him for the next 50 years.  He used them for inspiration when he drew together his experiences in the dream-like tour de force that is the middle section of his 1962 memoir Margin Released.

Painter …
JB loved art and later in life took up painting as an enjoyable hobby.  The J.B. Priestley Society have assembled 30 of his works for this show.   These intriguing survivals  illustrate the love of landscape that makes so many of his books unforgettable , his understanding of art, and his extensive travels.   A few are still for sale, if you would like a unique bit of Priestleiana in your life.

The exhibition is free and open to all.  You can find out more about opening times etc. on the Museum’s website.

 

 

Invitation: Mince Pies and Art, 5 December 2013

Drinks Reception, Gallery II, University of Bradford
Thursday 5 December 2013 5-6 pm.  All welcome.

Arts on Campus and Special Collections invite you to join us for Christmas drinks and eats and a chance to see our new exhibition in the company of its curators.

Arts Curator Amy Charlesworth, with help from Special Collections, explores the growth and significance of the most fascinating and distinctive facets of the University’s story: the Arts and Issues programme.  See the Hockneys from the 1979 University Challenge win, campus buildings that never were and amazing 1970s political collages.

Credit: mince pie pic from ayca13’s flickr stream, CC BY 2.0 licence.

Arts and Issues: new exhibition in Gallery II Nov 2013-Jan 2014

Cohesion, Challenge and Critique

The “Arts and Issues” fellows at Bradford University, 1966-1982

14 November 2013-16 January 2014

A new exhibition in Gallery II at the University of Bradford brings together as never before the unique resources of special collections and the permanent art collection.  Arts Curator Amy Charlesworth, with help from Special Collections, explores the growth and significance of the most fascinating and distinctive facets of the University’s story: the Arts and Issues programme.

Tom Nash, maquette, circa. 1969, University of Bradford permanent art collection

The programme encourages students to look beyond the subjects of their studies, links the University to local communities, and enriches the life of the University through visual and other artforms; the exhibition considers the early years of the programme to examine how and whether these aims are achieved.

For further information, see the Gallery II website.

Art Forms on Campus: introducing Amy Charlesworth, Curator of Arts

I’m delighted to announce the arrival of a new colleague working on the University of Bradford’s heritage.  Amy Charlesworth, who started work this summer, is our new Curator of Arts.   She will be responsible not only for display and outreach work but for managing the University’s Permanent Art Collection.

This stunning image comes from Amy’s first exhibition in the University’s Gallery II, Art Forms in Nature.   These photogravures by pioneering German photographer Karl Blossfeldt offer unique insights into the shapes and textures of flora and fauna.  On show till 1 November 2013.

Amy’s role has much in common with our activities in Special Collections.  We are all here to care for and make the most of the University’s heritage and to use it to reach out to new audiences.   There are many ways in which we can work together and we have exciting plans for joint exhibitions later this year and in 2014.   Watch this space!

Follow Amy on Twitter for the latest on Arts on Campus and lots of other arts news too: @amycharlesworth.

PS The story of the Visual Arts at Bradford is a fascinating and complex story, beyond the scope of this little news piece.   More on this soon however.

 

Images of the Month: Lesbian and Gay Activists in the Archives

I was prompted to write this by a recent visit from our graduate trainee Katie Mann.  Katie was looking for archive images and inspiration for her exhibition  in the Library highlighting LGBT Month.  Our archives concerned with peace campaigns and nonviolent protest often overlap with gay and lesbian activism, as in these examples which I showed Katie.

This image is from the Peace News Archive, an immense collection of information and photographs on campaigns, countries and themes of interest to those creating the newspaper, including a file of fantastic photographs of lesbian and gay protests from the early 1980s.   This one shows marchers on a Lesbian and Gay Pride March 1985 and is very evocative of the styles and politics of the era.

As in its way is this striking little booklet, from the Archive of Jacquetta Hawkes, part of a file of correspondence concerning her work for the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform and the Albany Trust.  Throughout her life Jacquetta (like her second husband, J.B. Priestley) campaigned against injustice, using their star power and connections to influence political decisions, in favour of often controversial causes.  For instance, the couple played a key role in the creation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

I suspect that our large collections of peace-related pamphlets and ephemera, which we hope to catalogue this year, will yield further stories and pictures of LGBT campaigns … watch this space!

Back to “A Land”: Jacquetta Hawkes display and book

Jacquetta Hawkes by a waterfall, Carrantuohill, Co. Kerry, ca. 1951, photo by Nicolas Hawkes (HAW18/5/4)

One of the most significant, exciting and beautiful archives in Special Collections is that of archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes.  There is now a revival of interest in her great contribution to raising public awareness of Britain’s deep past during the 1950s.  Her masterpiece, A Land, which unforgettably fuses archaeology, geology, poetry  and personal experience, has been reissued by Harper Collins.   This book is explored and revisited, using manuscripts and photographs from the Archive, by Dr Christine Finn in a new exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park this autumn.  Find out more about Jacquetta, the Archive, the book and the exhibition on our Celebrating Jacquetta Hawkes website.