Monday 24 October 2016 | Rose Sinclair | Archives and archivists,
I am asked on a daily basis to describe who I am: one day I am an academic, another a researcher, and then a textiles practitioner. My name is Rose Sinclair and I am all of the aforementioned, but it is my researcher role that brings me to the archive, to seek out fabrics in a place perhaps often perceived from the outside as being full of paper.
Beyond the façade of bricks and mortar is another world and space in which I become so engaged time drifts away. If I could relocate my studio practice with all its ‘stuff’ for a month to just start to examine the designs, understand the prints, weaves, embroideries, in context, location iconography, one word… wow. I would be in design heaven.
Using my academic perspective I see the benefits of students seeing, handling, understanding the evolution of design, thinking against a backdrop of cultural evolution extending the reach of the archive into teaching and learning into creative practice with students, who on a daily basis curate and archive their own lives in digital spaces. 1 As a researcher I am interested in the ‘before and after‘, the stories and the memories, times before and times after. Textiles from an archive can be one vehicle that can tell those stories.
‘…but in archives, though the bundles may be mountainous, there is not very much there (…) the archive is made from selected and consciously chosen documentation from the past and also from the mad fragmentation that no one intended to preserve and just ended up there.’ 2
As a researcher, my first entry into the archives was one of awe and thinking, ‘wait a minute: how on earth will I be able to locate what I need, and how can paper lead me to textiles?’
Indeed Steedman’s quote could leave you thinking an archive is just made up of mounds of paper, and you will be sitting in room surrounded by mounds of books; that can happen and does happen. I call it serendipity that archives also contain cloth and other ephemera, fabrics, which are tangible things, material objects, which speak of approaches to technology, design, process, practice, making, crafting. The designs can also speak about how culture can be interpreted and reinterpreted.
The design register is a form of archive that allows an exploration about the design practice of British manufacturing companies that designed, crafted and then manufactured products for distribution not only in the UK but across the world. Companies sought to register their designs, and in some cases re-register after the five year registration process elapsed, speaking of the popularity of a design or product. The register speaks of design taste, the changing technology of manufacturing practices, colour, dyes, design motifs, aesthetics tastes, responses to market or markets, or the opportunity to perhaps usurp the local market.
As a textiles practitioner it is material object that triggers my research question, my practice, my ‘other’ knowledge. The design register is one such archive, of 3 million pieces of fabric. Once you realise that the numbers in the catalogue relate to a designed object, ephemera, it gets exciting as a box is delivered to your desk, you undo the ribbon, and you say ‘wow’.
My first delve into the archive was assisted by Julie Halls and Sandra Shakespeare at The National Archives. I was looking for fabrics that highlighted the migration process from Caribbean to the UK, and what I located was fabric that seem to indicate design operating in the other direction, starting in the UK and going to the Caribbean and the wider diaspora. This fabric, and its design, has lead me down other research paths, both through The National Archives and other archives. This fabric raises questions of material culture, object speaking, design history. Why would such a fabric – designed by an Irish company, made from Sea Island cotton, printed in Manchester – depict designs that showcase Caribbean cultural traditions such as Junkanoo and the Goombay dance? The history of the company that created the fabric also makes interesting reading, adding another layer to an already diverse range of questions.
Orange with Goombays, design registration 451013 (catalogue number: BT 52/6654)
Note however the first visit located one fabric. It would take more research and further visits to locate further fabrics.
For me as a practitioner the excitement is that I can use fabrics in a creative workshop that speak directly to cultural traditions I know of from stories from my own childhood or background. I am excited to be sharing this workshop on 12 November 2016 with other makers, researcher and crafters.
Blue and white Junkanoo, design registration 474392 (catalogue reference: BT 53/161)
Archival research is not fast, but it throws up the unexpected. It highlights for me the place the archive plays in the research practice space, both in the institution and also in the space of the practitioner, as you seek to interpret the findings outside of the space of the archives, working from your own photographs, notes, sketches, images, making sense of the wider and broader story of making, and its relation to the wider world. More will be revealed about these fabrics and their provenance at my forthcoming talk.
