Norwich Castle Textile Treasures

Textile Treasures

Duvet of Love © Norfolk Museums Service (Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery)

Running until February 20th, Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery plays host to this beautiful exhibition showcasing inspiring textile works and their makers.

Textile Treasures presents some of the best-loved textiles in Norwich Castle’s nationally important Costume and Textile collection. The exhibition showcases local connections and personal histories as told through textiles created to provide comfort, care and as a form of self-expression.

The exhibition includes extraordinary examples of patchwork, applique, and embroidery – techniques traditionally used to make bedcovers. The thirty or so pieces on show combine incredible artistry with emotional resonance which offer an insight into the lives of ordinary people.

The textiles are presented on open display, not behind glass, offering visitors a uniquely intimate view of pieces which are not usually on show to the public. With themes of collaborative creativity, gift-giving, recycling, friendship, family and love, the exhibition is even more relevant after the experiences of the past year.

The exhibition is curated by Curator of Costume and Textiles, Ruth Battersby-Tooke who says: ‘Developing Textile Treasures has been a wonderful opportunity to set up conversations between textiles made by diverse people, often generations apart, who find they have so much in common. The inclusion of some of the most recent additions to the collection demonstrates the continued relevance of creating textiles as an act of collective testimony and individual self-expression.’

The objects in Textile Treasures remind us of how personal these pieces of patchwork and embroidery are. Bedcovers and quilts are among the most intimate and domestic of items, and they hold in their fabric the lives of those who created and used them.

Lives such as that of local woman Margaret Brereton who created the extraordinary Brereton Tester panel – the ceiling of a four-poster bed-hangings set – between 1801 and 1805 while grieving the death of her teenage son, John. A stunning example of English pieced patchwork, it is also a moving testament to maternal love, said by her family to have been created over a period of four years. A clue as to the emotional resonance of this object lies in the image of the four children at play in the centre – the only human figures in the patchwork, they would only have been visible to those lying in this most intimate of spaces.

By contrast the bedcover made in 1961 for Jenny Pitchford, an occupational therapist at Shelton psychiatric hospital, Shrewsbury, was designed to support the mental well-being of its makers. Created by a group of female patients during Occupational Therapy sessions, each embroidered square was made separately, stitched together, and gifted to Jenny as a wedding present.

Other pieces are a celebration of the spirit of ‘Make Do and Mend’. These include a wonderful patchwork skirt by an unknown maker which dates from just after the end of the Second World War and reflects the fuller silhouette of the postwar ‘New Look’ invented by Christian Dior. With repurposed fabric from pre-War clothing and a waistband made out of black out curtains it’s a timely example of recycling in our disposable culture.

Collaboration is another important theme in the exhibition, with several of the pieces being created by more than one maker. The Marsham Quilt, for instance, which was donated to the museum in 2019 and is on display for the first time, is the work of Norfolk sisters, Sarah Patience Marsham and Ethel Maud Marsham. They created it while employed as housemaids in London in the 1910s. The quilt, which clearly shows their two different approaches to design, was made for their six nephews and nieces back in Norfolk and features an eclectic mixture of fabrics including fine woollen tweeds for men’s suits and overcoats, fragile silk crepe, velvet, half silks for women’s dress, and a range of furnishing textiles.

The exhibition also displays work by contemporary artists who have turned to textiles as a means of artistic expression. David Shenton’s Duvet of Love uses a mosaic of badges attached to a double duvet cover to create a stunning and colourful image of two male figures embracing.

Pitchford Bedcover © Norfolk Museums Service (Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery) Make Do and Mend Skirt © Norfolk Museums Service (Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery) Detail from Corona Quilt © Norfolk Museums Service (Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery)

the therapeutic potential of sewing in the face of challenging times. It was created by members of the Costume & Textile Association, who are also supporters of the exhibition, as a response to the pandemic. The quilt is made up of individual squares embroidered in isolation and then stitched together. The result is a unique collective record of living through the pandemic.

After a year like no other, this exhibition speaks to us of how people throughout history have found, in the seemingly simple act of sewing, personal expression, comfort and reward. Like pieces of a patchwork, these textiles are separate, but together, they shed light on our recent shared experience. They spark empathy, enabling us to connect with the past and reflect on our own lives. Textile Treasures is a rare and unmissable opportunity – a compelling, colourful tribute to the extraordinary skill and patience of ordinary men and women.

Textile Treasures: A celebration of inspiring textiles and their makers – personal histories, creativity and craft runs until February 20th 2022 at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery.