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John Lewis Heritage Centre Fortunately, when the planning for the new Heritage Centre was undertaken, the possibility of flooding was taken into account as the area of the Thames at Cookham suffered quite badly from the effects of the torrential rains we had earlier but all the plans worked so no damage was done. As I mentioned in the previous article, one of the very precious archived items is the sign of the Royal Warrant which was granted to Caleys of Windsor, which is where Queen Victoria had many of her hats made, and there are even some of the hats in the archive as she would take in an existing hat to be copied and then take the new version. One of the old kilns of the original Odney pottery has been preserved as have some small items which were made at the pottery. Prior to all the mechanisation of the fabric industry, patterned fabrics were printed by hand from carved wooden blocks. On one visit to the printing factory, I was very privileged to be able to watch a length of fabric being printed using the block method. It is very labour intensive but so many different blocks, giving so many different shades of colour can be used giving a very realistic finish to the print. On the fabric being printed as I watched, there were bunches of grapes and by the time the final colour had been added, it looked as if the grapes could be picked! Once a fabric had been designed, using many of those in the archives from which ideas were taken, it could then be re-coloured in a great selection of shades from which a
final few were taken to be printed for the shops. One of the most famous of our designs was the Daisy Chain which was produced for many years in a large selection of colourways. It was popular for curtains, cushion, bedcovers and even bought by some customers to make into summer skirts! On a visit to Singapore in the 1990s, we were taken by some friends into the British Club and on the top floor restaurant we were very surprised to find the curtains made in the brown/orange colour of Daisy Chain! There is a vast amount of archive material included in a specially conditioned area for safe keeping at the centre, all of which have been, or are being stored and listed. John Lewis, who started the business in London, had a Rolls-Royce which he had a bell attached to to warn oncoming traffic of his approach but this was soon removed as his chauffeur protested! John Spedan Lewis, who was the Chairman who gave the business to all the Partners, sent many memos and all of these are housed in this purpose built area. There is much more work to be done at the Heritage Centre, in Cookham, including setting up an internet Memory Store archive on which all stores can add their archive material.
This is really where I came in, as I work on the Robert Sayle archive which can be found at www.robert-saylememory-store. continued on page 18
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