The Silver Studio was a commercial design practice, founded by Arthur Silver in 1880. Between 1880 and 1963, the Studio completed more than 20,000 schemes for furnishing fabrics, wallpapers, tablecloths, rugs and carpets. Silver Studio designs were sold to a range of manufacturers around Britain and abroad, often becoming anonymised in the process. After it closed, the contents of the Silver Studio -artwork, record books, photographs, correspondence and so on - were given to Hornsey College of Art, which became part of what is now Middlesex University. This material is now the focal collection of the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA), Middlesex University. In 2008, the Silver Studio Collection was awarded Designated Status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), in recognition of its quality and importance as a national resource. The Designation Scheme identifies the pre-eminent collections of national and international importance held in England's non-national museums, libraries and archives, based on their quality and significance.
This article looks at the Silvern Series, a set of photographs of items from the South Kensington Museum’s collections. The Series was created and published by Arthur Silver in 1889 and was intended as a source of inspiration for textile manufacturers. Arthur Silver was a commercial pattern designer who founded his own design company (the Silver Studio) in 1880. The Silver Studio was a key producer of designs for wallpapers and textiles for manufacturers and retailers around Britain and abroad, from 1880 until the 1960s.
This article draws on evidence from the Silver Studio Collection, now part of the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Middlesex University.
‘You are quite sure this suit is all right, Bunter?’ said Lord Peter anxiously. It was an easy lounge suit, tweedy in texture, and a trifle more pronounced in colour and pattern than Wimsey usually permitted himself. While not unsuitable for town wear, it yet diffused a faint suggestion of hills and the sea. ‘I want to look approachable’, he went on, ‘but on no account loud. I can’t help wondering whether that stripe of invisible green wouldn’t have looked better if it had been a remote purple’. This suggestion seemed to disconcert Bunter. There was a pause while he visualised a remote purple stripe. At length, however, the palpitating balance of his mind seemed to settle definitely down. ‘No, my lord,’ he said firmly. ‘I do not think purple would be an improvement. Interesting—yes; but, if I may so express myself, decidedly less affable’. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy L Sayers (1928)
Gardens are a vital part of what defines the suburban landscape. Gardened spaces between the houses, roads and stations help define the suburb as ‘suburban’ – at the heart of which is the private garden, at both the front and back of the dwelling.
This exhibition considered the significance of gardens and gardening in the making of what has become the most ‘English’ of landscape environments. The first part looked at the evolution of the landscape as a whole, including the development of public open spaces. It suggested that despite subsequent infilling and densification, the landscape had largely acquired its character by the Second World War.
Although increasingly at risk of development, private gardens still make up a large part of the suburban landscape and gardening remains one of the nation’s consuming passions. The second part of the exhibition argued that the private uses of the suburban garden are intimately linked to the shared values of the larger public landscape.
This edited volume brings together international scholars to address the nature of tie in relation to crafts, design and architecture, in both historical and contemporary contexts. The contributors consider design practices in which time is key, the nature of memory and forgetting in relation to design, and the design of things that depend upon the passing of time, such as heritage and the archive.
The Victoria and Albert Museum’s ‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’ was an example of the very best kind of museum exhibition, bringing together a fabulous selection of objects and using them to tell a fas...
In 1893, Princess Mary of Teck married the future George V wearing a wedding dress that was entirely designed, woven, and made in Britain. The silk was designed by Arthur Silver, the founder of the Silver Studio in Brook Green, Hammersmith, and woven by Warner & Sons in Spitalfields, London. Over the interceding century, the story of the design and manufacture of this patriotically produced royal wedding dress has been fractured across three institutions: the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture at Middlesex University (home to the Silver Studio Collection), the Warner Textile Archive, and the Royal Collection's Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, which is cared for by Historic Royal Palaces. This chapter draws on both design history and heritage methodologies to ask whether it would be possible to interpret the dress in a public exhibition setting as anything other than a part of 'authorised heritage discourse'.
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