Jan Yager, Invasive Species Tiara
The Invasive Species Tiara forms part of Jan Yager’s City Flora/City Flotsam collection – jewellery that has emerged from a study of one city sidewalk in Philadelphia, PA, from 1990 to 2000.
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King James II Spectacles
A fascinating late-eighteenth century letter accompanied these spectacles when they were acquired by the Museum, claiming the case had once belonged to King James II (1633-1701). It also tells us how three times it was presented as a gift to different people.
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Leda & The Hat Pin
The Sculpture Collection is pleased to welcome a new addition to its collection of contemporary art medals - a silver version of Leda and the Hat Pin by Linda Crook, 2003.
More on Leda & The Hat Pin
Men in Skirts
Today, very few men wear skirts. The idea of men in skirts blurs the visual distinctions between the sexes. It contradicts how men are expected to look and, more fundamentally, challenges ideal attributes of male behaviour.
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Sampler
This embroidery, a confession by a young English woman, is unique in the Museum’s collection in its austerity and poignancy. We describe it as a sampler, which was usually a decorative schoolroom exercise in this period of the 19th century, but the laboriousness of Elizabeth Parker’s sampler reveals much more than just her skill in stitching.
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Thai Gold Choker & Matching Earrings
These outstanding examples of modern Thai goldwork were created by two senior master craftsmen and tutors at the Royal College of Goldsmiths in Bangkok.
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Home > Collections > Fashion, Jewellery & Accessories > Objects in the Fashion, Jewellery & Accessories Collections
Objects in the Fashion, Jewellery & Accessories Collections
Leda & The Hat Pin
A New Acquisition for the V&A
The Sculpture collection is pleased to welcome a new addition to its collection of contemporary art medals - a silver version of Leda and the Hat Pin by Linda Crook, 2003. If you can, come and see the medal on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Room 64, Level 2.
More About Leda & The Hat Pin
Linda Crook has rethought the ancient Greek myth about the God Jupiter who changes himself into a swan and makes an unwelcome visit to Leda, wife of the King of Sparta.
The artist has written, ‘I wanted to make a set of three medals around three Greek myths, which I felt needed some reworking. I wanted to free the women in them from the role of “victim”. In Leda and the Hat Pin we see the concluding episode of the story, hitherto unpublished. The swan is unable to escape being made into a fancy hat – which Leda tidies up nicely with a hat pin'.
More About the Artist
Linda Crook is based in London and has exhibited extensively in Britain and abroad. She has work in the collections of the British Museum and The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, having recently completed a portrait medal of Richard Came, the Company’s Prime Warden.
Leda and the Hat Pin by Linda Crook, 2003, back view
Thoughts About Her Medals
‘Medals address the intimate space between the observer and the object, making it legitimate to involve the sense of touch. Just as one can walk round and around sculpture, so it is possible to turn the medal round and around in the hand. It is possible to encapsulate a world of myth or dream or poetry in one small object. I shall continue to produce medals because of the endless fascination and challenge to be found in their making’.
Linda Crook, 2003
‘Linda Crook is a figurative artist combining imagination with personal experience. She refers to a wide cultural vocabulary from Giotto to Brancusi. Her love of irony and the ambiguities of language follow a great English tradition.’
Professor Ronald Pennell, medallist, glass and gem engraver. 1997
For more information, please contact either Linda Crook at Linda@crook.fslife.co.uk or Wendy Fisher at w.fisher@vam.ac.uk. See also the website of the British Art Medal Society for more contemporary medals.
Leda & The Hat Pin
A New Acquisition for the V&A
The Sculpture collection is pleased to welcome a new addition to its collection of contemporary art medals - a silver version of Leda and the Hat Pin by Linda Crook, 2003. If you can, come and see the medal on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Room 64, Level 2.
More About Leda & The Hat Pin
Linda Crook has rethought the ancient Greek myth about the God Jupiter who changes himself into a swan and makes an unwelcome visit to Leda, wife of the King of Sparta.
The artist has written, ‘I wanted to make a set of three medals around three Greek myths, which I felt needed some reworking. I wanted to free the women in them from the role of “victim”. In Leda and the Hat Pin we see the concluding episode of the story, hitherto unpublished. The swan is unable to escape being made into a fancy hat – which Leda tidies up nicely with a hat pin'.
More About the Artist
Linda Crook is based in London and has exhibited extensively in Britain and abroad. She has work in the collections of the British Museum and The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, having recently completed a portrait medal of Richard Came, the Company’s Prime Warden.
Leda and the Hat Pin by Linda Crook, 2003, back view
Thoughts About Her Medals
‘Medals address the intimate space between the observer and the object, making it legitimate to involve the sense of touch. Just as one can walk round and around sculpture, so it is possible to turn the medal round and around in the hand. It is possible to encapsulate a world of myth or dream or poetry in one small object. I shall continue to produce medals because of the endless fascination and challenge to be found in their making’.
Linda Crook, 2003
‘Linda Crook is a figurative artist combining imagination with personal experience. She refers to a wide cultural vocabulary from Giotto to Brancusi. Her love of irony and the ambiguities of language follow a great English tradition.’
Professor Ronald Pennell, medallist, glass and gem engraver. 1997
For more information, please contact either Linda Crook at Linda@crook.fslife.co.uk or Wendy Fisher at w.fisher@vam.ac.uk. See also the website of the British Art Medal Society for more contemporary medals.
Men in Skirts
Today, very few men wear skirts. While it is permissible for women to wear trousers, if a man wears a skirt in public he risks ridicule. Associated as they are with women’s clothing, skirts have become potent symbols of femininity. The idea of men in skirts blurs the visual distinctions between the sexes. It contradicts how men are expected to look and, more fundamentally, challenges ideal attributes of male behaviour. A man in a skirt is not only perceived as looking feminine but being feminine.
In the West, men have not always worn trousers. It was with the evolution of tailoring from the 14th century that bifurcated garments gradually became associated with men’s dress and masculinity. Previously, both men and women wore draped or unshaped garments and tunics. As men’s tunics became shorter and tighter-fitting in the 15th century, fashionable men began to wear hose or stockings as outer leg wear. By the 16th century they had adopted breeches and by the early 19th century trousers. Long gowns and full-skirted coats, however, remained part of fashionable men’s wardrobes until the early 20th century.
Since the 1960s, several designers have attempted to re-introduce the skirt as an acceptable form of male attire. Frequently borrowing styles from other times and cultures, these designers have invented and re-invented the ‘skirt for men’. In some instances, counter-cultural groups, such as hippies, punks and new romantics, adopted their designs as a symbol of anarchy.
Skirts have also been worn by gay men as a sign of their alternative lifestyle. More recently, other men have begun to wear them as a fashion statement, often endorsed by pop, film and sporting personalities. In the mid-1990s, the footballer David Beckham was photographed in a Jean-Paul Gaultier version of a sarong.
With the exception of the Scottish kilt, men have been reluctant to wear skirted garments. Their adoption by the general male populace will ultimately depend on the re-evaluation of traditional gender conventions. But, through the work of contemporary designers, the idea of ‘men in skirts’ is constantly given new impetus.
King James II Spectacles
A fascinating late-18th-century letter accompanied these spectacles when they were acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum, claiming the case had once belonged to James II (1633-1701). It tells us how the object was passed as a gift from person to person, ending with the writer of the letter.
The letter explains that the case had been in the possession of James II's son, but it does not say how he got it. Catholic James II was on the throne of England for only three years before he was forced to abdicate in favour of Protestant William of Orange in 1688. His son, also called James, consequently lived from infancy in exile in Europe. Known as the Pretender, James tried to seize the English crown in 1715 but failed. He spent most of the rest of his life in Rome where he died in 1766.
One of his followers and part of his court in Rome, Colonel John Hay of Cromling, was married to a Mrs Margery Murray. According to the letter, the Pretender gave the case to her, 'with whom he lived upon the most intimate of terms', implying she was his mistress. For his loyalty the Pretender gave Colonel Hay the title of Earl of Inverness.
The letter tells us that after Colonel Hay’s death 'Mrs Murray, alias Mrs Hay, alias Lady Inverness' lived in Avignon in the south of France, where she was visited in 1756 by Viscountess Dow Primrose. Mrs Hay gave the case to the Viscountess, who in 1770 gave it to her 'Faithful and Dutyful Servant' William Walker, the writer of the letter.
The letter is written in an 18th-century style of handwriting, and the piece of paper has a watermark we can date between 1780 and 1809. William Walker takes the story of the case up to 1770, so he could have written the letter. However, it is more difficult to prove the contents of the letter, leaving us with the tantalising question, ‘were these really James II spectacles?'
Stylistically it is possible James II could have owned the case, but this style of spectacles, known as 'pince nez', is not known before the middle of the 18th century. Notably, William Walker only refers to the case, not the spectacles inside them. It is probable, therefore, that the spectacles were added to the case sometime after he wrote his letter, and were never worn by a king.
Jan Yager, Invasive Species Tiara
The Invasive Species Tiara at the Victoria and Albert Museum forms part of Jan Yager’s City Flora/City Flotsam collection – jewellery that has emerged from a study of one city sidewalk in Philadelphia, PA, from 1990 to 2000.
Between 1990 and 2000, American jeweller Jan Yager created a unique body of work which used the sidewalks around her studio in Pennsylvania as a starting-point for an investigation of contemporary urban surroundings. Yager began beachcombing – collecting the detritus of the street: pen tops, paper clips, buttons, cigarette butts, spent cartridge casings, and crack vials and syringes – objects that were 'undeniably identifiable to this time and place' (Jan Yager). The City Flotsam pieces she created from them draw on the device of the 'trouvaille', or found object, which has been a key constituent of 20th-century art and craft since André Breton.
Yet these intimate objects of adornment are also 'memory devices', linking one sidewalk to a whole area, and one city to the histories that1 have shaped the contemporary landscape. Yager’s jewellery includes self-conscious historical references to the politics of trade and imperialism, the indigenous population of North America and today’s contemporary social structures. An example is the American Ruff. It is shaped like the collars of wealthy Northern European merchants in the 16th and early 17th centuries, whose ships circulated between Europe, Africa and the New World transporting goods, colonists and slaves. In contrast, the two dimes mounted on the ruff were minted in Philadelphia. Together, these historical references play against the crack vials that represent trade and mercantile activity on the streets of Philadelphia today.
Jan Yager created the City Flora series partly as an antidote to her stressful urban investigations. These metalworked floral pieces are portraits of nature’s survival in the urban environment. The Invasive Species Tiara is based on different wild flowers that grow in an abandoned lot across the road from Yager’s studio. The presence of prickly lettuce, plantain, clover, grasses and chicory in the city, growing through cracks in the concrete sidewalk or in abandoned spaces that are returning to prairie, shows the resilient strength of the natural world. At the same time, however, the urban landscape leaves its mark on these plants – and Yager represents this through the tyre-tread patterns which mark some of the leaves. She describes this as 'a kind of modern geometry'.
fashion
Fashion Museum, Fashion Research Centre
Collections include photographs from the 19th century onwards, records of couture houses, knitting and dress-making patterns and the Sunday Times Fashion Archive. Situated in Bath, the Fashion Research Centre is an extension of the Fashion Museum housed nearby. The Centre provides study and research facilities for students and members of the public.
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The University of the Arts
The London College of Fashion library holds Clothing & Footwear Institute Archive and rare materials such as artworks and ephemera related to fashionReference access is allowed for non-London Institute students and researchers: visitors must phone in advance to make an appointment to use the library.
The Central St Martins library holds Fashion Files, covering designers and other specific areas of fashion at the Charing Cross Road site. Written permission is required before visiting.
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Winchester School of Art, Library
It holds knitting and sewing patterns, the Design History Collection and the Textile Conservation Library (a collection of books, specialist journals and student dissertations).The Library is open to visitors, who must phone in advance to make an appointment.
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Leeds City Libraries, Art Library
The library holds the Sanderson Collection, a special collection of mainly 19th-century fashion plates.
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Publications Lectures Symposiums
This is the catalogue from the exhibition '6+. Antwerp Fashion in the Flemish Parliament'. It has been edited by Ludion and is available in Dutch and English, with contributions from Cathy Horyn, prof. dr. Barbara Vinken and Caroline Evans, among others.
ISBN 978-90-5544-659
www.momu.be
Catalogue Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp : Class of 2007
The 14 students of the final year fashion design made a catalogue together with Chris Gillis, Paul Boudens, Ronald Stoops and Sarah van Marcke.
The catalogue and dvd from the show can be ordered by Copyright Bookshop, Antwerp.
www.modenatie.com
Modebuch
Contemporary Fashion from Austria
Idiosyncratic, closely tied to the artistic avant-garde, incorporating a large dose of intellectual introspection coupled with meticulous craftsmanship – this is contemporary fashion made in Austria. With this book, Unit F büro für mode has aimed to give an impression of the complexity of Austrian fashion creation since the 80’s, and to document the national and international networks that develop in the fashion system. The book will be distributed throughout Europe beginning end of September.
ISBN-10: 3-9502225-0-2
ISBN-13: 978-3-9502225-0-0
www.unit-f.at/publications
A Magazine #5
After Martin Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, Haider Ackermann and Undercover's Jun Takahashi, the next curator is Martine Sitbon!
www.modenatie.com
_fabrics interseason protocol
Published by _fabrics interseason Wally Salner, Johannes Schweiger.
This reader on Viennese design label _fabrics interseason gives a comprehensive overview of past and current activities (collections, art, exhibitions, music) with a lot of images & text as well as with a cultural-theoretical discourse on socio-political phenomena in the context of art, design and fashion.
Distributed by Vice Versa from October 2006 on.
ISBN-10: 3-200-00753-2
ISBN-13: 978-3-200-00753-6
www.vice-versa-vertrieb.de
Mode in Nederland (Fashion in the Netherlands)
A history of fashion development in the Netherlands.
By José Teunissen. Published by Terra.
ISBN: 90-5897-468-5
www.terralannoo.nl
Bless Book
Celebrating 10 Years of Themelessness N°00-N°29
Published by Sternberg Press
www.sternberg-press.com
www.bless-service.de