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24 September 2018

Textiles come in all shapes and sizes at the British Library

As part of London Fashion Week Nabil Nayal hosted his presentation at the British Library on Tuesday 18 September. He is an advocate of ‘research in fashion education and practice’ and has used the collections at the British Library extensively. The image below shows how he used Elizabeth I’s famous Tilbury Speech as inspiration for one of his printed textiles.

A photograph of an presentation held at the British Library. Two models, one seated in a white dress, and one standing behind her, who is wearing a gossamer-like material, which has text printed on it, in the form of a old letter from Elizabeth I. The Model, slightly side-on to camera, has flung her arm out, the image capturing the cape-like material around her arm billowing out to the side. The Kings library tower can be seen in the background.www.nabilnayal.com

The Library Collections are diverse and complex, representing many cultures and comprises of published, written and digital content together with letters photographs, paintings, newspapers, sound recordings, videos, objects and textiles.

Textiles are found in all curatorial divisions: Contemporary British; Western Heritage, European and American and most widely in the Asia and African collections. As textile conservator, I have chosen a few of the most beautiful and inspirational objects.

A book jacket lying flat on a white plastazote, on a grey table. The Book jacket is red velvet, with gold thread edging. The front and verso of the jacket is the Prince of Wales crown of three Ostrich feathers, done in seed pearls, with some missing. The crowns are framed by a thick border of flowers in silver thread.
Royal MS 12C VIII 1 – Chemise book jacket with the badge and motto of Prince Henry Frederick (1594-1612): red velvet, silver and gold metal thread and seed pearls.

See the item online here. 

A Large folio opened out, of blue pages with red Chinese calligraphy neatly running down both pages in silk. The pages are thinly bordered in white material.
Or 1234 – Manuscript with blue silk pages and red silk embroidery.

Qianlong's Ten Victories: chronicle of ten successful campaigns conducted by the Emperor in 1790. The author is the Emperor himself, and the manuscript contains the Emperor’s own handwriting embroidered on silk.

Explore and learn more about this item here.

A large square silk brocade bag, with twin thin golden twine handles, ending in gold oak leaf bunches. The silk bag is deocrated with a central flower in pink, green and white, surrounded in a vaguely circular patter by large curling leaves, which in themselves are superimposed by small bunches of flowers in purple and pink, with green leaves. The background colour of the bag is a olive green in horizontal lines.
MSS EUR G59 – Large ceremonial, silk brocade bag which housed an ‘Ornamental Letter of Credence, dated 27 Oct 1835, from `Louis Philippe Empereur des Francais' (1773-1850) to Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), ruler of the Punjab 1792-1839’.

Explore and learn more about this item here.

Unfortunately, the above items are all restricted due to their fragile and rare status. Letters of introduction can be written to the curators to request permission to view restricted items.

LIZ ROSE, Textile conservator

Posted by BL Collection Care at 1:09 PM

Tags

Conservation, Digitisation, Fashion, Materials, Textiles

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