Museums at Home
​Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Norwich
Norfolk Museums Service

New exhibition
​23 October 2021 – 20 February 2022

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.”
 
Cllr. Margaret Dewsbury, Cabinet Member for Communities, Norfolk County Council says: “This exhibition is a wonderful reminder of the importance of stitching and quilting to our artistic heritage and mental wellbeing, both now and in the past. It is also a celebration of quite extraordinary skill which visitors are sure to relish. Norwich Castle has an internationally important Costume and Textile collection and it’s wonderful to see some its treasures take centre stage.”
 
The exhibition is sponsored by the Costume & Textile Association which supports and promotes Norwich Castle’s internationally important collection: “The Costume and Textile Association are very proud to be supporting Textile Treasures which will showcase some of the wonderful items in the museum’s collection. Our members are delighted that after the difficult past 18 months of lockdowns and restrictions this exhibition will feature many textiles that the C&TA have been able to purchase for the museum in the past or have made a contribution towards their conservation. It will also be wonderful to see textiles that have both local connections and stories to tell which touch on our recent collective experience. Our thanks must go to Ruth Battersby Tooke and all those involved.”
 
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 Margaretta 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 post-war ‘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 Bellamy Quilt is also the result of collaborative work, this time between a couple, Charlotte Alice Springall and Herbert Bellamy who lived in Great Yarmouth and created this exuberant piece during their engagement in 1890-91. In contrast to the abstract patchwork designs elsewhere in the exhibition, this quilt demonstrates the art of the scrapbook quilt. The motifs are a dizzying mixture of popular culture references, local sights, everyday domestic items, and personal references, giving us a vivid insight into their relationship.
 
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.
 
Bringing us right up to date, the amazing Coronaquilt is on display, another example of the resilience of collaboration and 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.
 
While representing a huge variety of techniques and purposes, the items on display in Textile Treasures communicate a common delight in texture and pattern, and a shared inventiveness in their creators’ approaches to whatever materials were available to them, whether purchased specifically at great cost or recycled from salvaged remnants.
 
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.

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VISITING INFORMATION:
How to Book:
Admission to the exhibition is included in general admission to the Castle. It’s best to book tickets in advance as visitor numbers are limited:
https://norfolk-museums.arttickets.org.uk/norwich-castle-museum-art-gallery/Norwich%20Castle%20Admission
Please check the Norwich Castle website for further information, including the measures that have been put in place to keep you safe and which areas of the Castle are open to the public: www.norfolk.museums.gov.uk

Time and Tide BlogTime & Tide Museum have launched the Great Yarmouth Museums blog where you can read about John Ives, the ‘original curator’, hear from Chair of Yarmouth & Waveney Pride about their recent donation of a t-shirt from the first ever pride event in Great Yarmouth, and much more.

Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse - Tails from the Farm!If you are missing the great outdoors (and who isn’t) take a look at the Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse social media posts. The site is closed but essential work continues to make sure the animals are fed, happy and healthy and staff are sharing photos of some of our farmyard friends taken during their daily rounds.

Recreating art in your own home

#TussenKunstenQuarataine
If you’ve been anywhere near social media in the last few weeks you’ll be hard pushed to have missed the amazing #TussenKunstenQuarataine (between art and quarantine).  

​If you have missed out, take a look, people everywhere are re-creating works of art in their homes with costumes and props and a lot of loo roll!  If you’d like to re-create anything from the Norfolk Museums collections you can find our images here – and we’d love to see the results, so please @ us in!