Behind the scenes at the Silver Studio: Rex Silver and the hidden mechanisms of interwar textile design

The Silver Studio produced designs for mass-market wallpapers and textiles between 1880 and around 1960. This paper draws on evidence from the Silver Studio Collection (now at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, Middlesex University), to propose that Silver Studio designs in the interwar period were never the work of one individual but were rather the product of complex negotiations between clients and designers, mediated by Rex Silver. The Studio’s diaries and other records provide an insight into these negotiations and raise questions about the nature of ‘authorship’ in design

Archives, collections and curatorship: Virtual Special Issue for the Journal of Design History, 2019

Design historians frequently find their interest in a particular subject prompted by archival materials, or begin their research with collections of designed objects supported by online databases. While these are the raw materials, the primary sources of the design historian’s work, they are also deserving of attention in their own right. This Virtual Special Issue is comprised of twelve articles drawn from past issues of the Journal of Design History’s Archives, Collections and Curatorship section, drawing out key themes and highlighting ongoing dialogues between academic design historians, curators, librarians and archivists. This Introduction seeks to contextualise these within the wider discipline of design history, and to draw connections to scholarship beyond the Journal of Design History itself. Articles under the first heading look at archives, while articles under the second consider collections of objects. The third section turns to the related challenges of presenting design historical research to public audiences. This Virtual Special issue also offers a reminder that as both the processes and products of design move into the digital sphere, it is pertinent to ask what this means for the ways in which design historians, students, and the general public will engage with design history in future

The Silver Studio art reference collection

This article examines a collection of art portfolios and visual reference books which form part of the Silver Studio Collection. They were acquired as visual reference material, rather than from the compulsion of the connoisseur or bibliophile. This article seeks to unpick their significance within the context of the Silver Studio as a working design practice

Inspiration examined: towards a methodology

How are museum collections used as a source of inspiration by creative practitioners? This article describes a project, Inspiration Examined, funded by Share Academy,which used a narrative research method to critically examine the process of inspiration, using interviews with students carried out at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA). Share Academy was a partnership project between University College London (UCL), University of the Arts London (UAL) and the London Museums Group, with the aim of exploring the potential for more effective and mutually beneficial collaborations between Higher education and specialist London museum

Rex Silver, designer-manager: the Silver Studio and questions of authorship

What does it mean to be the ‘author’ of a design? Commonsense tells us that if something is made by human hand then there must be someone, ideally a named individual, to whom the item can be attributed. But commercial realities and design processes sometimes mean than ‘authorship’ is a problematic concept, with the finished product being the result of a complex interaction between client and designer, not to mention the numerous further interventions in the manufacturing process. This paper will draw on archive evidence from the Silver Studio collection to propose that Silver Studio designs were never simply the work of one individual but were rather the product of complex negotiations between clients and designers, mediated by Rex Silver. The Silver Studio produced designs for mass-market wallpapers and textiles, and between around 1900 and 1960, Rex’s role was to act as an intermediary between his clients (representatives of manufacturing companies) and his employees, ensuring that the latter were briefed to meet the requirements of the former. We can gain an insight into these negotiations through detailed diaries and other records kept by Rex’s secretaries, who themselves played an important but frequently-overlooked role in the working of the business. The paper will also draw on evidence of correspondence between Rex and his clients, to show how he worked to maintain these working relationships, some of which evolved into genuine friendships over the course of his working life. Consideration of the Silver Studio collection necessarily requires a re-consideration of practices of biography within design history, and the purpose of this paper is not to attempt to raise Rex Silver to ‘hero’ status, but rather to draw attention to the inadequacy of this model of historical explanation

That feels like home: connecting sites of lockdown to design collections

This article discusses the response of the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, Middlesex University, to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular the development of the second series of the museum's podcast That Feels Like Home

Handwork rendered expeditious: the Rottmann-Silver stencil venture of the 1890s

This paper will examine a series of stencilled wall coverings produced in the 1890s as a result of collaboration between businessman Alexander Rottmann and designer Arthur Silver. These products were inspired by a collection of around Japanese stencils (‘katagami’), acquired by the Silver Studio as design reference in the 1880s or 90s. The katagami stencils, and archival evidence of the Rottmann-Silver stencil venture, now form part of the Silver Studio Collection at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture. Alexander Rottmann and Arthur Silver had already worked together by the time they set up their joint venture: the Silver Studio had supplied a number of designs to Rottmann for his ‘Japanese leather papers’, made at his factory in Yokohama (Wailliez 2016). As Suga notes, Japanese leather papers represent a kind of hybrid product, perceived as authetically Western by the Japanese, and authentically Japanese by Westerners (Suga 2006). The Rottmann-Silver stencil venture seems to have been an extention of this earlier collaboration, using similar techniques and aimed at a similar market. It therefore represents an interesting example of the dissemination of Japanese design ideas within British homes. The Rottmann-Silver stenciled wallpapers were described in the promotional material as Japanese, though they were almost certainly made in London. However, their selling point was not their typically Japanese appearance; they generally feature large-scale stylized Art Nouveau motifs and were praised for having adapted Japanese techniques for Western tastes. This paper will explore the ways in which Japanese-influenced techniques made certain products more affordable through the use of semi-industrialized processes, and argue that this presented a challenge to Western notions of craft, workmanship, art and labour. It will draw on the evidence of the Rottmann-Silver stencilled wall-coverings themselves, along with archival records and contemporary press cuttings that gives clues to the project’s reception in the late 1890s; and which illuminate wider themes about the influence of Japanese design ideals in the last years of the nineteenth century

‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK, 29 February–18 March and 27 August–25 October 2020

A review of an exhibition about Kimono, held at the V&A museum, 202

Looking back and looking forward: the Silver Studio Collection as heritage asset and educational resource, 1968-2018

The focus of this thesis is the Silver Studio Collection, a body of material that originated as the working contents of a commercial design studio and which is now the focal collection of the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA), at Middlesex University. The Silver Studio opened in 1880 and after it closed as a business in the 1960s its remaining contents were given to Hornsey College of Art, becoming known as the Silver Studio Collection. This thesis considers the ways in which this Collection has been understood and interpreted both as a teaching resource within a Higher Education institution, and as a heritage asset – signified by its incorporation into a ‘museum collection’ - in the fifty years between 1968 and 2018. The contents of the Silver Studio Collection have remained the same over this fifty-year period, but the meanings ascribed to them, and the uses to which they have been put as a learning resource, have continued to evolve. The main body of this thesis is structured around five main chapters, which take a broadly chronological approach to the development of the Silver Studio Collection since the late 1960s. Interspersed between these main chapters are a series of ‘intercalary’ chapters in which I go behind the scenes into the museum store, and which serve as a reminder of the physical stuff that makes up the Silver Studio Collection. These intercalary chapters are a way of reflecting on, and making visible, some of the tacit knowledge that I have accumulated through working with the Collection since 1999, and most recently in the role of Head of Collections since 2011. This question of what it means to know the Silver Studio Collection, and the many ways that the Collection supports learning and research, is an ongoing theme throughout this thesis