The Fund organises a series of one- and two-day conferences (generally in collaboration with other bodies)..
If you have ideas for future conference themes which might be developed in collaboration with the Fund do please contact Pat Hudson: HudsonP@Cardiff.ac.uk

The most recent Pasold conference wasl held in January 2008 in collaboration with University College, London. As always with Pasold Conferences, the aim was to facilitate critical dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and between academic and other practitioners, particularly those from archive, museum and conservation fields.Until now, studies of contemporary clothing and textiles have focussed on adults and ‘youth’, while studies of children’s wear have concentrated on the Victorian and earlier eras. This was the first conference to examine the twentieth century – a period of unprecedented social, economic and technological change – through the material culture of childhood. A mjor question behind the conference was: What do children’s clothes and textiles, the fortunes of the industry and companies that produced them, and the childhoods they fashioned say about society in our time?

2008 PASOLD CONFERENCE

CLOTHING CHILDHOOD, FASHIONING SOCIETY:

CHILDREN’S CLOTHING IN BRITAIN IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Thursday 17th-Friday 18th  January 2008

The Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ

9:30 am-5:30pm Thursday,  9:45 am-4:30 pm Friday

Conference contact Dr Kaori O’Connor  email: k.o’connor@ucl.ac.uk

THURSDAY  17th January

9.30 to 10 am  Registration and coffee

Introduction: Professor Pat Hudson

10- 10.45

Keynote Speaker:Fashion for Whom? Display, Ambiguity and the Performing Child

Professor Daniel Thomas Cook (Rutgers-Camden University, USA)

10.45-11 Coffee break

11- 12.45

Session 1, Design, Marketing and Gender

Chair: Pat Hudson

Dr Clare Rose (University of Brighton): Democratic Design and Edwardian Children’s Clothing

Dr Katrina Honeyman  (University of Leeds): Suits for the Boys: The Leeds Multiple Tailors and the Making of Boy’s Wear 1900-1940

Alison Carter (Hampshire County Council Museums and Archives): From the Liberty Bodice to the 28AA Bra:  Revealing Stories in the Girls’ ‘Underwear Department’, 1908-2000

1pm to 2pm Lunch

2- 4pm

Session 2, The Business of Children’s Wear

Chair: David Jenkins

Professor Stanley Chapman (University of Nottingham):Pasolds Limited, 1930-1970: The Strategies of the Leading British Manufacturer of Children’s Wear

Dr Kaori O’Connor (University College London): Ladybird: Cultural Icons  and the ‘Golden Age’ of British Childhood

Dr Bramwell Rudd  (Formerly with Courtaulds Textiles Plc): Manufacturing and Distributing Children’s Wear in a Changing Retail Scene, 1970-2000.

4pm to 4.20 Tea break

4.20 to 5.30

Session 3,  Knitting and childhood

Chair: Kaori O’Connor

Professor Sandy Black  (Prof of Fashion & Textiles Design & Technology, London College of Fashion):Home Knitting for Children: Fashioned with Love

Ann Wise  (Warner Textile Archive): Knitting for Janet and John: 1920-1960

6pm to 8pm

Pasold Reception  (Wine and Canapés)

FRIDAY  19th January

9.45am Arrival and coffee

10.00-11.15

Session 4, Home Made Clothing

Chair: Barbara Burman

Dr Mary Clare Martin (University of Greenwich), Class, Childhood and Clothing: Puritanism, Pleasure and Home Production in Professional  Families, 1900-1975

Anna Konig (London College of Fashion:Home-made Children’s Clothing since 1945: From Items of Necessity to Objects of Desire.

11.15 to 11.30  Coffee

11.30 to 12.50

Session 5, Promoting Children’s Clothing

Chair: Dr Negley Harte

Noreen Marshall (V&A Museum of Childhood): Bargains for the Kiddies: Children’s Clothing from Selfridges Bargain Basement, 1925-1935

Dr Hilary Young (University of Manchester): Clothes and the Modern Boy and Girl: Fashion Pages in Girl and theBoy's Own Paper in the 1950s and 1960s

Paul Seaton  (Woolworths and Ladybird Archivist, and author of the Woolworths Virtual Museum): Chinese Whispers: Long Life and Igloos to the Eskimos

12.50-1.45pm Lunch

1.45-3.00pm

Session 6 Designer children

Chair: Noreen Marshall

Pennie Alfrey (University of Loughborough): Little Devils Wear Denim: Fabricating Childhood

Annebella Pollen (London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London): Mass-produced Dressing Up Costumes and the Commodification of the Imagination

Professor Alison J. Clarke (University of Applied Arts, Vienna: Brand Values: Clothing the Second-Hand Designer Child in the late 20th Century

3-3.15 Tea

3.15-4pm

Session 7:  Pointers to sources and future research

Panel and Discussion

Hilary Davidson  (Museum of London:The Children's Clothing Collections at the Museum of London

Aude Le Guennec (Cholet Museum): The Textile Museum, Cholet, France and their Children's  Clothing Project

Katherine Baird (Manager of Archives and Special Collections, London College of Fashion: The Emap Archive, the Woolmark Archive and other Resources at theLondon College of Fashion

In 2009-10 conferences will be held on on Textiles and Health and on Textile retailing and distribution. Plans are also being developed for a conference on the links between the natural and the social history of textiles. These will be publicised shortly on this website.

The 2006 PASOLD CONFERENCE was on the theme:
Textiles for Interiors : Furnishing the Home from the Renaissance to Inter-War Britain
Date 6 May 2006
Venue : The Victoria and Albert Museum
Organisers : Professor Chris Breward and Miss Clare Browne

This one day symposium was organised by the Victoria & Albert Museum, in partnership with the Pasold Research Fund. The programme was developed by Chris Breward, Deputy Head of Research and Clare Browne, Curator of Furnishing, Textiles and Fashion both of the V & A. Their choice of six speakers provided an exceptional programme of varied and stimulating insightful papers, that explored the production, distribution, consumption and culture of household textiles from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

 

Giorgio Riello ( London School of Economics) presented a paper on ‘The Material Culture of Textiles and the Life of the Home in Early Modern Europe’. This combined exceptional picture research and multidisciplinary approaches. He traced the relationship between textiles, textile objects and our understanding of images of the household. The wide ranging study captured the shifting nature of material culture as a reflection of wealth and taste through time and space.

 

Tricia Allerston (National Galleries of Scotland) presented on the subject: ‘Renting Furnishings for the Venetian Renaissance Home- Typical Behaviour’. She interpreted the considerable level and variety of rented furnishings in Venice in the 17th century using the records of Jewish rental merchants. She showed that the considerable level of commercial activity around rental reflected cultural attitudes toward textiles. Textiles were a symbol of wealth and prestige and, by looking at what visitors to Venice chose to rent much was revealed about attitudes to furnishings and to the importance of household presentation.

 

David Mitchell (London) spoke on ‘Colour preference in English furnishings’ in the early modern period. He compared changing fashions in bed and wall hangings to examine the influence of colour and its reflection in furnishing fashions over time. Drawing upon probate inventories, David Mitchell’s detailed analysis by value, and by fabric type and colour revealed much about the meaning of, and reaction to, colour and changes in dyeing fashion and technology.

 

Margaret Ponsonby, (University of Wolverhampton) presented a paper covering ‘Making the Home, 1750-1850: Textiles in use, Display and Storage’. She focused on urban and rural households in the West Midlands. The paper considered window and bed curtains in particular and showed showed how textiles recorded in inventories were very much a reflection of the changing priorities of domesticity.

 

Mary Brooks, (Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton)spoke on ‘Conservation and Context: Insights into a Chippendale Bed Cornice’. This paper gave an unusual insight into the way in which revelations from the conservation process can facilitate an understanding of the cultural context of textiles. The piece of bed cornice in question came from Harewood House in Yorkshire. Mary Brooks showed the way in which conservation analysis and archival research altered the understanding of the biography of the object and the design of home furnishings.

 

Sarah Cheang's paper on ‘Dragons in the Drawing Room: Chinese Embroideries in British Homes, 1860-1940’ showed how embroideries from Chinese clothing were sold through department stores to adorn household furnishings. Her study demonstrated how this practice projected narratives of colonial conquest into homes. A major source was her study of the furnishings at Quex House in Kent.

 

A wide range of common themes emerged from the symposium including the interplay between material objects, culture and consumption, the importance of visual images in understanding the shifting position of textiles in daily life, and the relationship between economic, social and historical forces in understanding textile design. This excellent day also highlighted the importance of multidisciplinary symposia of this kind where textile conservators, museum curators and academic historians can share a range of perspectives on a carefully specified theme.

 

A particularly valuable element of the conference was the three lunch time break- out sessions. These introduced the visual database of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Centre, the Museum’s Word and Image Study, and the Textile Store of the V & A.
The session on the visual database of the AHRC Centre for the Study of the Domestic Interior (co-hosted by the V&A, the Royal College of Art and Royal Holloway) was led by Liz Miller, Flora Dennis and James Hall. Delegates were offered an overview of the way that the database had been researched and constructed and advice on how its content might be used by researchers in the field of textile history.
 

The sessions on the Museum's Word and Image Study Room,  led by Mor Thunder, and Textiles Store, led by Clare Browne, gave delegates a chance to view examples of textiles, and textile designs, relating to the  day's papers. These ranged from Renaissance Italian lace pattern books, and designs for printed cotton furnishings by the late 18th century pattern-drawer William Kilburn, to 17th century bed valances of 'wrought dimity', and Norwich worsted furnishing damasks.

 

 

Other recent conferences have included :

April 1998
Linen in Europe, Lisburn

March 1999,

The Legacy of Hosiery, in collaboration with Leicester City Museum Service.

March 2000

Textile Mill Building and Architecture in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Masson Mill, Matlock Bath

October 2001,

Textiles and the Arts and Crafts Movment, Centre for North West Regional Studies, Lancaster University

April 2002

Textile Matters: Object Based Research. The Contribution of Conservation to Textile History and Research, Textile Conservation Centre, Winchester Campus, University of Southampton

September 2003

Clothing for Extremes, jointly sponsored by KIMMlite and organised in collaboration with Mountain Heritage Trust.

October 2004

Business Networks in Textile Industrial Districts, University of Nottingham, International Business History Institute