Yesterday the Crafty Chat was led by Pippa Lacey, our Vice-Chair, who has recently been to see the 'Costume Couture' exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey.  This celebrates 60 years of the famous costume house CosProp, and documents the foundation of the company by John Bright, as well as displaying an enormous number of famous costumes from films and TV.  We spent a lovely half hour trying to identify outfits from Great Expectations, A Room with a View, Out of Africa, Tess of the D'Urbevilles, Pride and Prejudice and Downton Abbey, amongst many others.  The clothes are sumptuous, and interestingly Pippa explained that with the advent of high-definition television, the detail and making of these costumes has now to be of a higher quality than ever before.  The exhibition is well-worth seeing, and is open until 8th March 2026.

For those interested in film and TV costumes, members also mentioned a good selection at the Bankfield Collection in Halifax, where you can find 'Gentleman Jack' Anne Lister's clothing as well as the famous shirt worn by Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice!

Last Saturday C&TA members gathered for our first in-person event of the year at the Town Close Auditorium at Norwich Castle to hear ex-Chair Joy Evitt deliver a wonderful talk about French fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet.

​Joy has been researching the life and work of Vionnet with great enthusiasm, and clearly feels that although she is not perhaps a household name in the same way as Chanel or Dior, she has been equally influential in her impact on fashion and indeed on social attitudes to the female form, and should be equally well-known.  

 She took us through a detailed outline of Vionnet's career, which started at the age of 11 working for a local dressmaker in Aubervilliers.  Her skill was recognised at an early age and she soon moved on to fashion houses in both England and Paris, spending time working on the lavish embroidery and antique lace favoured by Mme Gerber and her sisters at Callot Soeurs, before being poached from there in 1907 to work for Jacques Douçet.  However, by this time Vionnet, who had already experienced the collapse of an unhappy early marriage and loss of a child, was developing strong feelings about the female form, and refusing to use corsetry in her designs in the way Douçet demanded, she set up her own fashion house in 1912.

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​Vionnet was also very influential in improving the legal rights of fashion designers over their products, making use of clever photography to record her designs and only allowing very few licensed copies to be made of her garments.  This began the establishment of copyright for Haute Couture.  In addition, by launching a collection of 'repeated original' labels in New York in the late 1920s, Vionnet laid the foundations for the creation of quality ready-to-wear clothing.

Joy's admiration for Vionnet was very clear.  The designer's skill was phenomenal: Balenciaga, whom she mentored,  called her 'his master' and her fashion house at 50, Avenue Montaigne was known as 'The Temple of Fashion'.  Designs such as the 'Greek Vase Dress' and the stunning 'Carnival Dress' are now iconic, and her influence on the graphically shaped and draped clothing of modern designers such as Issey Miyake is obvious.  Joy is of the opinion that Madeleine Vionnet should be much more widely fêted, and after hearing her fascinating lecture, we are inclined to agree.

On Tuesday evening this week Sheffield-based fine artist Toni Buckby treated us to a fascinating talk on the beautiful blackwork embroidery of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Blackwork is a particularly skilful type of counted thread embroidery which has been practised for centuries, but had its heyday between 1530 and 1630, when it was particularly fashionable amongst the most wealthy members of the English aristocracy and royalty.  The main reason for its exclusivity was the incredible amount of skilled work involved in creating even smaller items such as coifs (close-fitting caps) and partlets (sleeveless garments covering the neck and shoulders, used to fill in low-cut necklines for modesty or warmth).  These were made from extremely fine linen - sometimes with as many as 80-100 threads per inch.  The embroidery used a wider range of stitches than that commonly found in modern blackwork, and was made with black thread on white, often also incorporating gold.  

​​Toni is an artist and maker with a wealth of practical experience of blackwork, and as well as explaining the changes in fashion and technique that she has documented, she was also able to give detailed insight into the way in which these designs were executed.  She finished with a description of the stunning 'Falkland Waistcoat', a rare extant garment now in the possession of the V&A, which is a particular focus of her research in an attempt to eventually be able to reproduce her own precise copy of it.  Her enthusiasm for this beautifully decorative embroidery shone through her talk, and kept us all enthralled!

if you wish to find out more about Toni's work, join her mailing list from her website here: blackworkembroidery.org 

The C&TA trustees were honoured to be asked by the Forum Trust and American Library in Norwich to help put together a costume display as part of the Silverwings Exhibition mounted in the Forum to mark the 80th anniversary of the 'friendly invasion' of USAF personnel to East Anglian Airfields during WWII.  

The free Exhibition filled the Forum Atrium and Gallery for nine days of special events and thousands of people visited to remember and share stories and recollections of different experiences of wartime Britain.

We also offered visitors the chance to try on WWII outfits, and a collection of Hollywood dressmaking patterns prompted many memories of rationing, and how women would make-do and mend.  The wedding dress in the picture below was made from parachute silk.  Another had images of humpty dumpty woven into the silk, demonstrating the creativity and ability to make something beautiful out of the most unlikely materials and in the toughest circumstances.

It was clear that the exhibition was extremely successful as many people stood and talked about their parents' experiences and remembered their own childhoods.  Whilst for the younger generation seeing photographs, artefacts  and original clothes worn by the young people of the 1940s brought the wartime era sharply into focus and their stories came to life again.

Sunday 14th September 2025

​C&TA ran a busy workshop at Norwich Cathedral as part of the free Heritage Open Days events programme celebrating Norwich Architecture. 

It attracted visitors all ages and abilities who enjoyed embellishing beautifully designed bookmarks with colour and stitches.  

​On Saturday 6th September nearly 200 people gathered in Norwich University of the Arts’ stunning new Duke Street Lecture Theatre to hear the wonderful Patrick Grant from the BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee deliver this year’s Pamela Clabburn Memorial Lecture.
Anyone who is a regular watcher of Sewing Bee will know that Patrick is charming, intelligent and funny, with an extraordinary practical knowledge of tailoring and fashion design based on a career running (amongst other ventures) a Savile Row tailoring business, and designing and making for top brands around the world.  In 2010 he was named the British Fashion Awards Menswear Designer of the Year.  His credentials as a judge for the programme are impeccable. 
But there are those who may know less about his business experience.  He has a degree in Materials Science and Engineering, and an MBA from Oxford. These, combined with his hands-on experience of running a range of successful clothing manufacturing businesses, put him in a unique position to comment on the state of the fashion industry in Britain, and in 2024 he published a book called ‘Less’, which does just that.
Although there were tantalising titbits of Sewing Bee gossip and some celebrity anecdotes to lighten the mood, his message in this talk was a very serious one. 

​He talked eloquently and knowledgeably about how quality has been eroded by changes in the ways clothes are retailed in Britain, separating the maker from the customer as sourcing and production have been moved abroad in a continuous drive to cut costs. He described how the advent of internet shopping has intensified the problem, reducing seasonal fashion trends to daily ‘drops’ of thousands of new garments made as cheaply as possible from environmentally damaging materials.  His main message was that in fact, it is a con of capitalism that has made us always hungry to have more, and that in fact, happiness is not dependent on having a lot of poor quality belongings, but on having a few well-made, high quality items that give us pleasure in their functionality and beauty, as well as bringing dignity to the people who make them.  His experience comes from the textile industry, but his message is a much broader and deeply philosophical one: as the subtitle of his book says, it is how having fewer, better things can make us happier.

​This is serious stuff, and his message is an important one, from a man who clearly feels a strong moral imperative to use his own success and influence for good.  It was so fitting that this was the focus of the Pamela Clabburn lecture; Pamela, the founder of the C&TA and a pioneer in the restoration of historic textiles, certainly understood quality, and she would have approved wholeheartedly of a lecture which encouraged her members to value beautifully made fabric and homegrown craftsmanship.  Many of us left determined to pay even closer attention to the quality and economic and environmental impact of everything we buy, not just our clothes.
The C&TA would once again like to express our heartfelt thanks to Kenneth and Lisa Clabburn and their family, who have been kind enough to fund the annual Pamela Clabburn lecture in memory of Kenneth’s remarkable aunt.  The Clabburn family’s continuing support and patronage of the Association are very much appreciated.

On Tuesday night online members were treated to a fascinating update from Ruth Battersby, Senior Curator, Costume and Textiles at Norfolk Museum Service.  As part of her PhD studies and in preparation for an exhibition to be held at the Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth in 2027, Ruth has been undertaking research on the amazing embroidered letters of Lorina Bulwer.  Lorina  was a resident in the workhouse in Great Yarmouth in the early years of the twentieth century, and while she was there she produced a number of incredible pieces of embroidery.  These are mainly outpourings of her thoughts, memories and emotions in 'stream of consciousness' style stitched texts on a double layer patchwork ground, although she did also produce a few beautiful collaged pictures as well. 

​Earlier this month online members were treated to a fascinating illustrated talk about a truly local textiles project.  Nik Ravenscroft is an experienced teacher and embroiderer, and coordinator of the making of the new ‘Bayeux-style’ narrative hanging which has been commissioned by the Friends of the Norwich Museums as part of the ‘Royal Palace Reborn’ project at Norwich Castle. Over the past few years, with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, a massive project has been taking place to restore the Victorian museum in the castle keep to its original state as a twelfth century palace, complete with furnishings.  In her talk, Nik gave us a wonderful insight into the subject matter of the tapestry and the practical issues her team have had to overcome in creating this amazing artefact.

Nik explained that although we are all aware that the Bayeux tapestry is NOT a tapestry in our sense of the word, but an embroidery, the original French word ‘tapisserie’ referred to any fabric wall covering, or even wallpaper, and that for this reason she does refer to their work as a tapestry.  After stressing the importance of textiles in medieval buildings in evoking a sense of wealth and power, as well as providing warmth and comfort, she asked us to consider the part played by pieces like this in reinforcing the impression of the power held by their owners, and said that this was clear in the choice and slant of the subjects they depicted.  ​.

Nik explained that although we are all aware that the Bayeux tapestry is NOT a tapestry in our sense of the word, but an embroidery, the original French word ‘tapisserie’ referred to any fabric wall covering, or even wallpaper, and that for this reason she does refer to their work as a tapestry.  After stressing the importance of textiles in medieval buildings in evoking a sense of wealth and power, as well as providing warmth and comfort, she asked us to consider the part played by pieces like this in reinforcing the impression of the power held by their owners, and said that this was clear in the choice and slant of the subjects they depicted.  

​The new tapestry at the castle will tell two stories of events in the East of England following the Norman Conquest: that of Hereward the Wake’s uprising, and that of the Revolt of the Three Earls.  Both of these events were rebellions against the new Norman rulers, and both are shown as ending in William I’s victory and assertion of his authority over the East.  Nik said that although there was conflicting evidence about exactly what happened to Hereward after his surrender to William, it had been decided that in a Norman castle, it was certain that an outcome most flattering to the Norman king would have been portrayed! 

Further details of these two stories and beautiful pictures of the scenes from the tapestry linked the events described can be found on the Norwich Castle website here:
A Story in Stitch: Hereward the Wake – Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
A Story in Stitch: The Revolt of the Three Earls – Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
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​Nik then told us in detail about the evolution of the work on the tapestries.  The idea was originally conceived by Tim Pestell, Senior Curator for Archaeology at Norfolk Museums Service, and began in 2017.  It has been undertaken by a team of volunteers, some of whom had little or no previous embroidery experience, and Nik has not only led their training but has also been responsible for researching the materials and approaches to be used.  The team were anxious to keep their work as authentic and accurate as possible, and also to achieve the highest possible standards of needlework.  This has involved a great deal of reading and then practical research, and Nik’s close-up photographs of the numerous samples created in deciding how best to create the tapestry were wonderful; they showed clearly how the evolution of the work was refined by a long process of trial and error.  

​I was particularly impressed by the ways in which such a variety of effects could be created by the thoughtful use of just two basic stitches, as in the Bayeux tapestry.  Nik showed in close detail how the direction of the couching in the Bayeux stitch could be manipulated to create a sense of movement in the body of an animal, or to make a jointed arm look more natural, and this really made me want to return to the detail of the stitching of both the original Bayeux tapestry and the new Norwich work to see how such life has been brought to them.  Nik stressed that although the new tapestry will be adorning the walls in the renovated King’s chamber, numerous digital photographs have been made of it that will be available at ground level to enable visitors to get a really close look at any detail they wish to examine. 

​I think that what has stayed with me from this talk is once again the many ways in which textile projects such as this not only reflect, but also create community.  From the start, this endeavour involved a group of people of vastly differing experience, and brought them together in a joint undertaking that clearly created a strong camaraderie amongst them.  Nik said herself that she was surprised by how quickly working together and sharing their ideas created a uniformity in their stitching that brought the whole piece together very effectively, and it is obvious that their shared hard work and sense of achievement will be something that will stay with them.  They have also made every effort to involve more members of the wider community in their work, taking the tapestry out to be seen and shared at many local events, inviting people to add a stitch or a motif, insisting that museum staff and others involved in the castle project also ‘make their mark’.  And of course, it will soon hang in the King’s Chamber in the Castle Keep, where two stories from our own local history will be seen and recalled again by many people through its medium.  What a very fitting and beautiful way to show and celebrate the way that our lives are interwoven with the past.  I for one cannot wait to see it.

The sun shone on the beautiful conservatory at Carrow House in Norwich for an extra special occasion on Saturday 29th March.  It was incredible to see over 30 magnificent and rare Victorian Shawls, the majority of them made in Norwich, worn again and paraded on the catwalk.  

This event was held as a tribute to C&TA co-founder Helen Hoyte MBE, 2023-2024.  Her family were able to attend and said 'She would have loved it!' And so did the audience.  We were thrilled and very grateful to be able to show so many shawls, all from private collections.  One member, who has traded in antique textiles for over 40 years, described some of the shawls, representing styles from the early to the late nineteenth century as 'breathtaking'. The quality of materials and workmanship highlighted the extraordinary wealth of textile skills of Norwich in the nineteenth century.​