The members who 'gathered' virtually on the 17th March had another lovely meeting chatting about recent makes and experiences.  Jenny Fletcher had recently been to visit Dennis Severs' house in Spitalfields, London, and explained the history of the creation of this amazing 'still life drama', and talked about the impact it had on her.  In the 1960s, when eighteenth century houses in Spitalfields were crumbling and derelict, American Dennis Severs bought a house formerly occupied by Huguenot silk merchants, and he and his partner began a thirty year restoration of the house as it might have been during the 18th and 19th centuries.  They collected, begged, borrowed or made everything in the house, living in it themselves as they created scenes from the lives of five generations of the imaginary Jervase family, who were themselves silk weavers.  The result is an extraordinary building - it still has no electrical lighting or appliances in the rooms, no heating other than open fires, and no running water; clocks tick, fires crackle, there are scones baking in the kitchen, the remnants of food on the plates, and a pair of muddy leather boots by the stove.  Severs left messages for his visitors that explain that the occupants of the rooms 'have just stepped out for a minute', and stress that 'the most important thing is what is happening between the surface of your eye and the objects that you see'.  Jenny felt that it was the most vivid experience of an historical atmosphere she had ever had, and was fascinated both by being placed in the role of a 'visitor' in the past, and by the questions the house raises about conservation.  For costume and textile enthusiasts, the house abounds with beautiful fabrics, both clothing and soft furnishings, but be warned - these are used, worn objects hung over doors, squashed into sofas, eaten threadbare by mice - it is not a perfect and pristine museum, but reflects life as it very well might have been lived by a family not always flush with money.

This led to some lively discussion about the preservation of the past and obsession with the new and the perfect - our crafty chatters are often a philosophical lot!

For those interested in visiting Dennis Severs' house, at 18, Folgate St., you can find more information here - the experience came highly recommended.  https://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/
​And for textile enthusiasts, look out for the blue plaque telling you that the famous eighteenth century silk designed Anna Maria Garthwaite lived in the house next door!

​This led to some lively discussion about the preservation of the past and obsession with the new and the perfect - our crafty chatters are often a philosophical lot!

For those interested in visiting Dennis Severs' house, at 18, Folgate St., you can find more information here - the experience came highly recommended.  https://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/
​And for textile enthusiasts, look out for the blue plaque telling you that the famous eighteenth century silk designed Anna Maria Garthwaite lived in the house next door!

On the 14th March a large group of members gathered at The Costessey Centre to hear a very interesting talk by John Miners.

John grew up in a textiles family in Halstead, Essex, where his father Peter, like many members of the community, worked at the Courtaulds mill.  Courtaulds had been an incredibly successful company during the nineteenth century, producing high quality silks and later, black silk mourning crepe.  In the early twentieth century they were one of the first companies to investigate the use of artificial fibres such as viscose, and when John himself joined the company on leaving school, the Halstead works was one of three thriving Essex sites belonging to one of the world's largest textile manufacturers.

​In a world where reproductions of historic designs are now so popular, it is easy to imagine that these fabrics were perhaps ahead of their time.  Our members were certainly delighted to see them up close and spent a wonderful half hour examining the fabrics in detail and choosing their favourites!  John is the custodian of an impressive archive of samples, some of which never went into production, and it was a real privilege to be allowed to share them with him.

Julia also told us about her historical costume making: she is a member of the Sutton Hoo Interpretation Textile Group in Suffolk, and volunteers regularly with the Textiles Team there, modelling Anglo-Saxon clothes that they have made themselves and helping visitors to understand more about the daily life of Anglo-Saxon people.  She showed us the dress that she has made from nettle fibre and linen, decorated with beautiful embroidery, and it really inspired us all to visit the wonderful museum at Sutton Hoo to see both the site of the ship burial there and also the full size re-creation of the original ship which is currently taking place in nearby Woodbridge.

There was lots of other chat too - we admired Jane's sheep bunting (yes, bunting made of tiny sheep!) and Jackie's beautiful dragon quilt, and also heard about the UNESCO-backed initiative called 'Living Heritage in the UK'.  This is a government supported project to record and preserve 'intangible' aspects of heritage in the UK, and covers many arts and crafts.  Further details can be found on their website at ​https://livingheritage.unesco.org.uk/ ​

On Tuesday 10th February members from places as far flung as Munich and San Francisco, as well as many from the UK, gathered online to hear a fascinating talk by Jessica Gasson, a Teaching Fellow at the Courtauld Institute.  As part of her PhD Jessica is studying an unusual and, until now, almost unexplored collection of more than 1000 textile fragments from the Courtauld Library.  These mainly Spanish religious artefacts were collected by Lionel Harris, a dealer in antiquities who opened the Spanish Gallery in Conduit Street, London in 1898, and they were later loaned to the Courtauld Institute by his son, Tomas Harris.  Most are small pieces of textile with some small garments, and are chiefly silks, velvets and damasks; there are many 'figurative silks' depicting extraordinary images and some stunning pieces of embroidery. 

 ​These fascinating questions led to a lot of useful discussion and many suggestions about ways in which the collection might be used in the future, and made many of us eager to see it for ourselves.  Jessica explained that although the collection has not yet been digitised, it is possible to go to the Courtauld Library to see items - anyone interested should contact them on [email protected] or can contact Jessica at [email protected] 

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.