When we arrived we were warmly welcomed and shown the objects.  Unfortunately, the bowler hat and Elizabethan shoe are on display and unlikely to be lent to us.  The gold shoes were stunning, if a bit crackled with the passing of time, but they were worn by a bride in a village just outside Oxfordshire, so we are unable to justify using them for this project.  Very frustrating as there was photo of the bride too!!  Sam and I asked if we could have a glance at the other objects, mostly shoes that had been taken to the shoe repair section of a department store called Copes in Thame and never collected.  We were expecting a lot of boring, worn out shoes but to our joy there were some wonderful 1920s and 30s women’s shoes and a mixture of men and women’s Victorian and Edwardian boots and shoes.

Some of the early C20th shoes had beautiful details and fit perfectly with the collection at the Museum Resource Centre (MRC), where most of the objects will come from for this exhibition.  I want to have a section in the exhibition which mimics an early C20th shop front, showing these beautiful shoes off with shiny signs that say cheesy things like Comfort and Style, what every woman wants.

Some of the shoes at MRC (click to scroll through)  [See image gallery at blogs.ashmolean.org]

Shopping and advertising have a huge part to play in how we feel about the garments we wear.  Sometimes it’s really hard to put your finger on what it is exactly that makes you want/desire that pair of shoes or that hat or any other garment for that matter.  This is what I’m most interested in and somehow I want this to come across in this section of the exhibition.   I was speaking to a friend recently about his hat.  I asked him why he wore it and he couldn’t articulate the reason, it just made him feel better.   Better about himself?  Better than other people?  I didn’t push the questioning that far!  Although we can’t say this in words, we all know this feeling.  We all have some item of clothing that whenever we wear it we feel, well, just better.

Thame Museum – http://www.thamemuseum.org/index.html

For more information see their website:  http://www.didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/visitor_information/gws.html

I’m sure that the excitement of being in control of a huge, powerful engine hurtling through the countryside is something that all enthusiasts dream of, young and old.   And the mark of the driver is of course the hat.  I wonder how many scaled down,
train driver’s dressing up costumes there are.  In the Witney and District Museum there is a child’s bus conductor’s uniform complete with hat. Not quite the same fan base but I think our next visit might have to be to see this.  This all reminds me of my favourite programme when I was a child which I was excited to find out was one of Sam’s favourites too.  What I am about to share with you will date Sam and I to a particular decade!  Do you remember this?  “And as if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0bSH_XFWMs

(If you haven’t got 12 minutes to watch this then skip to about 1.45 for the costume shop action!)

So, I wanted to find out what they had in terms of headwear and footwear and I can tell you that it is all about the headwear.  They must have at least 100 hats, helmets and caps judging by a brief look at their database.  What I found the most visually interesting were the wonderful spike helmets, busbys with huge plumes and quirky shakos.  Stanley my guide was very knowledgeable about how they were all influenced by the styles of other countries.  Spiked helmets were of course a German idea, the busby was inspired by the Hungarians and shakos, particularly the high ones, were stolen from the French.  He backed this up with his expert knowledge of when these countries were seen as powerful and it was at this time that the English stole their fashions.  Again this comes back to the idea of transformation that I touched on in my last post.  Did the soldiers of the time use these new hats as a way of inspiring them to be more successful in their battles?   Just like a Native American puts feathers in his headdress to become as wise and powerful as the eagle, it is a little bit of magic!

The SOFO website has most of their objects on so please search here if you want to see examples of the headwear I’ve mentioned.

http://www.sofo.org.uk/research-centre/collection

What did we learn that we can apply to our own exhibitions?  Well, not so much really.  The collections we will be working with are quite different!  The stories, the history, the meaning are the things that make our objects interesting.  An art gallery approach would not make the most of them.  However, a chat with the exhibition curator, Olivia Oldroyd, gave us valuable insights into time scales, sourcing mounts and other useful things.

A very productive day was had, discussing what our project is about and what it is not about.  And we all looooooved the objects.  Do go and see it, although there’s not long left as it ends on 17th July.

http://www.thelightbox.org.uk/events1/march2011/essentialaccessories