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The Museum of Domestic Design & ArchitectureThe Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA) presents the furnishings of homes from the 1870s to the 1960s. Fabrics, wallpapers and other soft furnishings are showcased in the permanent exhibition ‘Exploring Interiors: Decoration of the Home 1900-1960’. Drawing on personal commentary and photographs, the exhibition sets out to find what people’s homes were really like in the first half of the twentieth century, concentrating mainly on surface decoration.
MoDA’s wealth is drawn from six main collections, of which the Silver Studio Collection is the largest. It is the archive of a commercial design practice that operated in London from 1880 to 1963 and includes over 40,000 designs (for wallpapers, textiles, carpets and other domestic furnishings), 5,000 wallpaper samples and 5,000 textile samples The Silver Studio was a leading source of pattern design, providing clients such as Liberty and Sanderson with designs for their own ranges of wallpapers and textiles.
A forthcoming exhibition ‘The Silver Studio Then & Now’ will display over 60 original designs, textiles and wallpapers plus photographs and samples. Designs on show will include traditional floral chintz, art nouveau and geometric patterns. A second part to the exhibition looks at how the Silver Studio is still part of the design process today. A range of designers and manufacturers from Europe, North America and the Far East are licensed to use the Silver Studio Collection as a source of inspiration for a wide variety of items, including wallpapers, fabrics, stationary and pewterware. The exhibition will feature a case study showing a contemporary fabric from an original Silver Studio design. Other collections include the Crown Wallpaper archive of pattern books dating from the fifties and Sixties and the extensive library of interior design and architecture books donated by the architectural critic JM Richards, and the archive of his wife, the designer Peggy Angus. The Charles Hasler collection of printed ephemera is also of interest, and includes Central Office of Information wartime posters, while the British and American Domestic Design Collection (1850-1960) consists of 4,000 books, home- interest magazines and trade catalogues.
‘Exploring Interiors’ shows only a small fraction of MoDA’s extensive collections. To explore MoDA’s collections in greater depth, a study room adjacent to the permanent exhibition gives access to MoDA’s electronic catalogue during normal museum opening hours. Objects not currently on display can be viewed by appointment between 10am to 4pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The Silver Studio Then & Now
Location: The Museum of Domestic Design &
Open: Open Tuesday to
Saturday 10am – 5pm, Email: moda@mdx.ac.uk Web: www.moda.mdx.ac.uk The following prop companies and individuals specialise in wallpapers or wallcoverings: Period wallpapers: Designer wallpaper: |
