Our Friday Gem series is coming to an end. We’ll still be promoting items from the collection here, but as the cataloguing project draws to an end, we’re putting the Friday Gem into retirement. You can see all the Friday Gem images on our flickr site. We hope you’ve enjoyed them all.
For this week’s gem we have chosen a selection of carpets – the finished product. The heritage carpet collection retained by Stoddard International plc encapsulates the history of Scottish carpet manufacture including examples of tapestry velvet, chenilles, axminsters and pictorial carpeting. The collection is now held by Glasgow Museums as part of their textile collection.
Today I’m highlighting two of my (very many) favourite items from the design archive. These small painted boards were among the first items that caught my eye when I started working with the collection over four years ago and they still grab my attention. I don’t quite know if I would want to walk across … Continue reading
The Friday Gem returns after an unscheduled holiday! H. W. Batley featured in a previous Friday Gem, with his coloured sketches being highlighted. We return to him today, with some more sketches. These sketches were digitised for Archive Services by students on the Information Management & Preservation (Digital) MSc with the assistance of the … Continue reading
This week’s gem from the Stoddard - Templeton Design Archive is a small design attributed to Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The Glasgow born artist, designer and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), as we all probably know, is today celebrated internationally as one of the most significant figures in design history in the late 19th and early 20th … Continue reading
This week’s gem from the Stoddard – Templeton Design Archive is a selection of designs ascribed to the Silver Studio. In 1880 Arthur Silver, a pupil of H. W. Batley and who has been the subject of a previous post, founded the Silver Studio. The studio produced countless patterns for wallpaper, textiles and floorcoverings, as well as … Continue reading
This week’s gem from the Stoddard – Templeton Design Archive is a collection of designs by Agnes Pinder Davis from the 1930s. Agnes Pinder Davis was a well known and well respected artist/designer in the 1930s. She produced countless designs for ceramic firms such as Royal Doulton and Crown Staffordshire, specialising in tea and dinner services as … Continue reading
This week’s gems from the Stoddard – Templeton Design Archive come from a drawer entitled “Picture”. When I opened the drawer to begin cataloguing what was inside, I must admit that, going by the title of the drawer alone, I didn’t really know what to expect. However, of all things, I certainly didn’t expect to find what … Continue reading
This week’s Stoddard Templeton Friday Gem comes from the Archive’s Associated Design Records, and features a small number of cyanotypes, or blueprints, of early Templeton carpet designs (STOD/201/1/7/23). Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that gives a cyan-blue print. It was popular in engineering circles well into the 20th century as the simple and low-cost … Continue reading
The Friday Gem from the Stoddard Templeton Design Archive this week features a number of carpet designs created by James Templeton & Co for luxury liners. The Templeton publication Carpets and Interiors: A guide for Architects, Decorators, Furnishers, Hoteliers, & Shipbuilders noted: Luxury passenger liners are traditionally big users of good quality carpets and the … Continue reading