Biba label

Biba was one of the most popular fashion stores in London by the end of its life in 1975. It originally started out as a mail order service created by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with the help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon. Biba’s postal boutique had its first significant success in May 1964 when it offered a pink gingham dress to readers of the Daily Mirror. The dress had celebrity appeal, as a similar dress had been worn by Brigitte Bardot. By the morning after the dress was advertised in the Daily Mirror, it had received over 4,000 orders. Eventually, some 17,000 outfits were sold.

Biba Mini dress

The first store was opened in September 1964 on Abingdon Road in Kensington. As the Biba style of tight cut skinny sleeves, earthy colours and its signature logo became more and more recognisable, the more and more people wanted to be seen in it. The second store in Kensington Church Street opened in 1965 and series of a mail-order catalogues followed in 1968,which allowed customers to buy Biba and the style that came with it, without having to come toLondon. The next move, in 1969, was to Kensington High Street into a store which previously sold carpet. Again the shop was a unique mix of Art Nouveau decor and Rock and Roll decadence.

Blouse, 1969

In 1974, the store moved to the seven-storey Derry & Toms department store know as the ‘Big Biba’, which immediately attracted up to a million customers weekly, making it one of the most visited tourist attractions in London. There were different departments, and each floor had its own theme, such as a children’s floor, a floor for men, a book store, a food market, and a “home” floor which sold items such as wallpaper, paint, cutlery, soft furnishings and even statues. Each department had its own logo or sign, which was based on the Biba logo and had a picture describing the department; these were designed by Kasia Charko^.

The store had an Art Deco-interior reminiscent of the Golden Age of Hollywood interspersed with non-traditional displays, such as a giant Snoopy and his doghouse in the children’s department, where merchandise based on the Peanuts comic strip was sold. The Biba Food Hall was also designed ingeniously, each section being aimed at one particular kind of product. A unit made to look like a dog displayed dog food; a huge baked beans tin displayed tins of baked beans and so on. The new “Big Biba” was also home to “The Rainbow Restaurant”, which was located on the fifth floor of the department store and would become a major hang-out for rock stars, but which wasn’t solely the reserved of the elite.

The Biba look appealed to mostly teenagers or twenty year old women. The employees were from the same demographic; among them at one point was a young Anna Wintour, later the editor of Vogue. The Biba look consisted of what Hulanicki called “Auntie Colours” – blackish mulberries, blueberries, rusts and plums. Biba smocks were uncomfortable and itchy, and stopped women’s arms from bending – something that didn’t prevent customers from buying the clothes. These clothes became the uniform of the era with the added bonus of matching accessories available to purchase with most of the clothing.

Biba court shoes

Miniskirts were causing a scene of their own, every week they got shorter. Although Mary Quant was the first British designer to show the mini skirt, Biba was responsible for putting it on the high street and as miniskirts were in fashion, everyone needed to be associated with them.

Maternity smock and trousers, 1973

Biba’s second store inLondon, the Kensington Church Street boutique, looked like an old apothecary on the outside with an interior that was dark and boudoir like where the clothes were hung up on old fashioned coat racks.

Suit, 1969

The clothes in the beginning of Biba’s life were extremely affordable and reflected the sentiments of the fashion conscious teenagers of that era, with soft fabrics that were form fitting, very stylish and also extremely comfortable. At the time, Biba used bright colours like blue’s, gold’s and silvers in flouncy chiffons with whirls of muted psychedelic colours and bright boas. Many different kinds of fabric were used including satin, crepe, chiffon, metallic, a fabric that looked like soft felt (which had not been seen before). Biba also had dresses with sleeves that covered most of the hand with thumb holes.

Dress

Later in 1969 when Biba moved to its first upscale store on the north side of Kensington High Street, across from where they would later open up their department store, there was a radical change in that the clothes became more expensive and the styles of clothing appeared to be designed for more sophisticated and richer young women in their 20s. The Kensington High Street store also lost the cozy boudoir look of its predecessor, which had been so appealing to its teenage customers, and took on the more sophisticated look of the upscale Kensington/Knightsbridge designer stores.

Jacket, 1973

After some years of severe financial difficulties, Dorothy Perkins and Dennis Day bought 75% of Biba. This led to the formation of Biba Ltd, which meant that the brand and the store could now be properly financed. However, after disagreements with the Board over creative control, Hulanicki left the company and shortly afterwards in 1975, Biba was closed by the British Land Company. There have been various attempts to re-launch the brand but few have been successful until the recent Topshop revival of the brand for which Hulanicki designed a capsule collection. Once again Biba is being enjoyed and appreciated by young women and teenagers around the country.

The nature of the conflict meant that it drew many men away from their homes in the North East and into foreign theatres of War. Those events are usually less well documented in our Archives. However, I recently came across a small but fascinating set of personal papers, which shed a little light on the War beyond these shores. These documents belonged to George Cuthbertson, a marine engineer from Tyneside.

George Cuthbertson, 1910s (TWAM ref. DX1539/5)

George Cuthbertson was born in South Shields in 1886. By the age of 14 he and his family were living in Dunston, where he served an apprenticeship as a colliery fitter. At the age of nineteen George’s father died and he took on the responsibility of looking after his mother and younger brother and sisters. It appears that his work at Dunston Colliery didn’t bring in enough to support his family so in 1912 he went to sea as a marine engineer.

By 1918 he was serving as 2nd engineer on the ‘Sunik’ an oil tanker built by Armstrong Whitworth & Company Ltd. The vessel had been requisitioned by the Admiralty (Oil Transport no. 57). On 9 April 1918 disaster struck and the ‘Sunik’ was torpedoed off the coast of Sicily, north of Messina Harbour. The website uboat.net identifies u-boat UC 52 as the source of the attack.

The vessel was struck in the engine room and the stern sank under the water, with the bow sticking out.

'Sunik' sinking at Messina, April 1918 (TWAM ref. DX1539/4/3)

Fortunately, the ship was saved. A large wooden ‘patch’ measuring 50 feet by 37 feet 6 inches was made and secured to the hull with hawsers passed around the ship.

The wooden patch is floated across to the 'Sunik', April 1918 (TWAM ref. DX1539/4/4)

The patch is fixed in place on the port side of 'Sunik', April 1918 (TWAM ref. DX1539/4/4)

The vessel was made water tight at Palermo and in due course the vessel was towed back to Liverpool where the vessel could be properly repaired.

View of 'Sunik' in dry dock, showing the patch, c1919 (TWAM ref. DX1539/4/3)

View of 'Sunik' with patch removed, showing the torpedo damage, c1919 (TWAM ref. DX1539/4/3)

The conduct of the crew through all this was later recognised. In a brief set of biographical notes, Cuthbertson’s son recorded:

“The Captain said to my father ‘Geordie they are talking about giving us medals, or you can have the money’. Dad said ‘The money will be of more use to my mother’. In due course the Captain and First Mate were awarded OBEs and dad got £29.19.11” (TWAM ref. DX1539/7).

The repairs in Liverpool were clearly successful since the ‘Sunik’ gave a further twenty years service until suffering a collision in July 1939. George Cuthbertson went on to become a chief engineer. He died in South Shields in 1946 at the age of 60.

Sadly, I could not take part in a full week here, since there were not enough people with enhanced CRB checks to allow me to legally be in, but on Tuesday I was in the entrance hall by Turbinia signing in. It was then, once installed at a desk in the office (with my own phone) that I found out how much working in a job was just a little bit like hard work. On that day, I actually got a mini tour of the museum, even getting to go into where they conserve objects, and then store them out of the way because they don’t have enough space to show everything. One of the many weird things I saw in the depths was a giant freezer, which they use to destroy any harmful bugs on artefacts before they are put back into controlled conditions – it’s not very good to have moths eat away at your clothes at the best of times, but 200-year-old dresses need to be extra protected.

On the Wednesday Sarah showed me the database of everything TWAM has stored away in its many locations. This was very fun, just because of the sheer range of objects filed away; like a letter from Tony Blair about a petition to him or the switch from the first electric cooker in the area, a display model mistakenly sold to the donor before anyone had had the chance to show it off in the shop. I also worked up in the History Office, going through questionnaires my classmates had completed, all about electric lighting and how they use them. Although they had not been very keen do them, I still got them back in, giving a rough idea of what we should keep for the future generation’s history lessons. The whole idea around it was to eventually expand the current light bulb collection here; using modern examples just like John Henry Holmes did back in his day.

Thursday was all about researching where on earth you could get certain types of light bulb, and how much they would cost. In fact, for almost every type of bulb I could find a supplier – except for street lights. Obviously, one does simply buy a street light, so this proved quite challenging. But, at last, I did discover that the new street lights being set up around the north east were in partner with SSE, so I’ve left John with that task to contact them and get hold of one. If I’d have been here for longer, I would have contacted them myself, but a week is just too short in which to get used to the long term side of running a museum. I was also given the opportunity to observe the media side of the museum, watching a new pamphlet being designed by Rachel for the Hatton Gallery. This was more challenging than the previous leaflet they had, because it features a tear-off side as well as every other side already there, making it instantly more confusing to put together. With the advent of the new gallery on Weddings, I was then used as free labour to peel of vinyl labelling from a wall, resulting in a great chat with Richard, the guy I was working alongside, and several chipped nails. They really do know how to stick stuff down so that it stays there! I rounded off the day by doing a walkthrough of all the galleries with two of the men, Mick and Tom, who bimonthly do this, and are responsible for keeping everything securely screwed down and non-lethal. They then deal with their entire list of problems throughout the next two weeks and begin it all again.

Finally, on my last day here at the Discovery Museum, I ended up finishing off the initial research into acquiring light bulbs for the expanding collection and, as you can probably guess, writing this blog for the website. I was, however, put into use to help get the final preparations for the new gallery on migrating to Newcastle ready. This, nicely for me, involved carrying various bits of Victorian dressing up clothes around the building – giving a much needed break from sitting and staring at a computer screen all day.

Throughout all of my four days working here I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I came here to find out what work was about, and what people do when they put together professional history displays and educate visitors. And now, upon leaving, I have decided that it is extremely enjoyable thing to do, and the amount of variation in your job means that you can never get bored – you’re constantly preparing stuff and turning over new galleries to present more history. My greatest respect goes to those who come in, in their free time, to help with their own expertise in organising everything the museum has. They are the true heroes; using knowledge they gained from working in the industries now considered bygone and helping us to understand it today. Without it, TWAM would be useless, since there would be no one to teach the next generation all that they consider important. Without that, there would be no History.

I think that I will pursue a career in history; I may not know how far I wish to be involved, whether it is purely academically for my own good, or as a teacher working in a school.

The first stage in this work was to remove a large amount of material from the storage section area of the Library and relocate this into the area that is usually used by customers.

You can see from the images below why the closure of the Library was needed.

The next stage of the project will involve contractors installing the required kit. This process should take around two weeks. Then the task of reocating all the items that have been removed back to their original location.

We hope that the Library should re-open for business on Monday 12 August.   In the meantime if you have any comments or queries please send an email to gnmlibrary@twmuseums.org.uk, or telephone 0191 222 3555.

Papers, notebooks, press cuttings, sketches and photos relating to the Tyneside artist Ralph Hedley were left to the Laing Art Gallery by the artist’s great-grandson Julian Brown. Some of the sketches are on show in the exhibition Ralph Hedley: Painting the North East at the Shipley Art Gallery until 21 December 2013. But there’s loads more. I’ve been working with a team of volunteers to sort out and record the piles of papers so that they can be made accessible. As the work progresses we’re finding photos of missing or lost paintings. Here are a few.

Ready for a stroll (1887) is only known from this press cutting. The chair makes another appearance in Market morning (1888) in the Shipley exhibition, and a similar hat to the one on the chair is in Hedley’s self portrait on display in Northern Spirit at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.

These pictures are only known from old photos that were probably taken in Hedley’s studio.

The horse thresher (1900) shows workers at a huge threshing machine driven by four horses – the farm at Beamish museum has a similar machine.

The rope walk (1899) shows workers twisting a long length of rope.

These pictures have been tracked more recently but they have disappeared again.

On the look-out (1883) is an early hand-drawn colour print (chromolithograph) of a Hedley painting.

Age and want; oh, ill-matched pair (1899) shows a woman in her home with no fire and no food.

I was asked to do a trail activity for the current Ralph Hedley exhibition for the children visiting the Shipley Art Gallery to be able to do whilst going around the exhibition. So, I have been totally absorbed and occupied with that lovely task for the past couple of days.

I spent a good amount of time admiring the show, in order for me to think about which aspects of his paintings I found interesting, and which of those I could take forward to feature in a fun trail which children would enjoy and be able to engage with the art works on a different level. From here, I began simply picking out ideas such as finding, counting, and drawings things which featured within Hedley’s paintings, and planned potential layouts and tasks for the children to do.

Ralph Hedley Children's trail- a work in progress!

I felt myself thoroughly enjoying the freedom of making something for someone younger than me – enabling me to be fun and exciting through my design! In the format of a leaflet, I started assembling my ideas. Activities for the children within this trail feature the likes of “Find the painting called…”, with an activity linked to that particular painting, such as counting the number of horses, or drawing themselves as a portrait, referencing Hedley’s painting Portrait of Spence Watson, which features in the exhibition.

The trails will be available throughout the year on the front desk at the Shipley, for a donation of 50p.

Each week, for four weeks, we’ll be blogging about a museum object and posing a question for you to respond to.  Please help us get the discussion going by adding your comments below, whatever comes to mind.  Later in the summer, your comments may be fed into a live debate where we hope you’ll have the opportunity to join academics and curators discussing the most popular topic.

The theme for this week is ‘the cultural history of technology’, and this Wearside-designed and built ship’s engine in our collection always starts people talking.

Our Doxford ship's engine, designed and built at Pallion, Sunderland, with my colleague Graham for scale

The first thing people usually comment on is its enormous size – it is 7 metres high and weighs in at 125 tonnes – but the conversation usually gets round, sooner or later, to what it meant to a town (as it then was) like Sunderland to have people around who designed and developed, marketed and made engines for ships that supplied the world with food, fuel, raw materials and manufactured products.

So how can industry and technology shape a community’s culture?

One way is by providing opportunities to young people for learning, education and personal development.  Apprentices at Doxford’s often progressed to careers in the merchant navy, with the chance to travel the world and to work with people from a wide range of cultures and nationalities.

Doxford Engine Works apprentices take a break from assembling a ship's engine in the 1950s

The apprenticeship system of training, usually referred to as ‘serving your time’, was a key rite of passage in the life and culture of many industrial communities.  What other characteristics might an industrial community share?  Typically, an industrial community might be one where most workers could hear the factory hooter from their home; where people lived, worked and found entertainment together; and where young people tended to follow their parents’ generation into the same workplace and to marry someone with a similar family background.

Was this a sound prescription for social cohesion, to use a modern term; or did it nurture inward-looking communites, lacking in aspiration and inherently resistant to change?

What have we lost, and what have we gained, by consigning that era to the past?

The Doxford Engine Works Football team, 1950s

Suit, 1926

During the 1920s, men had a variety of sport clothes available to them, including sweaters and short trousers, commonly known as knickers. For formal occasions in the daytime, a morning suit was usually worn. For evening wear men preferred the short tuxedo as opposed to the tail coat, which was now seen as rather old-fashioned and snobby! Men’s fashion also became less regimented and formal with trends favoring short jackets and pinstriped suits rather than jackets with long tailcoats. It wasn’t called the roaring 20s for nothing!

Men’s hats were worn depending on their class, with upper class citizens usually wearing top hats or a homburg hat. Middle class men preferred either a fedora, bowler hat or a trilby. During the summer months a straw boater was popular for upper class and middle class men, however working-class men wore a standard newsboy cap or a flat cap.

Bowler Hat

Throughout the 1930s-1950s the most noticeable effect of the general sobering associated with the Great Depression was that the range of colors became more subdued and the bright colors popular in the 1920s fell out of men’s fashion. By the early 1930s, the drape cut or “London Drape” suit championed by Frederick Scholte, tailor to the Prince of Wales, was taking the world of men’s fashion by storm. The new suit was softer and more flexible in construction than the suits of the previous generation; extra fabric in the shoulder and arms, a slightly nipped waist, and fuller sleeves tapered at the wrist, resulted in a cut with flattering folds or drapes front and back that enhanced a man’s figure. The straight wide-leg trousers that men had worn in the 1920s also became tapered at the bottom for the first time around 1935.

By the early 1940s, Hollywood tailors had exaggerated the drape to the point of caricature, outfitting film noir mobsters and private eyes in suits with heavily padded chests, enormous shoulders, and wide flowing trousers. Musicians and other fashion experimenters adopted the most extreme form of the drape, the zoot suit, with very high waists, pegged trousers, and long coats.

Homburg Hat, 1940-1950

The most common hat of this period was the fedora, often worn tipped down over one eye at a rakish angle, again another trend favored by fashionable men today!

Teddy boy was a British subculture typified by young men wearing clothes that were partly inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period. The clothing included drape jackets reminiscent of 1940s American zoot suits. The subculture started in London in the 1950s, and rapidly spread across the UK, soon becoming strongly associated with American rock and roll.

Teddy Boy Drape Coat

From the late 1960s into the early 1970s clothing was often androgynous and could be worn by both sexes.

1960s Jacket

Platform shoes with heels 2-4 inches thick appeared in 1971 and were worn by men and women. These shoes were often paired with wide-leg flared jeans and trousers which were popularized in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta. The “disco look”, complete with three-piece suits became very popular!

Suit, 1970s

Paul Smith Jacket, 1980

Miami Vice was one such series, whose leading men donned casual t-shirts underneath expensive suit jackets—often in bright or pastel colors. The t-shirt-with-designer-jacket look was often accompanied by jackets with broad, padded shoulders, and a few days growth of facial hair, dubbed “designer stubble”. Similarly, another popular look for men in the early 1980s was the Hawaiian shirt, worn by Tom Selleck, star of television’s enormously popular detective series Magnum, P.I. Thanks to Magnum, P.I., Hawaiian shirts sales soared, as did the number of men sporting mustaches!

Jean Paul Gaultier Suit, 1980s

Menswear develops and reinvents itself just as frequently as women’s wear and like all fashion trends, similar shapes and styles can be seen again and again.

So hold on to your best outfits boys!

The register is part of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) programme to support and raise awareness of archives. The Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection is one of 11 items or collections from the UK to be awarded this status this year, along with the Domesday Book, the Churchill Archives and the Silent Movies of Alfred Hitchcock.

The Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection is a testimony to the remarkable achievements in shipbuilding and engineering produced on Tyneside and Wearside over the past two hundred years. Shipbuilding firms on the Tyne, such as Swan Hunter have produced awe inspiring passenger ships such as ‘Mauretania’, completed in 1907.

'Mauretania' at full speed on the Measured Mile, 1907 (TWAM ref. DS.SWH/4/PH/7/6)

She held the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic in both directions.

The River Tyne has also witnessed the construction of amazing warships, such as the ‘Ark Royal’, launched by Swan Hunter in 1981.

HMS Ark Royal, launched by Swan Hunter, 1981 (DS.SWH/4/PH/5/109/31)

The River Wear produced world beating passenger ships in the nineteenth century such as the ‘Torrens’ launched by the shipyard of Sir James Laing & Sons in 1875. However, it’s perhaps better known for its achievements in the construction of cargo ships.

Sea trials of the tanker ‘Borgsten’ built by J.L. Thompson & Sons Ltd, North Sands, Sunderland, c1964 (TWAM ref. DS.JLT/4/PH/1/709/6)

The Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection reflects Sunderland’s history of innovation in shipbuilding and marine engineering. From the development of turret ships in the 1890s and the production of Doxford opposed piston engines after the First World War through to the designs for Liberty ships in the 1940s and SD14s in the 1960s. Sunderland has much to shout about.

The Collection has something to appeal to everyone. There are boardroom minutes, financial accounts, administrative files and production records to satisfy maritime researchers. There are personnel records to interest family historians and ships plans to assist model makers.

SD14 Profile and decks plan, designed by Austin & Pickersgill Ltd, Southwick, c1966 (TWAM ref.DS.AP/4/PL/3/4)

Perhaps most strikingly, there are fabulous images of the ships and the people that built and launched them. The images show the human side of this great story – the sweat and toil of the workers

Welder at work at the shipyard of J.L. Thompson & Sons Ltd, North Sands, October 1946 (TWAM ref. DS.JLT/5/3/13)

as well as the glamour of ship launches and royal visits.

View of Princess Elizabeth on a royal walkabout after the launch of the ‘British Princess’ at the shipyard of Sir James Laing & Sons Ltd, Sunderland, 30 April 1946 (TWAM ref. DS.LG/4/PH/4/1)

It’s fitting that the Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection has been recognised by the UK National Commission for UNESCO. The shipbuilding industry is absolutely fundamental to the history and heritage of Tyne & Wear and has employed hundreds of thousands of men. It has also been a uniting factor in the region.

There have been many examples of co-operation between the Wear and the Tyne in the construction of ships. This co-operation is nicely symbolised by the ‘Rondefjell’, launched in two halves on the Wear, which were then towed to the Middle Docks, South Shields, where they were joined together in late October 1951.

Launch of the aftpart of the tanker ‘Rondefjell’ by John Crown and Sons Ltd, Sunderland, 1951 (TWAM ref. DS.CR/4/PH/1/233/2/4).

The populations of both Rivers have also long been united by a passion for shipbuilding. For many shipyard workers it was more than just a job – it was a way of life. Understandably, there’s a lot of sadness that the industry has passed away. However, I’m proud to be able to say that its legacy will endure and should be an inspiration to future generations.

I am currently partaking in a two week placement at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, gaining experience over many areas of work. This Wednesday I was lucky enough to spend my day in the Fine Art Painting and Print Store and the Decorative Arts store.

My morning was spent, in awe of the amount of paintings and objects which the store rooms are home to. Simultaneously, I was helping Marie-Thérèse Mayne (Assistant Keeper of Fine & Decorative Art) and Dawn Bradshaw (Conservation officer), with the re-hanging and updating records of the locations of art works.

We were un-wrapping a collection of works which had been returned to the Laing stores from an exhibition at the Hatton Gallery. The works in which we un-wrapped and re-hung onto their racks included Layla Curtis’ Newcastle Gateshead, 2005:

My afternoon was spent in the Decorative Arts store, with Dawn Bradshaw. This gave me the opportunity to take part in a small amount of conservation work. I was privileged with the task of cleaning up some beautiful, and intricate Japanese amour pieces, which were from 1600-1799.

What an exciting day!