Two Temple Place is one of London’s most lavishly decorated buildings. Once the estate office of William Waldorf Astor, it opens its doors to the public for a few months each year to host a themed exhibition drawing on Britain’s regional museum collections. The opulent context means there’s a tendency toward craft and antiquities – which makes Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles a classic Two Temple Place exhibition.
Drawn from seven institutions, there are some exquisite pieces here. Edith Durham’s glorious collection of textiles and garments from the Balkans includes a waistcoat made in Berat, Albania. Embroidered with gold and silver on black velvet, it is as richly worked as a glistening jewel. The garment was presented to Durham by the provisional government of Berat in 1913 in recognition of her role in petitioning the British government on behalf of the Greek-occupied city of Korçë.
The antique costumes amassed by Olive Matthews include an impeccable men’s three-piece suit in embroidered grey silk from the 1770s, so slight and unblemished that it seems implausible it was ever worn. Matthews started collecting as a young girl at the turn of the 20th century: she chose costumes over antiques because they required less storage space, and prided herself on never spending more than £5 on a piece.
More recent treasures include Alice Kettle’s monumental embroidery triptych Three Caryatids (1989-91), inspired by the artist’s travels in Turkey and purchased by Jennifer Harris for the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Harris is one of two collectors here who built up collections directly on behalf of a museum, rather than as a private pursuit. Here, the term “visionary” indicates a sense of greater purpose than accumulation for its own sake: the desire to preserve endangered objects, to record waning craft traditions or celebrate a new tendency.
At the Whitworth, Harris engaged both with feminist scholarship and Manchester’s historic involvement in the transatlantic cotton trade. At Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, Nima Poovaya-Smith has developed a collection that responds both to the area’s textile history and its contemporary links to South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Both curators champion textile and fibre art.
Important as their work is, it feels peculiar to place the institutional work of Harris and Poovaya-Smith alongside women whose collecting was a private passion. Not least because the biographical circumstances of the other collectors is significant. Louisa Pesel’s collection of Turkish and Greek embroidery was used in her rehabilitation work with traumatised soldiers after the first world war. The display dedicated to her work here includes antique samples used by Pesel in her writing and teaching, samples of her own designs for ration-book covers, slippers made from scraps and an altar cloth stitched by recuperating servicemen. All are inspired by Greek embroidery work, but also broadcast their provenance in the war years.
The small library gallery in the middle of the exhibition is nominally given over to the collections of Muriel Rose and Enid Marx. During the 1930s, Rose ran the Little Gallery in south London, a high-end craft store in which contemporary textiles, ceramics and furnishings were creatively displayed. Marx – a celebrated designer of books, graphics and textiles – was among those whose work was celebrated there. Both sections include non-textile objects and are displayed in such a way that you may think you’ve taken a wrong turn into the gift shop.
The Rose display includes mid-century ceramics by Lucie Rie, acquired for the collection after Rose’s involvement. Marx, in turn, is celebrated more as a designer than a collector, her display dominated by her own work. Her partner Margaret Lambert is referred to by the deathly euphemism “friend” in the exhibition text. Their bequest to Compton Verney is called the Marx-Lambert collection. It is peculiar that Marx is presented here as a lone force.
These are just a couple of odd moments among many (Olive Matthews’ display is also dominated by a costume purchased for the collection after her death. Harris’s includes a work by Tadek Beutlich acquired by the Whitworth before her arrival). All raise questions about what, precisely, the subject of this exhibition is. If it is textiles, why include ceramics? If it is the role of individual visionary collectors, why include works that pre- and post-date their involvement?
The achievements of the women celebrated here feel too large and exciting to be expressed in such tiny displays, and the selections are too unfocused for the most part to offer a rounded view. What we have instead are some wonderful objects – and tantalising glimpses of the stories that lie beyond.
• Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles is at Two Temple Place, London, until 19 April.
