This material comes primarily from two sources, private collector Mary Hope Greg and Arts and Crafts designer Lewis Foreman Day. During the 1920s and 30s Mary Greg gave several hundred household textiles such as blankets, curtains and towels, dress accessory fabrics such as lace and ribbon, and domestic needlework including patchwork and embroidered samplers and pictures. Most of this is European and dates from the 18th-20th centuries, but there is also material from further afield including South and East Asia, Russia and North Africa. It was part of a much wider collection, which you can read more about here.   The Lewis Day Collection of Embroideries was donated in 1929 by his widow, Ruth Emma Day. Lewis Day was a tutor at Manchester School of Art and a prominent Art and Crafts designer of fabric, wallpaper and furniture. He amassed a large study collection of woven, embroidered and printed fabrics from all over the world, many of which are fragments cut from garments, collected as samples of surface pattern and making technique. Research remains to be done into how and from whom much of this was sourced. The material at Platt Hall is only a selection from this collection, which was distributed across several museums after his death.   These two collections formed the foundation of Manchester Art Gallery’s better-known and significantly larger dress collection. As the dress collection grew, the focus shifted to collecting full garments, Platt Hall became The Gallery of Costume, and textiles became less significant. The collection has been added to over the years by only a few small donations and purchases. During the 1990s, however, Platt Hall Curator Anthea Jarvis began collecting South Asian dress, textiles and artefacts acquired from local shops in Rusholme and from research trips to India and Pakistan. This material is the subject of our collaborative research project Patterns of Life.

The Industrial Art Collection was a contemporary collecting programme set up by Manchester Art Gallery Curator Lawrence Haward during the 1930s. Haward believed that the role of a civic art gallery was to develop in its visitors an appreciation of beauty, not just through painting and sculpture but also in everyday things. The Industrial Art Collection set out to acquire contemporary mass-produced textiles, furniture, ceramics and glass that embodied what he regarded as good quality design, simplicity and fitness for purpose. As a textile city, the textile element was also intended to provide inspiration and study material for trainee designers. The collection was built up by direct approaches to manufacturers that met Haward’s criteria of good design. Some material was given, and some bought with a small annual budget. The textiles section of the Industrial Art Collection included: Furnishing fabrics by approved British manufacturers such as Morton Sundour and Edinburgh Weavers, Donald Brothers, Old Bleach Linens and others. It includes designs by high profile artists and designers such as Barbara Hepworth, Ashley Havinden, Marion Dorn and Marianne Mahler. This material is currently on long-term loan to the Whitworth. Printed cotton dress fabrics made by Manchester manufacturers from the Calico Printers Association. Fabric lengths and samples related to Manchester’s textile trade with West Africa, given or bequeathed by Manchester manufacturers and traders Charles Beving, Charles Sixsmith and Hubert Barrett. This material forms the subject of our collaborative research project 776 Pieces of Cloth. (link) A small number of craft textiles acquired from annual Red Rose Guild exhibitions for a parallel handcraft collection by interwar makers such as Ethel Mairet, Joyce Clissold, Barron and Larcher, Salford Handblock Printers. The global textile collection at Platt Hall reflects the changing interests of Manchester Art Gallery over the past century, from celebrating the role of amateur making in everyday life to the dynamics of global exchange in the city’s design and manufacturing history. It also sits, of course, in the context of the Hall as the one-time home of a textile merchant. Not much is currently known about John Lees who commissioned the building of Platt Hall, but the wealth and power of the industry that made Manchester is woven through the very fabric of the building. There is a lot more to learn.