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Mitchell, Elizabeth Sarah (2018) ‘Believe me, I remain...’: the Mary Greg collection at Manchester city galleries. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University. Downloaded from: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/620461/ Usage rights: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Deriva- tive Works 4.0 Please cite the published version https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk ‘Believe me, I remain...’ The Mary Greg Collection at Manchester City Galleries Elizabeth Sarah Mitchell PhD 2018 ‘Believe me, I remain...’ The Mary Greg Collection at Manchester City Galleries Elizabeth Sarah Mitchell Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy MIRIAD Manchester School of Art Manchester Metropolitan University 2018 i Abstract This thesis traces the history of a collection of domestic objects and amateur crafts given to a museum during the first half of the twentieth century. Using the metaphor of archaeology, it takes an object-centred approach to the investigation of changing relationships over time between a collection of objects, an archive of letters, and the institution in which they are held. Drawing on developments in sensory anthropology, theoretical distinctions between objects and things, and letter-writing as a gendered social practice, it treats this material as both ‘evidence and affect’, using writing and photography to consider sensorial and emotional responses to objects, documents and place alongside the historical data they may yield. It situates this within wider historical and biographical research into private and public collecting during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In so doing, this thesis provides new insight into the histories of collecting and the development of the municipal art gallery in Britain during the interwar period. It evidences the centrality of decorative art to an increasing domestication of the art museum in the aftermath of the First World War, even as modernist art practices prompted the development of the formalist ‘white cube’ aesthetic. It demonstrates the conflicted position of decorative art objects within this developing dynamic, caught between aesthetic and ethnographic criteria of value. It also challenges received knowledge in relation to the gendered history of institutional collecting. Mary Greg is identified as a significant patron of multiple museums, her interests contributing to an expansion of scope in what was considered worthy of museum preservation. The Mary Greg Collection in Manchester is shown to manifest, in microcosm, a history of changing attitudes towards the material culture of the domestic past, from nineteenth century antiquarianism, through an Arts and Crafts sensibility and developments in domestic ethnography, to the early twentieth century theorising of childhood and the interwar handicrafts revival. However, this thesis also demonstrates how formal technologies of record keeping, distinctions between professional and amateur, and developing hierarchies of museological value, as well as social and gendered modes of propriety, all contributed to the obscuring of one woman’s contribution to British museum culture. Bringing the history of the collection up to the present day, this research also considers the ways in which museums incorporate the sedimented layers of their own institutional histories, and how the meaning and value of objects in museums changes over time. Drawing on a Ruskinian notion of ‘voicefulness’, found within the collection’s history, it makes a case for ii alternative museological criteria of value based on qualities of intimacy, love and curiosity. In so doing, it demonstrates how the legacies of past collecting practices, often difficult to reconcile with contemporary professional concerns, may yet have the potential to yield not just new insights into the past, but new possibilities in the future. iii Acknowledgements There are so many people to thank. No project is conducted in isolation, and it is often hard to know where and when it really begins. This one has been a long time in the making. It emerged as a possibility from countless conversations and debates and excited showings and tellings, and behind it all, the quiet company of objects, during the period of my association with Manchester City Galleries. It took shape through a similar process with supervisors, colleagues and fellow researchers at Manchester School of Art. But it goes back further than that. To growing up in a ramshackle house full of inherited bits and pieces that didn’t quite fit. To parents and grandparents who were, in their own ways, both collectors and makers, both professional and amateur, who pursued their own idiosyncratic pathways according to the different opportunities available to them. It goes back to a love of objects, in all their vulnerability and durability, that was founded within this complicated dynamic. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisory team, in its various iterations, at Manchester School of Art. Jane Webb, Myna Trustram, Sara Holdsworth, Alison Slater, Jim Aulich and Melanie Horton have all given so generously of their considerable expertise, thoughtfulness and enthusiasm, and I am completely in their debt. In particular, Myna and Alison have provided both the discipline and encouragement to see me through the last months and I would not have managed it without them. Thank you both. I would also like to thank my fellow Art School researchers who have made the past five years such a joy and have opened my eyes to the creative possibilities of research, as well as becoming good friends along the way. Sara Davies, Tilo Reifenstein, Sue Blatherwick, Jan Fyfe, Sabbi Kaur, LOkesh Ghai, Ralph Mills, Derek Trillo, Daksha Patel, Laura Guy and Simon Woolham – thank you. And to Jackie Stacey and the members of the Writing and Anxiety discussion group, who have shared both the dark side and the joys of academic writing: Lin Charlston, Sara Davies, Anna Frew, Victoria Haire, Gemma Meek and Stacey Coughlin. Finally, to my examiners, Dr Sandra Dudley from the University of Leicester and Dr Philip Sykas from Manchester School of Art, thank you for your constructive criticality, insightful questioning and guidance for the future. Manchester City Galleries has been a part of my life for such a long time it is part of me. I am grateful to the institution as a whole, for the richness of opportunity it afforded me during nearly two decades as a member of staff, for the lasting friendships I made there, and for its ongoing support of this research in allowing me unlimited access to store rooms and archives. I would like to thank all the staff at Manchester Art Gallery, Platt Hall and Queens Park, and iv especially Amanda Wallace, Janet Boston, Miles Lambert and Rosie Gnatiuk. I would also like to thank the Mary Mary Quite Contrary project team: Alex Woodall, Martin Grimes, Sarah Rainbow, Joanne Davies and, from Manchester School of Art, Sharon Blakey, Hazel Jones and all their wonderful students. Particular thanks must go to Sharon Blakey, with whom I have since had the good fortune to develop a wonderful writing partnership that goes from strength to strength. And thanks are also due to those who set me on my path in the first place with encouragement and opportunity in equal measure, in particular Lesley Jackson and Ruth Shrigley from Manchester City Galleries, and Alex McErlain from Manchester School of Art. Memories of exploring the pottery store cupboards with Alex will stay with me always. Thanks are also due to the many people who have patiently and generously responded to my requests for information. These include numerous archivists, curators, academics and private individuals, but in particular Laura Carter, Richard Gray, Peter Greener, Bettina Harden, Kate Hill, Catherine Howell, Michael Janes, Louise Pullen, Ros Westwood, Amy Woodson-Boulton and Bridget Yates. And the Guild of St George, whose members have welcomed me with such enthusiasm. I am particularly indebted to Stuart Eagles in this respect, for his enthusiastic support of my research, for commissioning me to talk and write about Mary Greg for the Guild, and for providing invaluable historical and editorial advice. To my poor longsuffering family, Tom, Peter, Arthur and Rosie, thank you for putting up with the growing heaps of books and papers on every surface, with my gradual withdrawal in recent months from work and play alike, and with my furiously furrowed ‘thinking/stinking face’, prowling the house, lost in thought. Thank you for understanding the thing about spoons and keys and bits of old fabric. And for the meals and the cups of coffee and the clean clothes and not complaining about the state of the living room. And then there is Mary. A woman whom I never met, who died twenty years before I was born, but whose energy, determination and faith in the future, at the age of 70 and in the face of personal loss, I have found truly inspirational. She emerges from this research as being, like all real people, complex and contradictory – alternatively gracious and demanding, lyrical and blunt, passionate and stubborn – and I love her for it. This thesis is dedicated to four equally complex and contradictory women, who have been particularly influential in my life. None are famous, or written about, or expect/expected to be; nevertheless they have made and continue to make a significant difference in the world. Rose Cottle, Marcia Paul, Marilyn Paul and Cathy Seal. Thank you. v Nothing is sudden. Not an explosion – planned, timed, wired carefully – not the burst door. Just as the earth invisibly prepares its cataclysms, so history is the gradual instant. Anne Michaels1 I so enjoy being out in a good wind – being half lifted or carried along by it or still better meeting it full in the face & battling with it! Mary Greg2 1 Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (London: Bloomsbury, 1997) p.77. 2 Mary Greg, nature diary, 30 December 1904, p.141.