EVERYDAY AND UNWORN DRESS AS MUSEUM PIECES: A STUDY OF THE HODSON SHOP COLLECTION, WALSALL MUSEUM, 1983-2016 JENNY E GILBERT-EVANS, BA (Hons), MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This research programme was carried out in collaboration with Walsall Museums Service. Research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Awards. May 2016 This work or any part thereof has not previously been presented in any form to the University or to any other body whether for the purposes of assessment, publication or for any other purpose (unless otherwise indicated). Save for any express acknowledgments, references and/or bibliographies cited in the work, I confirm that the intellectual content of the work is the result of my own efforts and of no other person. The right of Jenny Gilbert-Evans to be identified as author of this work is asserted in accordance with ss.77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. At this date copyright is owned by the author. Signature............................................... Date..................................................... Abstract The place and presence of everyday and unworn dress in museums has been largely overlooked in museological and historical accounts of museums and collections. Instead, the focus has been upon the study of elite, spectacular and worn clothing. Similarly, little academic attention has been paid to small-scale, local government operated social history museums, with the bulk of research being conducted into elite national and metropolitan museums or the spectacle of living history museums. This thesis addresses these omissions through a biographical investigation into a single collection of everyday and unworn clothing held by a small and local social history museum: Walsall Museum’s Hodson Shop Collection. Discovered in 1983, the collection consists of around 5,000 items of mass produced unsold shop stock, mainly women’s clothing, from between 1920 and the 1960s. It comprises of the stock of the Hodson General and Fancy Drapers, a small clothing shop located in the lock-making town of Willenhall, West Midlands. Sisters, Edith and Flora Hodson operated the shop between 1920 and around 1971 in the front room of their family home. This thesis provides both a detailed biographical account of the Hodson Shop Collection and a timely account of Walsall Museum’s struggle for survival in an age of increasing austerity. It focuses upon the passage of a large quantity of everyday shop stock items from the world of retail to the museum. Firstly, it demonstrates how the collection has been subject to a range of complex and interconnected external and organisational influences, through an account of its journey to Walsall Museum and its life within the museum, 1983-2016. A number of binary oppositions and hierarchies are explored to show how shifting ideas of value have influenced the survival and visibility of the collection and museum. Secondly, it shows how the statuses of everyday and mass produced items are altered by accession to a museum, challenging the assumption that biographical approaches are most suitable for dealing with ‘spectacular’ aspects of material culture. The story of the Hodson Shop Collection challenges the perception of the museum as a safe and static environment. i Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................. v List of Tables………………………………………………………………………vii List of Charts……………………………………………………………………..viii Preface………………………………………………………………………………ix Acknowledgments ....................................................................................... xiv Glossary…………………………………………………………………………...xvi Key Organisations……………………………………………………………..xviii The Hodson Family………………………………………………………………xx Timeline of Events Related to the Hodson Shop Collection……………..xxi Introduction .................................................................................................... 2 Literature Review .......................................................................................... 2 Aims ............................................................................................................ 14 Definitions and Concepts ............................................................................ 15 Methodology ............................................................................................... 16 Content ....................................................................................................... 34 Chapter One: The History of the Hodson Shop, 1905-1983 ..................... 37 The Business’s Beginnings ......................................................................... 38 The Nature of the Shop .............................................................................. 43 The Shop’s Customers ............................................................................... 50 The End of the Business………………………………………………………..54 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 55 Chapter Two: The Cataloguing and Contents of the Collection .............. 57 The Catalogue ............................................................................................ 59 Size of Collection ........................................................................................ 62 The Types of Items ..................................................................................... 68 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 76 ii Chapter Three: Organisational History of the Hodson Shop Collection.79 Discovering the Collection, 1983 ................................................................ 82 Journey to Walsall Museum 1984-1993 ..................................................... 86 Museum Life 1993-1999 ............................................................................. 93 The Collection in the Early 21st Century 2000-2014 ................................. 100 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 112 Chapter Four: Defining and Interpreting the Hodson Shop Collection . 115 Museum Professionals’ Perspectives ....................................................... 117 Museum Visitors’ Perspectives ................................................................. 129 ‘Uniqueness’ and Designation Attempts ................................................... 134 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 144 Chapter Five: Display and Storage ........................................................... 147 Display and Storage History ..................................................................... 152 Walsall Museum Gallery Display 2013-2015 ............................................ 162 Present Day Storage ................................................................................ 179 The Future for the Collection’s Display and Storage ................................ 188 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 190 Chapter Six: The Collection as ‘Unworn’ ................................................. 193 The Nature of the Worn/Unworn Binary: ................................................... 196 Worn Dress in Museums .......................................................................... 199 Unworn Dress in Museums ....................................................................... 207 The Worn and Unworn in Retail ................................................................ 221 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 228 Chapter Seven: The Collection as Everyday Dress ................................ 233 Examining the Everyday ........................................................................... 235 The Everyday, Material Culture and Museums ......................................... 245 Dress, Fashion and the Everyday ............................................................. 254 High Fashion and Everyday Dress in Museums ....................................... 261 Alternatives to the Everyday ..................................................................... 267 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 268 iii Chapter Eight: Dirt, Damage and Decay .................................................. 271 Defining Dirt, Damage and Decay ............................................................ 274 The Surface Condition of the Hodson Shop Collection ............................ 277 Dirt, Damage, Decay and Everyday Life ................................................... 285 Dirt, Damage, Decay and the Body .......................................................... 288 Dirt, Damage and Decay in the Museum .................................................. 293 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 298 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 300 Epilogue…………………………………………………………………………..308 APPENDICES .............................................................................................