ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the changing storage conditions of a large collection of twentieth-century clothing held by a small, local government-operated museum. It will focus on the storage history of Walsall Museum’s Hodson Shop Collection – a collection of over 3,000 items of mass-produced clothing from 1920–60s. The items were once the shop stock of the Hodson General and Fancy Drapers – a small, family-owned business located in the industrial town of Willenhall, UK.
Following discovery in 1983, the collection has been stored in a range of environments, including ‘behind an oil engine’ in a garage and in makeshift museum stores that had once been a school’s catering depot. The storage history of the collection reveals a series of conflicts and compromises, highlighting how the ideal standards of textile storage and conservation remain elusive within the context of a small, provincial local government-owned museum.
Interviews with museum staff and volunteers will be used alongside archival sources to present a chronological storage history of the collection. This history will be structured in four phases/sections, each marked by significant shifts in the collection’s storage and status:
Discovery: 1983
Movement: 1983–93
Improvement: 1993–2007
Uncertainty: 2007–15.
The storage locations, environments and materials are described for each phase. Museum staff and volunteers’ attitudes towards these conditions are explored and the wider political, heritage and economic context that determined the resources available for storage are analysed. This chapter will challenge perceptions of the store as a protected and largely static space; showing instead how the store can be a place where conflicting priorities, both financial and ideological, are waged and resolved.