THROUGH THE ARCHIVES FEATURE Through the Archives


There’s no such thing as new. We visited the Brintons archive in Kidderminster to find out how history is often the driving force of modern trends.


Housing over 100,000 custom designs, the Brintons archives and historical pattern library is one of the largest historical preservations of this type in the world. It provides daily inspiration for the design team and their clients as well as a reference point for patrons with specific project needs.


Design archivist, Yvonne Smith is responsible for looking after the vast collection of important authentic designs while keeping it updated with new patterns and delivering seminars to the academic and design communities.


“All manufacturers would have had a pattern library because in the Victorian period they would have had all their designers in-house,” Yvonne explained. “In fact, this archive is made up from three separate companies including American company, Alexander Smith, which later became known as US Axminster and neighbouring carpet manufacturer Woodward Grosvenor [both of which have been bought out by Brintons.] The American archive had very similar books to what we had.”


The first Brintons mill was opened in 1783 with a carpet factory in Kidderminster following in 1819. One of the earliest dated design papers in the collection is from March 1798 although that’s not to say it’s the oldest paper Brintons have. However it’s even earlier than the papers in the town’s museum which go back to the 1830s. At this time all designs were hand-painted on miniature papers, Yvonne tells me, because the price of paper was so heavily taxed. The weavers would have picked up the pattern from the small square grids it was painted on and when woven the design would double in size.


Sometimes the back of the papers are as fascinating as the front and one of the designs has Prince Albert’s signature. Yvonne tells me that she always believed it to be Albert’s but when Julian Brinton did a presentation to the queen she confirmed it. The reason for the signature, Yvonne thinks, is that the carpet wasn’t designed especially for Osbourne


House and so Albert simply chose the design from a selection of fashionable patterns and signed the back to ensure that no mistakes were made. “The chosen carpet was the height of fashion in its day and is still being woven and put down today; if you go to the Isle of Wight you can see it.”


Albert’s might be the most prominent signature but many of the old designs are initialled on the back. According to Yvonne, they were most probably signed


by the manufacturer who bought the designs from freelance artists who would have created patterns for not only carpets, but wallpapers, fabrics, silks and so on.


Many of the designs in the collection would have been used in America and there is even a letter dated early 1800 stating that a rug from the Woodward Grosvenor archive was used in the White House. This trend has continued as in 1990 Hilary Clinton chose one from the range for the private suites.


Yvonne works closely with restoration bodies such as English Heritage and the National Trust or private developers who want to return their properties back to a key period. When Kew Palace underwent an extensive £6.6million restoration project ten years ago, it involved painstaking research of 19th Century décor. It was known that King George had owned a Turkey rug but nobody knew what exactly that might be so Royal Palaces turned to Yvonne for advice. Because of the accurate ways in which everything had been recorded on design papers dating back to Georgian times, Yvonne was able to present them with a range of patterns and colours that would have been de rigueur at the time.


The archives are also used by Brintons’ highly- skilled team of designers who work globally in the company design offices in London, Los Angeles, Pune in India, Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, and Dubai.


Tomorrow’s Retail Floors Autumn 2015 | 31


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