THE CRAFTS STUDY CENTRE EXHIBITIONS : 2004 - PRESENT DAY
The Crafts Study Centre opened to the public at its new home in Farnham, Surrey, in 2004. The museum has two exhibition galleries. The ground floor gallery was named ‘The Tanner Gallery’ to commemorate the remarkable achievements of Robin and Heather Tanner, who were closely involved in the foundational years of the Centre, and Robin played a pivotal role as a Trustee. After Heather’s death, funds from the sale of their house were passed on as a wonderful legacy gift, the CSC was appointed as the owner of the copyright relating to Robin Tanner’s work, and works from their modernist craft collection were also gifted to the Centre. The Tanner Gallery displays long term exhibitions drawn from the Crafts Study Centre’s permanent collections: six month runs at first, and now shows that are open for a year. The first exhibition ‘Crafts in the Twentieth Century’ reprised the founding show held at the Holburne Museum in Bath. ‘Three by One: a selection from 3 public craft collections by Alison Britton’ placed CSC works alongside those drawn from the Crafts Council and British Council collections, and was accompanied by a publication analysing these major public holdings of craft. Other notable shows in the Tanner Gallery focused on key protagonists in the Crafts Study Centre’s own history, such as Robin Tanner and Muriel Rose (curated by Jean Vacher, CSC Collections Manager).
Exhibitions in the first floor gallery have focused on modern and contemporary craft, across a wide range of material disciplines. Shows have included solo exhibitions where makers have presented work to the public for the first time (Nao Matsunaga and Takeshi Yasuda, for example), exhibitions curated by makers such as Alison Britton, Ewan Clayton and Ann Hechle, and exhibitions which intermingle contemporary work with historic pieces from the collection (for example in Frances Hatch’s show The Common Ground which placed her paintings in juxtaposition to notebooks and ceramics by Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie). The CSC now presents three exhibitions per year (one each academic term) and often works in collaboration with the International Textile Research Centre at UCA.
The CSC has overseen and curated some one hundred exhibitions in the period 2004 to 2021, and worked with exhibition providers such as Tate St Ives, Ruthin Craft Centre, the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, the National Centre for Craft & Design and the Crafts Council and independent curators such as Miranda Leonard, Greg Parsons, Sarah Roberts and Liz Cooper.
CRAFTS STUDY CENTRE EXHIBITIONS : 1972-1999
The first home of the Crafts Study Centre was in The Holburne Museum of Art, Bath. The collections and archives which had been built up by the founder Trustees of the Crafts Study Centre and those working assiduously prior to its establishment as a charitable trust in 1970, formed the research basis and the physical gathering of artefacts which prompted a thriving exhibition programme.
The Crafts Study Centre’s first exhibition, which introduced the range and depth of these outstanding collections of modern craft, was held at The Holburne Museum in 1972. It was called 20th Century Craftmanship: work by Artist Craftsmen of the Twentieth Century, selected from the Collection made by the Crafts Study Centre Trust. The title and the thesis of the exhibition were reprised in 2004 in the Crafts Study Centre’s first exhibition in its new location in Farnham, as a tribute to the long exhibition history, the makers, Trustees and curators in Bath.
The exhibition programme of the Crafts Study Centre started in earnest with the Opening exhibition of the Crafts Study Centre, held from May to December 1977. The shows were displayed in a ground floor space specially dedicated to the Centre within The Holburne Museum, converted by Neville Ward Associates. Some 85 craft exhibitions followed, with the final show (22 years later) at Bath being a Display of calligraphy by Irene Wellington, which closed in December 1999.
Many of the exhibitions at the Crafts Study Centre in Bath drew on its growing collections, and often highlighted these through solo exhibitions across the craft subject range including ceramics by Bernard Leach juxtaposed with his source collection, also a retrospective of the potter and educationist Henry Hammond; weaving by Rita Beales and Elizabeth Peacock; hand block printed textiles by Phyllis Barron, Dorothy Larcher and Susan Bosence; calligraphy by Edward Johnston, Irene Wellington and Ann Hechle. These exhibitions were interspersed with important touring shows by other key craftspeople represented in the collection including a retrospective of furniture design and cabinet-making by Edward Barnsley which opened at The Fine Art Society; furniture by Alan Peters initiated by Cheltenham Museums and Art Gallery, and Peter Collingwood: Master Weaver organised by firstsite and the Minories Art Gallery, Colchester. Influential exhibitions and publications on Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie, Ethel Mairet and David Pye were undertaken collaboratively by the Crafts Study Centre and the Crafts Council, while from 1987 the museum showcased a substantial and changing body of work from the Crafts Council Collection. The Centre also worked together with organisations such as the World Crafts Council and the School of Textiles at The Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham to host impressive work by makers from abroad, and others such as The Society of Scribes and Illuminators and the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen to show memorable group exhibitions by leading contemporary makers in Britain.
The majority of the Crafts Study Centre’s exhibitions were curated by Barley Roscoe MBE. She had joined as Research Assistant of the Crafts Study Centre, later becoming its full-time curator and finally Director of the Holburne Museum and Crafts Study Centre. These exhibitions stand as one of her major and lasting contributions to developing a wider and deeper understanding and enjoyment of modern craft.
