Dr Kirk, the founder of York Castle Museum, collected colourful woven silk pictures showing Christmas scenes, portraits of notorious figures, such as the highwayman Dick Turpin, and famous buildings like York Minster.

These pictures are often called Stevenographs after the manufacturer Thomas Stevens of Coventry.

They were used as ribbon-like bookmarks or as gifts, celebrating friendship in happy times and offering sympathy in mourning. We were thrilled to find registrations in the Board of Trade Design Register (BDTR) for the designs of six of the Stevenographs in the Museum’s collection.

These include the dramatic ‘Called to the Rescue: Heroism at Sea’, which was advertised as costing one shilling (the equivalent of 10 new pence and roughly £25 today). The register (BT44/30/346644) tells us this silk picture design was registered on 20 February 1880.

The example preserved in the BTDR volume of representations (BT43/403/346644) has much brighter colours than the framed example at the museum. This may be because the framed picture was displayed in pride of place for many years in someone’s home and so became faded while the other stayed unfaded between the pages of the huge and seldom-opened volume.

 

‘Called to the Rescue: Heroism at Sea’ (York Castle Museum 232/[19]32; © York Castle Museum)

Mary M Brooks, Director, MA International Cultural Heritage Management, Durham University

 

This research is supported by The Textile Society: www.textilesociety.org.uk/

For the Guide Reference to the BT Design Register, see:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/research-guides/reg-design-trademark.pdf

For an online exhibition of 300 Victorian-era ceramic and related designs from the BT Design Register, see:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/designregisters/aboutbt.htm

For links to interactive images of some of the designs in the BT Design Register, and a medieval seal, see the following links:

http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/capturing-and-exploring-texture/

http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/texture-mapping-part-two/

http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/texture-mapping-part-three/

http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/texture-mapping-part-four/

http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/new-light-on-old-seals/

Photographs taken by Dinah Eastop; copyright York Museum Trust