The next stage in searching for links between objects in York Castle Museum’s  collection and evidence in the Board of Trade Representations and Registers of Designs 1839-1991, known widely as the BT Design Register, took me to The National Archives (TNA) in Kew Gardens, London.

Dinah Eastop (Curatorial Research Fellow, TNA) and I examined several of the impressively large volume filled with photographs, drawings and samples.

The BT Design Register contains nearly three million designs which were registered between 1839 and 1991.

This vast record contains the name and address of everyone who registered a design together with a ‘representation’ of the registered design to protect illegal copying. These ‘representations’ could be a drawing, photograph or even a sample – so the books are full of fascinating stuff.

Some of the registration records are available online, notably for the years 1842-1843. Searching on the TNA’s ‘Discovery’ catalogue turns up numerous addresses in York. You might even find someone who lived on your street!

We had already made a link between a printed cotton handkerchief celebrating Queen Victoria’s reign belonging to the Museum and the BT Design Register. This enabled us to find the name of the manufacturer – Aitken Campbell & Co. My blog of 13 October 2013 describes this in more detail.

Now we were looking for matches between the York Castle Museum’s collection of unworn boy’s suits made by the well-known Leeds manufacturer John Barran & Sons. One sailor suit has a bright blue waistcoat with a shawl collar with a Barran’s label printed with the registered Design Number 331385.

This number meant we could make a match with entries in the Board of Trade Register. We were delighted to find that Barran’s had registered a drawing of the waistcoat and the pattern pieces on 23 December 1898. The company was then based in St Paul’s Street, Leeds. This meant that the date of the waistcoat design was earlier than had previously been thought.

 

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 Mary Brooks & Dinah Eastop