Introducing Dinah Eastop
Our first keynote speaker on Wednesday 26 August will be Dinah Eastop, Honorary Senior Lecturer at UCL who many will know of as the founding Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Textile Conservation and Textile Studies and formerly a senior lecturer at the Textile Conservation Centre at Winchester.
Dinah’s research spans textile conservation, preservation and presentation and at In the Loop 4 in Glasgow she will speaking on the subject of ‘Innovation in knit design, copyright and online exploration’ which straddles many of the issues to be considered by papers at the conference, from authenticity to the digital revolution.
The abstract for the lecture is below
Evidence of innovation in knit design and commerce is provided by an extraordinary but little known set of archival records: the Board of Trade Representations and Registers of Designs, 1839-1991. These records are held at The National Archives [of the UK government] and contain details of nearly 3 million registered designs. This registration scheme encouraged investment in design by enabling copyright control over both ornamental and useful designs, for many materials and products. The Registers include the written records of design-registration and include the date of registration, the name and address of the person or firm registering the design (within the UK and beyond), and sometimes the name given to the design or product. The designs are represented by a sample of the product or by a drawing, photograph or tracing. The BT Design Register includes samples of knitting, as well as several beautiful watercolours of designs for knitted garments. The written records for each design registered between 1842-1883/4 have been transcribed and made available online. Several designs (including knitted gloves) have been presented online as polynomial texture maps (PTM) which provide a user-friendly way of studying such textured material. This paper introduces the BT Design Register, focusing on knit-related designs (including knitted samples and artefacts)and those who registered them for copyright protect ion. It will be illustrated with knit-related designs registered by proprietors based in Scotland.
Please don’t forget to register for In the Loop 4 in Glasgow 26-28 August. Early-bird registration closes on 10 July.
You can register online at http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-the-loop-conference-2015-craft-to-couture-tickets-16860979644?ref=ebtnebtckt