■ LAST SUMMER I NIPPED into London’s Southbank Centre to get directions. Turning back towards the exit, I was faced by an internal wall on which hung a huge patchwork. Ten squares high and ten wide, with each patch a foot square (30cm), the piece filled the width of the wall and extended upwards to the next floor. Hard to miss an object of such size, but it was not something I remembered seeing before. My original destination was forgotten. The focus now was the Patchwork of the Century. One hundred squares. One for every year from 1851 to 1950. Each patch hand-sewn with an image of an event, achievement or figure associated with a specific year. Some squares were embroidered, most a combination of stitch and appliqué. Images varied in style but shared a graphic quality in their simple, identifiable shapes: a Remington typewriter (1873), a writing slate (1891), a belisha crossing (1933), an ARP warden (1941). The patchwork had the feel of a cloth book, its pages laid out vertically, with the 1851 Great Exhibition and the 1951 Festival of Britain acting as bookends. Themes rippled across the decades: war, innovation, entertainment, social reform. Time laid out in this manner seemed to somehow bring it within grasp. Free education, Votes for Women, state pensions, the founding of the NHS, and the BBC. Each was noted as a milestone. A century suddenly seemed no time at all. I left wanting to know more about the work and its maker. The display label and venue website provided basic information, including a key for each square. It was a start. Tracing the story of an object can itself be a patchwork process, as snippets of information from various sources are first gathered, and then pieced together. The artefact, collection information, contemporary reports, publications: fragment by fragment, a picture was formed.
The
Patchwork
of
the
Century
was designed by Lilian Dring (1908-1998) for Women of the Century, a Festival of Britain exhibition at York House, Twickenham, that she also curated. Opened by Dame Sybil Thorndike, the exhibition traced the history of women’s political and social advancement through pictures, photographs, models, textiles and dress. The patchwork was Dring’s initiative, a communal project in which she worked with 80 members of women’s groups in Twickenham, Teddington and Hampton over a period of two months. Each square was worked separately using recycled
fabric, then assembled together by Dring. The variety of hands involved is apparent in the stitching and several individual designs. Dring’s own hand is equally evident. She made four squares. The first and last are known to be hers, while the 1926 General Strike block has a resonance with
Parable
I
(1941), an earlier work acquired by the Needlework Development Scheme that is now held by National Museums Scotland.