FRAGMENT OF A DRESS
Image: Fragment of a Dress. Detail. Courtesy of Hannah Lamb.
‘My mother was a seamstress…I still have a wool coat she wore often. When I wear it, I feel her hugging me.’
‘When I was nineteen, I had a short black dress with a big black satin collar. It was very short, and I loved it.’
Textile artist Hannah Lamb was recently commissioned by the Brontë Parsonage Museum, once the home of the Brontë family, to create an installation inspired by its current exhibition Defying Expectations: Inside Charlotte Bronte's Wardrobe.
The brightly coloured, fashionable, even exotic, items in this exhibition challenge preconceptions of Brontë as her famous protagonist, Jane Eyre. Rather, these twenty or so pieces of Charlotte’s clothing and accessories offer an intimate insight into both her domestic and literary lives, and remind us that she was an active participant of fast-changing mid-nineteenth century society.
At the heart of Defying Expectations is a striped evening dress. Over the last six years, Dr Eleanor Houghton has conducted painstaking research to establish the dress as Charlotte’s, and it is exhibited here for the first time.
Image: Fragment of a Dress. Detail. Courtesy of Hannah Lamb.
But it was small fragments of cloth that inspired Hannah Lamb. Approached by the museum with a very open commission brief, Lamb’s starting point was the collection’s digital catalogue. Lamb was surprised to find so many items of textile and, she says, “as I looked at the catalogue entries, I noticed quite a number listed as 'fragments': D107.1 - fragment of woollen textile; D119.1 - fragment of bodice; D119.2 - fragment of a dress.” Unlike many museums, where the priority is often collecting the best quality specimens, here any tiny morsel connected to the Brontës was venerated. Lamb began to consider the idea of scraps of cloth being kept as souvenirs, and the power they hold to conjure something of the wearer. “How this might translate to the present day?” Lamb wondered, “Do we still venerate special clothes?” Lamb began to consider how, despite living in a world of fast-fashion and disposability, many of us keep hold of things that help us remember people, places, and moments in time.
Over two weeks, in June 2022, she invited the museum’s visitors to tell her about a piece of clothing that was special to them. The resulting stories were heart-warming, joyful, and often deeply touching. The responses recalled everyday favourites— ‘My grey hoodie…It helps keep me warm when I am out walking the dog’ —as well as items worn on special occasions— ‘1920’s Chinese silk lounge dress… subsequently refashioned into a short cloak,’ and ‘My purple and black wedding skirt and corset, handmade by myself’.
Image: Fragment of a Dress. Detail. Courtesy of Hannah Lamb.
Lamb noted the many mentions of handmade items, as well as items repurposed and adapted from vintage materials: “As a maker myself, I found it touching to hear the stories of special handmade things. Growing up in a family where clothes were often handmade out of economy, another that really resonated was this— ‘A shop bought dress given to me as a child. My Grandmother was a tailor, and all my clothes were home-made. I wore the dress until it fell to pieces.’ It highlights that we often value most whatever is rare to us.”
Mindful that home dressmaking, up-cycling, and the repurposing of materials would have been commonplace in the time of the Brontës, Lamb recruited students from Bradford School of Art to help embroider fragments of the stories she had collected from the museum’s visitors onto fabric pieces, eventually creating a Fragment of a Dress, in a mid-19th century silhouette. This, Lamb tells us, was both an artistic and a practical solution:
“Creating site-specific work for heritage locations requires some creative thinking; nothing can be fixed to the walls, ceiling, floor... my solution was to create something that could be free-standing, or in this case supported on a mannequin. The practical planning also happened alongside researching fashions of the Brontë era and generally obsessing over the mid-19th century silhouette. My aim with 'Fragment of a Dress' was not to create an authentic period piece, but to capture something of that era translated through my own artistic filter. Keen-eyed costume historians will notice that the crinoline cage is slightly late for the period— becoming fashionable just after Charlotte Brontë's death —but I felt the need to give the dress support without adding further layers of fabric, so this is a bit of artistic license. I hadn't originally planned this element, but it was interesting to make my own crinoline from scratch.”
Image: Fragment of a Dress. Detail. Courtesy of Hannah Lamb.
Of her process and materials, Lamb says, ”I love to work with transparent and translucent materials. They allow me to bring light into my work, and I was keen to make use of the light from the beautiful arched window in the Servants' Room, where the piece was to be displayed. The light through the silk organza dress gives it a ghostly quality, allowing the embroidered stories to 'float' in thin air.
The volume of words to be stitched meant that I needed help, and I was so grateful to have a great group of my students volunteer on the project. Together, we sat and stitched, mainly by hand, with each person taking a story and faithfully rendering the words onto cloth. There was something very special about stitching together. The rhythm brought a deep sense of engagement and great camaraderie. Our thoughts frequently turned to the stories we were stitching.”
Image: At work on the piece. Photo courtesy of Anna Kornatovska.
For some of Lamb’s volunteers this was a special experience: "It felt a privilege; the words were intimate and meaningful"; "It was moving to think that I was entrusted with someone's thoughts."
Fragment of a Dress will be on display in the Servants Room of the Brontë Parsonage Museum until the end of December, 2022. Admission to the exhibition is free with entry to the museum, but the pre-booking of tickets is strongly advised.
When the exhibition closes, Fragment of a Dress will be returned to Hannah Lamb, who has further ambitions for the piece. “There are so many other ideas I would like to explore with this work. One of the things I plan to do is deconstruct the piece, so that it becomes a set of fragments again. I love the thought that I might be able to make souvenir fragments from the work.”