This was the first Christmas meeting of our new Textile Group and after a convivial lunch (despite having to bring our own) we were then introduced to the surprise speaker, Ros Liddington, Archivist at Wilton House (an English country house near Salisbury, which has been the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years).
Ros’s talk was entitled “Lost in the Cloud” and the premise of her talk was that we are encouraged to do everything on-line and to ditch the physical. What do you do if you have lots of things. Of stuff. Can the Cloud and your stuff co-exist.
Ros had been a history teacher for many years and working with Wilton House had collected many artefacts and costumes for use in schools, plus lots of fabrics and costumes during 20 years involvement with the Salisbury Playhouse. Coming from a family of makers, she also inherited items from relatives (including her mother’s entire workroom) and all this “stuff” she suspects is her daughters’ worst nightmare. She admitted to having somewhere between 1500 to 2,000 sewing patterns alone.