16th DECEMBER 2020 at 6pm
A talk by Jennifer Wearden
The Victoria & Albert Museum and the Science Museum began life as ‘The South Kensington Museum’, a product of The Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1899 the decorative arts were separated from the sciences and the V&A was born. This talk will describe how and why the South Kensington Museum began to collect oriental carpets and it will give you an overview of the almost 200 carpets it acquired between 1876 and 1899.
Jennifer Wearden was Senior Curator (Textiles) in the V&A’s Department of Furniture, Textiles & Fashion until 2005. She is the author of Oriental Carpets and their Structure: Highlights from the V&A Collection (V&A Publications 2003) and is now a Year Course Director in the V&A’s Academy, devising and delivering courses on the history of textiles and dress.