An Altered Chronology
The Barbara Sawyer Archive, is unlike many others held at the Archives and Special Collection centre.
When I was cataloguing the collection, I had to consider how to preserve its 'original order'. Preservation of ‘original order’ is a key archival principle. But it raises interesting questions when trying to apply it in practice. Particularly so, in the case of Barbara Sawyer.
Material in the archive can be placed in clear chronological contexts relating to the artist’s life. These are Sawyer’s student works, documents relating to her teaching practice, and her artistic practice. It was possible to work this out because she often dated her work or wrote her address on the folders which corresponded to where she was living during different stages of her career.
Blurred time frames
However, the divide between these time frames is blurred by Sawyer’s reuse of work she had made. Sawyer kept key pieces of work from her own time as a student. She then reused them later, to teach her students. These archival items start to transcend time periods. Or, they exist simultaneously in different chronological narratives.
This altered chronology posed a challenge when cataloguing the archive. The resulting archival arrangement placed items in the time period that they were most recently used in.
For example, 'ODD Notes Fabric Structure' (seen below) is a folder of material used for teaching. As well as handwritten lecture notes there are also copies of notes and weave lifting plans made by Sawyer when she was a student. So this item straddles chronologies and is now catalogued with other teaching materials.
Barbara Sawyer at Camberwell
Barbara Sawyer (1919 - 1982) was a professional weaver and Associate Lecturer in Textiles at Camberwell College of Art from 1950 to her death in 1982 at the age of 63.
In her role as Associate Lecturer, she was heavily involved in the creating of the curriculum of textile at Camberwell. She was also responsible for bringing in visiting lectures or ad-hoc lecturers. For this, she invited other prominent weavers from her professional network.
The thirty-two years Sawyer spent at Camberwell were arguably the most important in her career, as it was her longest time spent in a teaching post.
Student Work as Teaching Materials
There were several items in the collection which posed a challenge during the cataloguing phase. This is because when they were made and the context for which they were used did not match up.
As in the above image, yarn sample pages made by Sawyer as a student in the 1940s were mixed in a folder of typed teaching materials relating to Camberwell College of Art dated between 1960 to 1980.
These clearly show Sawyer using her past knowledge to inform her present practice.
A Teaching Collection
After Sawyer’s death in 1982 her office was cleared. The contents found its way into the teaching collection at Camberwell College of Art’s Conservation programme.
The collection was used by students to learn about textile and paper conservation including writing condition reports, building custom storage boxes, cleaning and mounting artworks.
As such, the conservation course at Camberwell has a lasting mark on the collection with many of the objects being kept in purpose-built boxes with student names marked on them.
Recognising the intervention of Conservation students on the archive is important. Not only for institutional memory, but also the use of the Barbara Sawyer collection for teaching was fitting. Reuse was a concept which aligned with Barbara Sawyer’s teaching practice.
Accessing the archive
You can access the Barbara Sawyer Archive in person at the Archives and Special Collections Centre, UAL or Online.
The entire catalogue can be found at on our archive catalogue
A portion of the archive is also digitised on the UAL Digital Collections website.
To view the archive in person, you can book an appointment, please contact us at archive-enquiries@arts.ac.uk.