Conference
THE CATALOGUE OF DREAMS
KAYS’ MAIL ORDER CATALOGUES & THE DEVELOPMENT OF C20TH ASPIRATIONAL LIVING
DATE: 15 November 2011
Click here for Abstracts & biographies
Catalogue of Dreams, produced as the final major event of the JISC-funded Cataloguing Kays project, was a day-long conference that explored how the imagery and text of the Kays catalogues, 1920-2000, can be used as a prism through which to explore the developing tropes of aspirational living and body image presented to consumers during the 20th century.
The event provided a showcase for research currently underway at the University, for the Kays Archive itself and for the project team’s community engagement programme. It also served as the official launch of www.WorldofKays.org to the academic community.
Papers were presented by Dr Maggie Andrews, Dr Barbara Mitra, Dr Mehreen Mirza and Kate Flynn of the Institute of Humanities & Creative Arts; Clare Weston, Curator of Domestic & Cultural Life at the Black Country Living Museum; and Jenni Waugh, project manger of Cataloguing Kays.
These papers explored the ways in which the Kays Archive can contribute to the study of post-war domesticity; gender representation and ideology; children’s literature; social history and curatorial practice.
During the lunch break, all delegates had the opportunity to view a selection of catalogues from the collection. Much lively debate ensued concerning the relative merits of different household items, toys or fashions through the ages.
Catherine Clarke, from Walsall Museums Service was ‘really pleased to find Walsall-made homewares in the catalogue (such as Gaydon plastics and Old Hall stainless steel) – we knew they were popular but it’s great to see them in a national catalogue.’
27 delegates attended from 14 academic and heritage organisations, representing a wide selection of fields including specialist costume design, cultural studies, fine art, history, business and digital arts. One delegate came all the way from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland.
We received many compliments on the day for the presentation of the conference and the collection itself. One delegate said it was ‘the best conference [they had] attended’. Catherine Clarke again:
‘I think it’s a particularly valid resource for us here at Walsall because of our Hodson Shop collection (the entire unsold stock of a small local shop dealing in working-class women’s clothing and haberdashery).
The styles being sold by Kays seems to back up what we’ve gleaned from our collection that women were determined to look good even though they were on a budget, and how the mass-produced clothing available to them was bright and fashionable, not grey and boring, and every so slightly more modest than haute couture!’
Two doctoral research students stayed on after the conference to carry out research using the Kays Archive.
Dr Barbara Mitra hopes to publish a collection of research papers relating to the Kays Archive in 2012.
SPEAKERS:
Clare Weston, Curator of Domestic & Cultural Life, Black Country Living Museum
‘Stepping out of the Page: Using Kay’s Catalogues to re-create a 3-D historical setting’
CLARE WESTON_presentation & slides
And from the University of Worcester
Dr Maggie Andrews, Associate Head, Institute of Humanities & Creative Arts,
‘Shopping for Identity: Fantasies of Domesticity in post-war Kay’s Catalogues’
MAGGIE ANDREWS_Shopping for Identity slides
Kate Flynn, Graduate Research Student, International Forum for Research in Children’s Literature,
‘Playing Paper People: Catalogues and the Imagination in Jacqueline Wilson’s Waiting for the Sky to Fall (1983) and Eileen Fairweather’s French Letters (1987).’
KATE FLYNN_Playing Paper People slides
Dr Barbara Mitra, Senior Lecturer in Media & Cultural Studies, & Dr Mehreen Mirza, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Institute of Humanities & Creative Arts,
‘Gendered images, gendered ideology: an exploration of gender in the images of Kays Catalogue, 1920-1990′
MITRA & MIRZA_Gendered Images_slides
Jenni Waugh, World of Kays Project Manager, Research Collections, Information & Learning Services,‘Linking catalogues and communities: putting the World of Kays online’
JENNI WAUGH_Digitising the World of Kays
