Following on with my archive research I also discovered that there were pieces from Edmund Potter & Co at the Whitworth Art Gallery archives.
After booking in an appointment at the archive I was able to view quite a few of the lengths of fabric that had been left to the Whitworths' collection.
The oldest piece in the collection is this - Fanfare of Fashions, designed by Walter Crane.
Crane designed this for Edmund Potter & co to print , to be displayed at the Royal jubilee Exhibition in 1887, Manchester.
As well as the Crane textiles there are a collection of 23 textiles from DVP, dated 1946.
These are 23 fabric lengths, approx 1-2 metres in length. All from the same collection as they have the exact same date on their ID tag. These were prints that had been produced whilst in the CPA, so it is quite nice to see that some had been labelled and we are able to identify them as being printed at DVP.
Here is an example of one of the textiles with it's ID label.
Amongst the designs from 1946, there were large motifs in bright colours , these were produced for the West Coast of Africa market. There were many floral prints which of course were made for the English market and then some small repeats that were made for the Australian market. Out of the 23 textiles I was only able to look at about 6-8 pieces in the time slot. Only the above print is photographed and logged on the archive catalogue. I would need to arrange another appointment to have a deeper look into the rest of the collection.
As some of the local community worked at the DVP at this time it would be interesting to see if they recognised any of the pieces that are in the Whitworths collection.
This research trip was part of my DYCP project: Print & Place, and funded by Art's Council England.
