Seeking Women

Faye Claridge continues to blog about her artist's residency for Shifting Worlds at Ironbridge Gorge Museum with Meadow Arts

"A lot of what I’m looking at in the residency involves the role of women in the Darby family and, therefore, in Quakerism, early education, the iron business and, ultimately, in the Industrial Revolution.

The mothers, wives and sisters in the Darby family were at times shareholders and managers of the works. Diaries show us they were a regular sight in the works, understood the business and are recorded as joint signatories on loans and other business deals. This was in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, years before the wider British fight for (a semblance of) equality. In fact more than 250 years ago there were more women at management level in Coalbrookdale than there are today. Their achievements are extraordinary and can only be understood in the context of the Quaker faith.

As biographer Rachel Labouchere writes: “Quaker women, often with large families, [who travelled]… many thousands of miles away from their husbands and children, always seemed to astonish the world at large, but was accepted in their community and fully understood.” [i]

From the beginnings in the 1650s Quakers (originally called Seekers) believed women were equal in faith and were supported in public speaking and publishing. The Darby women who became ministers travelled extensively to speak at Meetings and either took nursing babies with them or left them behind (with family or staff) for weeks or even months at a time. Their long journeys on horseback were also often undertaken without a male companion.

The Darby women’s involvement in the business largely occurred after a male death and before a male heir was old enough to take over, but even so their involvement wasn’t limited to a caretaker role and some of the developments of workers’ cottages, banking and the brickworks were theirs. I think I’m right in saying it was their ability to take over that maintained the business in the family, as without them at worst the death of the head of the family would have meant selling the business, or at least the balance of ownership would have gone to other partners.

Their abilities had, of course, been developed through education as well as inclusion in business meetings and visits to the works. Again, years ahead of schools for the general public, Quakers supported education of boys and girls and the Darby children were all sent to Friends in what we would now understand as boarding school. By 1718 Abraham Darby II had started building schools for workers’ children and more than a century later, in 1846, Alfred Darby built a very large school with full support and donations from workers, to educate 700 children up to the age of 12.[ii]

The role of the male Darbys as fathers is also touched upon in the Darby diaries, where one notable letter from Abraham Darby to a business associate in 1758 states he might delay their meeting because he wants to be with the children at the time of their (then potentially harmful) smallpox vaccination[iii]. He also almost single-handedly brought up his daughter Hannah after the death of his first wife and the two were very close.

I don’t expect all of this to come across in the work I’m creating, but it’s been interesting to talk to visitors about why I’m embroidering names (or asking them to). Embroidery is a very accessible way into this important story. Visitors will look at the samplers in the collection and, hopefully after meeting me, will see them not just as remarkable works of skill but as symbols of education, empowerment and the joining of domestic and industrial talents."

Shifting Worlds: contemporary art and the Birthplace of Industry is a contemporary art programme produced in a partnership between Meadow Arts and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, funded by Arts Council England.

All exhibited work and events take place at Coalbrookdale, the site of three of the ten exciting and varied museums that make up the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. The museums give a fascinating insight into the people, processes and landscape of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the present day.

www.meadowarts.org

www.ironbridge.org.uk

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[i] P.39 Deborah Darby by Rachel Labouchere, William Sessions Ltd, 1993

[ii] P.263 Dynasty of Iron Founders by Arthur Raistrick, Sessions Book Trust, 1989

[iii] P.83 Abiah Darby by Rachel Labouchere, William Sessions Ltd, 1988

(Not) Burning Bridges

Faye Claridge continues to blog about her artist's residency for Shifting Worlds at Ironbridge Gorge Museum with Meadow Arts

"I’m hoping to do something spectacular with The Ironbridge and as part of planning this I’ve been thinking about the bridge as a symbol of the Industrial Revolution. Bridges are a great symbol of unity, literally linking communities and enabling travel, but do they symbolise revolution?

The phrase ‘burning bridges’ is dramatic, riotous even, which might remind historians of the food riots that affected developing industry in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But this isn’t representative of the vale, where the Quaker Iron Masters saw very small-scale protests, possibly because of the worker allotments and welfare donations already in place along with the belief in fairness regularly demonstrated by the foundry owners.

Rather this bridge – and the company’s other achievements – were born out of stability, family, permanence. Perhaps the problem is the word revolution, which the Oxford dictionary defines as a “forcible overthrow”. Its origins are only slightly more helpful, developing from an old term to turn which at a push we might dramatize as a cranking up.

The aims of the Darby foundry owners appear broadly to have been to innovate and improve, certainly not to revolt. As their biographer Rachel Labouchereputs in, they wanted “innovations… that would improve conditions for mankind” [i]. They left a huge legacy, which could be symbolised so many ways. Beyond their technological advancements, reading the Darby family diaries reveals so many visitors who go on and further influence many others – like Cadbury, Lloyds, Nash, Darwin, Fry, Cash – and I even wonder whether Prince Charles’ vision of Poundbury (where workers, business and services co-exist) was affected by his many visits and role as Patron of the gorge museums.

These connections – and so many more – make the bridge even more poignant as a symbol. It’s interesting as a work of engineering, it’s important as the world’s first iron bridge, it’s vital as a focus for cash-bringing tourism, it’s heartening as a symbol of continuing industry in the vale. But it’s strongest for me now as a symbol of the Darbys and the way their business, family and faith linked and the way their innovations made iron affordable enough to catapult industrial design all over the world.

They were a bridge between the rural and the industrial, the past and the future. And like all bridges (that aren’t burnt in revolution) they link so we can travel in both directions."

Shifting Worlds: contemporary art and the Birthplace of Industry is a contemporary art programme produced in a partnership between Meadow Arts and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, funded by Arts Council England.

All exhibited work and events take place at Coalbrookdale, the site of three of the ten exciting and varied museums that make up the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. The museums give a fascinating insight into the people, processes and landscape of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the present day.

www.meadowarts.org

www.ironbridge.org.uk

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[1] P.37 Deborah Darby by Rachel Labouchere, William Sessions Ltd, 1993

Shared Names

Faye Claridge continues to blog about her artist's residency for Shifting Worlds at Ironbridge Gorge Museum with Meadow Arts

"The second part of my Aga visit was at the Ketley works, on the edge of Telford, where the iron created and moulded in Coalbrookdale is painted and assembled with other parts to (mainly) make cookers. The operation is large and varied and a more diverse workforce of men and women use widely different skills here, from metal shaping to graphic design.

In the paint spaying section I was interested to see a sudden change from black branded polo shirts (now ubiquitous in business) to pure white overalls, each sewn with the individual name of its wearer.

For months I’ve been gathering names (from the present and the past near-endless Darby network of Quaker Friends, fellow innovators, employees etc) and I’ve been sewing these in reference to the samplers in the museum collection. So seeing embroidered names, in Aga, in the works made famous by the Darby family I’m researching, was a very pleasant shock.

Beyond this initial surprise, I’m curious about these uniforms, the way they differentiate these employees from the other strata (mainly made up of black polo shirt factory floor or own clothes in the office or call centre) and the significance of wearing an embroidered name. I may be getting hung up on the details here, but I’m certain being given a jacket embroidered with your name feels very different to being given a clip-on name badge. It has a permanence, it shows personal investment, it’s something you could be proud of. It’s individual.

Yet the story I’m focussing on keeps slipping strangely between individual and family or group identity. The innovations that led to the Industrial Revolution in Coalbrookdale were led by three men with the same name. This wasn’t peculiar to them of course, they lived at a time when first sons were habitually named after their fathers and, usually, followed their father’s business. But it’s convenient for their story told in retrospect to have this obvious link across the three generations. It’s also very telling of how we mythologise individuals, especially when further reading tells you there were more children in the family named Abraham Darby whose stories are little know and there were other partners in the business whose contributions were as great as the three main protagonists. But does it matter there are three Abrahams rather than one in the story when we talk about the Darbys as stereotypes of Quaker faith or industrial innovation? Perhaps stereotype is too harsh a word, when museums, historians, story-tellers inevitably have to simplify stories and find the main themes that will interest a present-day audience. I started this series of blogs saying how much we like to have a face for historical stories but it’s equally true we cling to names (and dates).

The Quaker burial ground above Dale House shows the Darby believers not at odds with us in this. Their tiny grave stones show just that: names and dates, nothing more. They deliberately reveal the bare minimum which, in itself, reveals (or confirms our understanding of) their non-conformist desire for simplicity. In this context the name is all-important, at its simplest to locate and at its broadest to commemorate. Visitors can see where Darbys lie and learn almost nothing of the individual but get a sense of their modest place as a tiny piece in a large and complex story."

Shifting Worlds: contemporary art and the Birthplace of Industry is a contemporary art programme produced in a partnership between Meadow Arts and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, funded by Arts Council England.

All exhibited work and events take place at Coalbrookdale, the site of three of the ten exciting and varied museums that make up the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. The museums give a fascinating insight into the people, processes and landscape of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the present day.

www.meadowarts.org

www.ironbridge.org.uk

Hot Work

Faye Claridge continues to blog about her artist's residency for Shifting Worlds at Ironbridge Gorge Museum with Meadow Arts

"Through research and residencies I’m very lucky to visit a wide range of places, but I’m willing to admit the Aga works were a bit of a shock.

Ponderous artists seldom work in places with potentially dangerous air quality, noise levels and lack of natural light.

The Coalbrookdale foundry is a place where hard, heavy, noisy, dirty work takes place. It’s an environment that’s uncommonly stressful on the senses, where workers have to be protected in some areas with breathing apparatus, fireproof suits, visors, ear defenders… you get the picture.

Yet there’s a really strong affection for the place. This is partly due its history as so many generations have worked foundries here from even before Abraham Darby’s arrival in 1709. But it’s also due to the nature of the work itself, described slightly reluctantly by the current manager as “a bit macho”. “It doesn’t suit everyone,” he tells me, possibly as a friendly jibe to the ridiculousness of me turning up for a tour in flip-flops and dress (soon rectified with borrowed overalls and boots).

Debbie (the only female employee at the foundry) describes the sound of the works as “a heartbeat” and says it doesn’t feel right when it’s quieter.

“Everybody hates it when machines are broken or away for repair,” someone else tells me. “The men want to be busy and they like to work hard.” It’s interesting that at the moment there are more job vacancies next-door at the museum than there are in the foundry."

Faye Claridge: Shifting Worlds artist residency, Ironbridge Gorge Museums, June-December 2015

Twitter @fayeclaridge or email info@fayeclaridge.co.uk and on Pinterest

Shifting Worlds: contemporary art and the Birthplace of Industry is a contemporary art programme produced in a partnership between Meadow Arts and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, funded by Arts Council England.

All exhibited work and events take place at Coalbrookdale, the site of three of the ten exciting and varied museums that make up the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. The museums give a fascinating insight into the people, processes and landscape of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the present day.

www.meadowarts.org

www.ironbridge.org.uk

On being “unknown”

Faye Claridge continues to blog about her artist's residency for Shifting Worlds at Ironbridge Gorge Museum with Meadow Arts

"Visitors have been busy suggesting names that could be embroidered (sampler style) onto the portraits I’m planning to make at Dale House. I was excited to find many names for me to collect and then was intrigued to find a comment posted among the nominations. The slip of paper with its simple two sentences spoke powerfully of a respect and passion for the portrayal of early Quakers in Coalbrookdale.

A comment left by a visitor to Dale House

I hope I’m right in taking it as a piece of guidance – please do not trivialise – rather than a criticism – you have trivialised - as hearing visitor fears for the project is a rare and useful thing. I also hope it will become apparent to this visitor and many others that I plan to do precisely the opposite of trivialising. By highlighting the lack of physical portraits I aim to show the inescapable importance of portraiture and, therefore, the strength of the early Coalbrookdale Quakers’ decisions not to be remembered in this way.

In modern language we might say we’re obsessed with appearance but back in 1854 the philosopher Thomas Carlyle was already arguing the search for a portrait in historical research had long been a “primary want”, adding that historians will: “search eagerly for a portrait, for all the reasonable portraits there are, and never rest till he has made out, if possible, what a man’s natural face was like. Often I have found a portrait superior in real instruction to half-a-dozen written biographies…”

By coincidence, just before discovering the visitor comment I found an excerpt from this Carlyle letter in a book of Quaker silhouettes, collected by the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Costume Project as a guide to Quaker clothing. Seeing August Edouart’s silhouettes for the first time I was astonished by their ability to capture personality and movement. The details omitted in the hand-cut method are more than compensated for in his style of grouping families, creating narratives and capturing figures in a point of motion (which light-needy photography at the time could not achieve).

I realise this needs to be a more significant visual reference for me than the oil paintings and early photographs that would be my usual calling place for material. Categorised by the book’s authors as a ‘folk art’ silhouette creation also sits better with the uneasy relationship with (self) representation explored by Quakers. As Anna Cox Brinton wrote: “Friends belonging to the first generation of Quakerism consistently refused to have their portraits drawn or painted. They preferred to be remembered by their deeds, preserved in their journals, in the meeting records or prefixed to early Quaker publications...". Despite all the evidence, context and writings about faith, such is the importance of portraiture that a legend in Coalbrookdale persists that from a certain angle a profile of Abraham Darby III can be seen in the ironwork beneath the iron bridge he created. I love what this reveals about our relationship to the bridge and the characters in its history, but I’m also wary of the unintended disrespect it implies. Although I am certain the myth that he cast a secret portrait of himself is untrue it feels harsh to denounce its believers, who see this modest-living man created a publicity statement of global impact. It was useful, egalitarian and fundraising, but undeniably also a big business promotion and in the Darby’s operations this allows for a minor contradiction as they united business and family, though trying to promote one and remain modest with the other.

In the museum collection at Rosehill House we see a number of portraits that could also confuse visitors being told early Quakers eschewed portraiture, but modesty remains apparent with silhouettes and miniatures evidently created as personal keepsakes rather than as public exhibits communicating status or wealth. The striking exception in the collection is the grand coat of arms (in tapestry and on dinnerware) favoured by Francis Darby (1783-1850), son of the iron bridge creator. This exception – as all exceptions – is exciting of course as it shows the importance and scope of the unexceptional, the very many generations who, as my anonymous visitor put it “chose to be ‘unknown’ physically”. I hope through the residency much more of the unknown can be highlighted, to show the important gaps, the reasons for them and how these fuel myths and characterisations."

Faye Claridge: Industry and the Artist residency, Ironbridge Gorge Museums, June-December 2015

Twitter @fayeclaridge or email info@fayeclaridge.co.uk and on Pinterest

Shifting Worlds: contemporary art and the Birthplace of Industry is a contemporary art programme produced in a partnership between Meadow Arts and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, funded by Arts Council England.

All exhibited work and events take place at Coalbrookdale, the site of three of the ten exciting and varied museums that make up the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. The museums give a fascinating insight into the people, processes and landscape of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the present day.

www.meadowarts.org

www.ironbridge.org.uk