1 Walthamstow Football Club home shirt with ‘Yare’ design, 2023
Sam Nicklin
“We have some glorious examples of William Morris pieces in the V&A collection. Mark Clack, founder of the Walthamstow artist collective Wood Street Walls, initiated an amazing collaboration between the east London borough’s football club and the William Morris Gallery to design a new team kit that adapts John Henry Dearle’s 1892 Yare for Morris & Co.
As a lifelong supporter of another north-London team, it slightly galls me to say that this the only football shirt that I have ever coveted. I think it’s brilliant that revenue from its sales is going towards setting up a women’s team at the club.”
2Golden Harvest furnishing fabric, 1959, Althea McNish/Hull Traders
Amelia Calver
“The trailblazer Althea McNish created the print for Golden Harvest in her Tottenham studio, drawing on her African Caribbean heritage and signature vibrant use of colour and pattern for the design, which became a bestseller. We’ve included a sample of it alongside groundbreaking ballet costumes by Leigh Bowery, opera set designs by Derek Jarman and furniture by Eileen Gray in a section called ‘Breaking Boundaries’. Here, we celebrate the creatives who have pushed their disciplines in new directions, often dismantling barriers of gender, race and class.”
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3Urania (portrait of Lubaina Himid), from the series ‘Zabat’, 1989, Maud Sulter
Jaron James
“The Ghanian Scottish photographer Maud Sulter has said of her creative practice: ‘It’s important for me as an individual, and obviously as a Black woman artist, to put Black women back in the centre of the frame.’ In this striking portrait of Lubaina Himid, Sulter challenged exclusions and colonial representations of Black women in European art histories. The golden frame and staging echo grand historic European portraits, while Himid wears a West African à dìrẹ (tied and dyed) cloth garment. So many things to love in a single work.”
4Captain Hook armchair from the series ‘If Chairs Could Talk’, 2015, Yinka Ilori
Sam Nicklin
“This chair by the lovely Yinka Ilori is a tribute to one of his London school friends and explores a Nigerian Yoruba parable about destiny and not judging others. The coat hanger symbolises his friend’s struggles of being ‘left to hang’ when young, before thankfully overcoming neglect to turn their life around – I find both this, and the colours and fabrics Ilori has used, immensely uplifting.”
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5Gown, 1744; silk design by Anna Maria Garthwaite
Sarah Duncan
“In 1730, the Lincolnshire-born textile designer Anna Maria Garthwaite moved to the capital to establish herself in the Spitalfields silk-weaving district. She was self-taught and one of a few women designers to become commercially successful in an industry dominated by men. I think this gown is exquisite. Her decorative pattern pushed aesthetic conventions of the time away from heavy, abstract florals to more realistic flowers – she was a true pioneer. East London has continued to attract generations of fashion innovators over centuries and more than 250 years later, it would become the location of my own late brother [Joe]’s first significant studio – and so it remains a place that is close to my heart.”
6 Reunion VI: Underneath the Surface (2021–22) by Bisila Noha
Sam Nicklin
“I adore ceramics and have always made close attachments to the creators that I have worked with. These two beautiful new acquisitions by Bisila Noha, who’s based locally, celebrate the ‘un-named women of clay’ traditionally overlooked in histories of ceramic art. Inspired by the Ivorian potter Kouame Kakahá’s work, the shapes of these vessels suggest bodies.”
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