Threads of Feeling - The Foundling Museum

Textile token of foundling 12058 - seen here

I finally got to see Threads of Feeling at The Foundling Museum in London today, an exhibition of textile tokens left with the babies given up for adoption to The Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century. Little snippets of ribbon, fabric, garments, embroidery, cockades and top knots which were kept with the details of the child's admission as a means of identification should the mother find herself able to reclaim her child at a future time.

I found it an emotional experience. It is hard to imagine another gesture that so clearly evokes the power invested in an object as the giving over of these harrowingly inadequate scraps. Each entry is recorded meticulously and anonymously, although sometimes the scrap is accompanied by a letter or is marked or sewn with a name and other personal details. The fabrics look as fresh and vivid as the day they were pinned to the billet in many instances which brings one up short. Not fragile, dusty relics of history, reassuringly distant and time-worn but bright, tangible reminders of the real people and the real stories that they embody.

Threads of Feeling - The Foundling Museum

Worckt with flowers - Linen or cotton embroidered with flowers© Coram - seen here

An exhibition at The Foundling Museum in London's Bloomsbury called Threads of Feeling opens on 14 October. The Foundling Museum tells the story of the Foundling Hospital which was established adjacent to the current museum and demolished in 1928. The hospital came into being as London's first home for abandoned children, a place where unmarried mothers could leave their babies if they were unable to take care of them. 

Between 1741 and 1759 the children admitted to the hospital were left with a token, often a small scrap of fabric which identified them with the mother. Perhaps taken from the mother's clothing - a pocket or a cuff - it served to identify the baby but also the mother should she be able at some future time to come back for her child; but sadly this was apparently a relatively rare occurrence. The little swatches were pinned into a billet book along with a written record of the fabric and possessions of the child.

Threads of Feeling is an exhibition of these little scraps which are usually held in London Metropolitan Archive being too fragile for permanent display. This archive actually constitutes one of the country's most comprehensive collection of 18th Century textiles and gives a particular insight into the fabrics worn by everyday women of the period.

The incredible poignancy of these little tokens, the emotions that must have been invested at that moment of farewell; in that decision to give a child into another's care, are hard to look to. I am sure that the exhibition will be an emotional experience. The show continues until March 2011. 

Flowered all over with cards - Cotton or linen   

printed with a playing card pattern © Coram - seen here

Mat Collishaw, Tracey Emin & Paula Rego: At the Foundling

Mat Collishaw - Children of a Lesser God - seen here

I hope I get a chance to see this show at the Foundling Museum in London, it's on until 9 May. The museum memorialises Britain's first home for abandoned children. These three artists have not shown together before, but their themes and subject matter sit particularly well in this context. The Museum has a history of working with artists to highlight the plight of vulnerable children and mothers begun by William Hogarth in the 18th Century.

Here's a Guardian video about the show.