Waste and Wasted Opportunity: Utilizing Archive Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Inform Contemporary Sustainability
By Hannah Auerbach George
DOI: 10.38055/FST030103
MLA: Auerbach George, Hannah. “Waste and Wasted Opportunity: Utilizing Archive Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Inform Contemporary Sustainability.” Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2024, 1-29. 10.38055/FST030103.
APA: Auerbach George, H. (2024). Waste and Wasted Opportunity: Utilizing Archive Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Inform Contemporary Sustainability. Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies, 3(1), 1-29. 10.38055/FST030103.
Chicago: Auerbach George, Hannah. “Waste and Wasted Opportunity: Utilizing Archive Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Inform Contemporary Sustainability.” Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies 3, no. 1 (2004): 1-29. 10.38055/FST030103.
Special Issue Volume 3, Issue 1, Article 3
keywords
Waste
Shoddy
Recycling
Sustainability
Material Resources
Victoria and Albert Museum
abstract
This paper explores forgotten material histories and how they can be harnessed to inform sustainable textile design and help us to combat our current climate crisis. Two now defunct collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)—the Animal Products collection and the Waste Products collection—provide an insight into ideas around waste, resource, and sustainability in Victorian Britain. These archival collections contain resources and technologies designed to tackle problems such as material shortages and wasted by-products that warrant reinvestigation. The research for this paper was developed in three stages: first, the collections were surveyed to quantify and build a complete picture of their contents; second, the background and motivations of the display’s curator, Peter Lund Simmonds, were investigated to further understand Victorian ideas around waste and material potential; and third, shoddy was identified as a case study to further understand the contemporaneous significance of the displays. Despite the prevalence of the shoddy industry, few examples survive in museum collections today. However, this research demonstrates that the V&A’s collection once held numerous examples of shoddy and examines why these materials were deaccessioned and destroyed. Shoddy manufacturing processes and societal attitudes are explored to further understand these curatorial decisions decipher lessons for contemporary textile recycling from this historical paradigm.
Introduction
There is an increasing interest in how forgotten material histories can be harnessed to inform sustainable textile design and help us to combat our current climate crisis. As Helena Britt denotes, “archives and collections exist as repositories of the past, containing artifacts and materials awaiting reactivation in order to discover new meaning” (Britt, 2019, p. 151). Amy Twigger Holroyd, Jennifer Farley Gordon, and Colleen Hill concur, stating that “stories from history carry radical potential, as understanding of past cultures can be of great help in imagining fundamentally different ways of fashioning our identities in the future” (2023, p. 473). Past societies have developed myriad solutions, technologies, and industries in response to material shortages, such as those explored by cultural historian Emily Cockayne in her book Rummage (2020), but many of these have been lost to time. By investigating these historical examples of reuse and reframing them in a contemporary context, we can identify possible solutions to our present-day difficulties.
Two now defunct collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)—the Animal Products collection and the Waste Products collection—provide insights into ideas around waste, resource, and sustainability in Victorian Britain and offer new interpretations of our modern consumption habits.[1] Objects displayed as part of the Animal and Waste Products collection between 1855 and 1928 included textiles made from waste wool and rags, jewelry made from human hair, and accessories made from unconventional materials such as “a pair of cuffs, hand-spun and knitted from the hair of French poodle dogs” (Simmonds, 1860, p. 21). This paper will investigate the origin and demise of the displays, the motivations of their custodian, Peter Lund Simmonds (1814-1897), and draw parallels with more current practices around utilizing waste. The industry and culture surrounding shoddy, a key exhibit in these collections, is explored, and its forgotten prevalence amongst the V&A’s textile objects revealed.
[1] These collections were also referred to as ‘The Collection of Animal Products’ and the ‘The Collection Illustrating the Utilization of Waste Products’ but will be referred to as the Animal and Waste Products collections in this paper.
Despite devoting his life’s work to the topic and publishing widely on waste and related subjects, Simmonds is scarcely remembered beyond a small number of present day historians, who include Cooper (2011), Desrochers (2009), and Greysmith (1990). His writings, which included 27 books, magazines, and numerous journal articles, foreshadowed many of our present ideas around the importance of material circularity (Greysmith, 2008, p. 3). Simmonds asserted that all materials should be wholly utilized and believed that waste streams represented opportunities to generate new resources. Through his curation, he strove to educate the public about the diversity of materials that could be produced from animal and waste sources, as well as to create a working catalogue of potential materials for industrial manufacturers.
Simmonds focused heavily on wool throughout his curatorial practice, in virgin form and as the waste material ‘shoddy.’
Despite its prevalence as a fabric, notably few examples of shoddy remain in museum collections. A search of the V&A online database yields no examples of shoddy currently held by the museum, yet, as this paper will demonstrate, there were at one time multiple examples of shoddy in the museum’s collections.
Methodology
This research was developed in three stages: first, the collections were surveyed to quantify and build a complete picture of their contents; second, the background and motivations of the display’s curators were investigated; and third, shoddy was identified as a case study to further understand the contemporaneous significance of the displays. Simmonds’ involvement and the formation of the collections is complex, so a timeline has been created for context (See Fig. 1).
Figure 1
Timeline showing key events in the history of the Animal and Waste Products collection. Auerbach George, H. (2024).
By 1928, 73 years after their original formation, the collections had been disbanded, deaccessioned, and destroyed. As will be later discussed, reasons for this included changing public interests and the physical disintegration of the exhibits, identified by an internal museum committee tasked with reviewing the collections (V&A Archive, 1928a). Therefore, research into the collections relies heavily on surviving written catalogues and records. Newspaper records and the writings of several social historians of the period, such as Walter White (1811–1893), were used to establish a wider context for materials within the collections.
Because of the collections’ changing nature (the displays were continuously edited and added to over more than half a century), identifying a definitive list of objects is challenging; there are several registers and incomplete digitized records from different periods in the collection’s history. Some objects were absorbed into other departments across the V&A and assigned new object numbers in the process, therefore identifying them is not straightforward. Additionally, the Waste Products collection is better described as a subsidiary of the broader Animal Products collection and therefore never had its own numbering system, further complicating the identification process. In response to this, a bespoke approach to surveying the object catalogues was developed to try fully capture the contents of the collections. The results are visualized in the graph in Figure 2.[2] First, the scope of the collections was established using the original collection registers in the V&A Archive. This survey indicated a total of 19,388 objects, 16,662 of which were part of the Animal Products collection and 2,726 from the Waste Products collection. Next, the digitized object catalogue at the V&A was used to identify objects in the current collection that originated from the Animal and Waste Products collections which retained their original numbers. The database was then searched again using alternative search fields to identify objects that had been renumbered and objects that had physically been removed or destroyed. As a result of this process, 1,505 objects in the V&A contemporary collection were identified as having once been part of the Animal and Waste Products collections.
[2] These figures are a best estimate based on the data available.
Figure 2
Chart Showing Individual Objects Added to the Animal and Waste Products Collections by Year, 1858-1918. Auerbach George, H. (2024).
Overview of the Collections
The Animal Products collection was an encyclopedic collection of materials obtained from animals such as leather and fur, but also included examples of by-products such as waxes, oils, and faeces (V&A Archive, 1928a). The collection began as part of the Great Exhibition in 1851. The objects originally came from the Trade Collection—a vast grouping of commodities from trade practices around the world leant by manufacturers at the curator’s request.
The result was an extensive iterative display of specimens, inventions, and objects totaling over 100,000 exhibits (Auerbach, 1999, p. 9). Historian of the exhibition, Jonathon Shears, noted that the heavily cluttered display format was driven by the Victorian preoccupation with taxonomy (Shears, 2017, p. 56). This would remain a feature of these displays well into the 20th century.
Playfair, Solly and Simmonds
After the Great Exhibition, much of the contents were formally gifted by Queen Victoria to the South Kensington Museum and used to form several collections, including The Collection of Animal Products, overseen by Edward Solly and assisted by Lyon Playfair (Simmonds, 1877, p. 14). Playfair initially trained as a chemist, starting his career as the director of a Calico printers, and later becoming a chemistry professor and a Liberal MP, promoting scientific education throughout his career (Gooday, 2016). Playfair regularly wrote about the power of chemistry to transform previously unusable materials into valuable commodities of industry (Desrochers, 2009, p. 706).[3] Solly also had a background in chemistry, which is indicative of the unity Victorian society perceived between science, art, and industry, as well as the importance of scientific advancement in the commercial world. With these ideas in mind, they recatalogued and reorganized the Trade Collection to form the Animal Products collection, first displayed at the South Kensington Museum in 1858 (Simmonds, 1860, p. 7).
It is probable that Simmonds was brought on board through his membership of the Royal Society of Arts, where he was likely introduced to Solly and Playfair (The Taunton Courier, 1862; Greysmith, 2008, p. 8). Later, the Animal Products collection found a permanent home at the Bethnal Green Museum when it opened in 1872, which had been created to extend the insights into art, design, and industry offered by the South Kensington Museum to the working-class populations of East London (East London Observer, 1872).[4] It was there that Simmonds really began to shape the collections, creating printed labels for each specimen and extending the display to include the Collection Illustrating the Utilization of Waste Products in 1875, which documented examples of waste beyond the animal kingdom (Simmonds, 1875). Over the next 40 years, Simmonds, among others, continued to donate examples and specimens of material ingenuity to the collections (V&A Archive, 1863).
[3] Playfair was undoubtably a great source of inspiration to Simmonds; he dedicated his book, A Dictionary of Trade Products, to Playfair, describing himself as a his “faithful and obliged servant” (Simmonds, 1858, p. 3). However, Simmonds’ biographer, David Greysmith, points out that despite their common interests and working relationship, Simmonds is not mentioned in Playfair’s memoirs or correspondence (Playfair, 1967; Greysmith, 1990, p. 12).
[4] The Bethnal Green Branch of the South Kensington Museum later became the V&A Museum of the Childhood and is now Young V&A.
Peter Lund Simmonds
To contextualize the Animal and Waste Products collections, it is important to understand the beliefs and motives of Simmonds. Born Peter Lund in Denmark in 1814, Simmonds was adopted by Lieutenant George Simmonds R.N. (The Yorkshire Evening Post, 1897). As a young man, Simmonds joined the Merchant Navy. It is likely that this instilled in him an interest in the commodities and economics of the British Empire. In 1834, he began a career in journalism, publishing many books, papers, and journals throughout his life on economics and commerce (Greysmith, 2008, p. 3). Included in these publications was Simmonds’s Colonial Magazine, which reported on trade across the colonies, and was later published by The Technologist between 1861–6, which described the publication as “a monthly record of science applied to art, manufacture and culture” (Simmonds, 1861). These two publications focused on materials that could be imported from the colonies and their abundant applications to industrial processes.
Waste and Wasted Opportunity
Much of Simmonds’ work heralded contemporary discourses on materials, most obviously the notion of waste as resource. That being said, his credentials as a pioneer of sustainability are more nuanced. Throughout his writings, he describes motivations for utilizing waste we might recognize today, including the problematic over-reliance on other nation’s commodities and the growing demand on resources fueled by overpopulation (Simmonds, 1862, p. 14; Simmonds, 1875, p. 4). “There is no waste in Nature,” he wrote in the catalogue of the Waste Products collection in 1875 (Simmonds, 1875, p. 4). This principle is echoed by leading authorities on sustainability, Braungart and McDonough, over a century later: “Nature operates according to a system of nutrients and metabolisms in which there is no such thing as waste” (Braungart & McDonough, 2009, p. 92). However, anthropologist Timothy Cooper has argued that the motivations and methods behind Simmonds’ ideologies were not entirely progressive; he supported and promoted the exploitation of Indigenous societies and crops for monetary profit and capitalist gain (Cooper, 2011, p. 29).
Crucially, Simmonds defined waste not only as “waste materials we make,” but also as “[waste] that lie[s] around us in abundance ready to be utilized,” indicating that he considered waste not only to be a by-product of manufacturing but also any virgin product or “nature” that was not being exploited to its fullest potential (Simmonds, 1862, p. 1). His extractivism was driven by a viewpoint of “…Britain, (and to a lesser extent, Europe), as ‘civilization’ or, rather ‘home’ and the rest of the world as ‘nature,’ as “out there’” (Greysmith, 1990, p. 13). As Cooper (2011) puts it, “Simmonds’ understanding of waste was bound up with a political ecology of imperialism; there was a relationship between colonization and the need to find substitute raw materials from the waste matter provided by nature” (p. 31). Further compounding his disregard for other cultures was his disbelief in the limits of natural resources. His philosophies were Cornucopian, a concept routed in Christian faith; he believed that God would provide unending resources and materials for human use (Cooper, 2011, p. 37).
Simmonds and the Collections
Before the move to the Bethnal Green Museum, many of the loaned objects in the Animal Products collection were returned at the request of the manufacturers who originally provided them (Council for the Committee of Education, 1867, p. 421).[5] As such, the collection that arrived at the Bethnal Green Museum had large gaps. It was therefore agreed that a process of acquisition would begin to repopulate the displays with permanent objects as opposed to manufacturers’ loans. Simmonds took this responsibility personally, donating many of his own artifacts. An entry from the collection notebook on June 10th, 1875, shows the total number of objects donated by Simmonds as 469 since March of that year (V&A Archive, 1863, p. 28). The same notebook records Simmonds creating a “new set of descriptive labels” for the collection in 1876 (p. 35) and his handbook to the collection on sale at the museum in 1877 (p. 40). The following year, he proposed that the museum purchase a range of items made from fish skins to add to the collection including cigar cases and purses (see Fig. 3). In fact, Simmonds’ displays were becoming so numerous and rambling that there was concern that the museum would run out of space to display the objects (Council for the Committee of Education, 1867, p. 422).
[5] The V&A was unique as an institution in its use of loans for a significant proportion of its object displays since its formation in 1852. (Eatwell, 2000, 21)
Figure 3
A.P. 7-1879: Cigarette Case. Artificially coloured fish skin (shagreen), with a hinged metal frame and clasp and purple watered silk lining ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Substance of the Collections
Objects in the collection ranged from the curious, such as human hair sections used in wig-making (see Fig. 4), to more everyday items such as buttons and socks (see Fig. 5). While the animal component of many of the objects was plain to see (e.g. earrings made from the heads of hummingbirds [see Fig. 6], or a tape measure and pin cushion made from a shell [see Fig. 7]), other objects such as imitation flowers and silk textiles are not immediately recognizable as made from animal products (see Figs. 8, 9).
Figure 4
A.P. 26-1889, Wig Weft. The label reads: “Hair weft for gentlemen’s wigs bought 1.5.89” ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Figure 5
AP.134:1-1875 Button Card. Two button cards of twenty-four round shell buttons, one set plain and one with a simple surface design, probably for shirts ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Figure 6
AP.259-1875 Earrings. Pair of earrings, each in the form of hummingbird head, the feathers attached to gold backing, ca.1865 to 1875 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Figure 7
AP.51-1875 Tape measure pin cushion. Shell, plugged green velvet, tape on pin via slit ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Figure 8
AP.58:3-1877 Feather Ornament. Floral spray made with feathers from several species of parrot including the scaly-headed parrot and scarlet ibis. The feathers have been worked into flower and leaf shapes and attached to silk-wrapped wire ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Figure 9
AP.405:4 Sample of Silk Poplin Made by R. Atkinson & Co. in Dublin ca. 1851, ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The objects were further polarized by those that were highly ornamental and heavily worked, such as a decorative carved ostrich egg (see Fig. 10), while other displays could be considered more as material specimens or constituents such as fish scales (see Fig. 11). The survey of objects carried out for this paper indicates that items which had been transformed into intentional objects were far more likely to be reabsorbed into the museum’s permanent collection than the material specimens. This is likely because they held interest as decorative objects in their own right, whereas the specimens are of little significance without the context of the Animal and Waste products collections.
Figure 10
AP.11-1889, Engraved Ostrich Egg. Ostrich egg carved with Arabic ornament. The engraved areas are filled in with black ink to create a contrast, ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Figure 11
AP.11-1889, Callipeva scales. Dish containing many fish scales; Callipeva scales; British Honduras, 1860 ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
In 1874, Simmonds wrote to the museum curators costing and proposing a new display of ‘Utilization of Waste Products,’ estimating a fee of £50, roughly equivalent to £3000 today, to research and compile the collection (V&A Archive, 1874). He was inspired by his invitation the previous year to curate a display of waste products at the Vienna International Exhibition and the recent publication of a second edition of his book on the uses of waste products (Desrochers, 2011; Simmonds, 1873, p. 3). This display was an extension of Class V of the Animal Products collection, ‘The Application of Waste Matters,’ which would crucially come to include waste products from beyond Animalia (e.g., glass, metal, and vegetable waste) (Simmonds, 1860, p. 114). The curators agreed and, in 1875, the Waste Products collection was opened to the public.
Shoddy
Simmonds (1876) declared that “In one corner of the ‘Animal products department’ in the Bethnal Green Museum, the visitor can see hundreds of specimens of this shoddy and mungo-a perfect resurrection of the old clothes from every country in Europe” (p. 27). Shoddy was a type of cheap woolen cloth produced by grinding used woolen garments into fibers for re-spinning. In the UK, the shoddy industry was located in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Specifically, the towns of Ossett, Batley, and Dewsbury predominantly used shoddy to make heavier cloth, like blankets (Greeley, 1853, p. 207; Hudson, 1986, p. 133). In 1860, mill owner and historian Samuel Jubb published his book, History of the Shoddy Trade, and later in the 1970s academics Patricia Hudson (1975) and John Malin (1979) compiled encyclopedic records of the then historic industry. More recently, shoddy has been explored by historians Emily Cockayne (2020) and Hannah Rose Shell (2020). The industry was active from around 1800-1950, however few examples of shoddy survive in contemporary museum collections. The current collections at the V&A contain no known examples of shoddy, however the survey of objects carried out for this research showed 137 entries for ‘shoddy’ and 10 for ‘mungo’ recorded during an audit of the Animal and Waste Products collections in 1928. Deaccession records on the V&A’s collection management system also show 111 examples of ‘shoddy’ and 10 examples of ‘mungo’ as once having been part of the Animal and Waste Products collections. As previously stated, the records used to compile these figures are multilayered and by no means complete, however they do give an indication that the V&A once held a sizable collection of shoddy. To understand why these materials are no longer amongst the museum’s holdings, first we must understand more about shoddy as a material.
Material Processing
There were several processes old clothes would go through before they would be made into shoddy. First, the ‘clobberer’ would mend clothes, then the ‘reviver’ would make old clothes into new garments, and only once the upcycled garments were worn through would they be used for shoddy (Barrow Herald & Furness Advertiser, 1864; Simmonds, 1875, p. 54). This multi-phase garment lifecycle that culminates in mechanical recycling is integral to new-age textile recycling and recognized by leading academics such as Kate Fletcher, a leader in sustainable fashion, as best practice when dealing with waste streams (Fletcher, 2014).
Often referred to as ‘rag wool,’ shoddy could be divided into three classes of textile material:
1) Shoddy, made from what were referred to as ‘soft’ woolen rags, such as stockings and old garments, most likely of a knitted construction.
2) Mungo, introduced around 1836, follows a similar process to shoddy but is made from ‘hard’ fabrics including woolen rags, sweepings and stiff tailor’s offcuts which are ground into finer fibers producing a finer weight, higher-quality cloth.
3) Recovered wool, made by immersing mixed wool and cotton fabrics in acid which would dissolve the cellulose (cotton) leaving the wool behind (Malin, 1979, p. 212; Johnson, 1862, p. 152; Baines, 1859, p. 30). This process was known as carbonization and greatly expanded the scope of the shoddy industry as it made more rags accessible for use (Posselt, 1892, p. 108).
In 1859, editor of the Leeds Mercury newspaper and MP Edward Baines Jr. (1800-1890) wrote of shoddy: “If cloth made of these kinds of rag wool is expected to have the tenacity of goods made from new wool it will utterly disappoint” (Baines, 1859, p. 30). As well as the poor tensile strength of the finished material, the old rags used to make the materials were often stained or soiled, making them undesirable and associated with disease (Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser, 1843). To combat the weak nature of pure shoddy, it was typically blended with a proportion of virgin wool fibres to improve the strength and longevity of the shoddy fabric (Johnson, 1862, p. 152; Sproule, 1854, p. 310). This principle could also be reversed; virgin wool could be bulked out by mixing it with shoddy, reducing the overall cost of the fabric but creating an inferior product in the process. In 1873, Alex Wilson and Michael O’Mally were put on trial for selling shoddy passed off as the best ‘West of England Cloth’ (Liverpool Weekly Courier, 1873).
Creation of an Industry
As waste or by-product, it is important to understand the symbiotic relationship shoddy had with the wider textile industry. As previously mentioned, shoddy manufacturing took root in the West Riding of Yorkshire, already a center for woolen textile production. In the early 19th century, the virgin wool trade was undergoing a fundamental shift; previously, manufacturers had bought directly from farmers but increasingly began to buy their product through dealers known as ‘staplers’ (Hudson, 1986, p. 112). While this increased the price, it had two advantages. First, the stapler would grade the fleece by quality, allowing manufacturers to specialize their production. Second, it removed the burden of paying for wool in cash and stockpiling it, as it could be bought from the stapler as needed on a borrowing scheme. This change in the market created the perfect circumstances for shoddy to evolve as a sub-industry. Compared to virgin wool, rag wool had more generous borrowing schemes making it more appealing to smaller manufacturers (Hudson, 1986, p. 133). Despite being a niche concern, shoddy manufacture was not insignificant, making up 37.4% of the total weight of clean wool consumed in the UK in 1866 (Malin, 1979, p. 403).[6] Samuel Jubb (1860) estimated that “7,764 tons of rags [were] converted annually in [Batley] into rag wool” (p. 22).
[6] Wool contains natural oils which heavily skew the weight if not removed, hence the need to clarify that the wool is clean.
Crucial to the production of shoddy was the rag-sorting stage, as this directly impacted the resulting material (Woolen Rags and Shoddy, 1871, p. 33). In her paper, Women’s Work in Leeds, Clara E. Collet observed that “the introduction of shoddy brought in its train a demand for rag sorters, whose work, unfortunately, can never be done by machinery. At least it is difficult to believe that machines will ever be able to distinguish colour” (Collet, 1891, p. 466). Rags would be divided into pure wool and blends, and then subdivided according to quality and shade in order to develop different material qualities (Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, 1891, 9). The existing colours of the rags were considered an advantage in the production of yarn as, if carefully sorted, it reduced the need for the expensive process of dyeing (Malin, 1979, p. 436).
Though there was commercial value in rags prior to the industrial revolution, the invention of the powerful machinery used for shredding revolutionized the trade (Jubb, 1860, p. 80). The shredding machines were known as ‘devils’ because of their frightening appearance (they had multiple layers of ‘teeth’ for grinding), but they also symbolized the mechanization of industry and therefore the loss of jobs and hand skills (Shell, 2020, p. 36). Travel writer and librarian of the Royal Society, Walter White (1811-1893), described the sight of one such machine: “There I saw a cylinder revolving with a velocity too rapid for the eye to follow, whizzing and roaring, as if in agony, and throwing off a cloud of light wooly fibres that floated in the air, and a stream of flocks that fell in a heap at the end of the room” (White, 1858, p. 353). Mechanization itself introduced further waste streams into what was already a waste industry. The shoddy dust described by White was commonly used as a fertilizer (Kentish Gazette, 1867). It is also listed in the Animal Products collection as being used in the manufacture of flock wallpaper (Bethnal Green Branch Museum, 1872, p. 11)
Simmonds and Shoddy
Figure 12
Page from the register of Animal Products collection circa 1882. Auerbach George, H. (2024).
Simmonds was a great proponent of the shoddy industry describing it as “the most valuable adaptation of the materials in the history of the woolen trade which the ingenuity of man has discovered” (Simmonds, 1875, p. 58). Simmonds donated several items of the shoddy himself to be displayed as part of the Animal Products collection, recorded in the collection register as seen in Figure 12 (V&A Archive, n.d., p. 24). The entry lists numerous samples of ‘wool shoddy from Germany’ and includes descriptions of colour and quality of the cloth. Categorization of the shoddy into groups such as ‘flannels’ and ‘white superior’ (half-wool) help give an insight into the material qualities of these lost samples. Despite his tendency to ignore the shortcomings of waste utilization processes, Simmonds was clearly aware of the negative aspects of the shoddy industry, referring to the poor working conditions within mills and the opportunity for fraud. However, he was also quick to defend the practice: “manufacturers and consumers owe more to [shoddy] than they are ready to admit… Stop the supply of shoddy and you may reasonably expect to double the present prices of wool, and deprive many of their warm and cheap winter garments” (Simmonds, 1875, p. 58).
Deaccession and Destruction
In 1928, under the curation of Arthur K Sabin, it was decided the Animal and Waste Products collections were no longer relevant, and the remaining objects were removed from display. Choice pieces were selected to be absorbed into the wider V&A collection, but the majority were deaccessioned or destroyed (V&A Archive, 1928a). Since his appointment in 1922, Sabin had begun to tailor the museum’s displays towards children, turning the focus of the collection away from informative displays and towards entertainment. It is likely that public attitudes were changing—they no longer desired to look at collections themed around resourcefulness, which often stemmed from hardship. Instead, they looked towards museums to be entertained and delighted.
Today, less than 10% of objects from the Animal and Waste Products collections remain in the V&A collections. No examples of shoddy survived the museum’s cull of objects in 1928. There are several likely reasons for this. First, objects were chiefly retained because of their monetary value or artistic and visual merit in line with the collection policies of the time. Shoddy’s characterization as a cheap and inferior cloth meant it fell outside of this definition. Secondly, in 1926, the V&A compiled a report on acquisitions from that year, which concluded that the Textile Collection was so full and wide ranging that anything new must be carefully considered (V&A Archive, 1927). This is indicative not only of a lack of space but also a dismissal of shoddy as a reputable textile worthy of collecting. Finally, records indicate that by 1928 many of the woolen exhibits had either rotted or been attacked by moths, making them impossible to save (V&A Archive, 1928b).
The Future of Shoddy
The importance of viewing waste as a resource has only become more pressing with the exponential rise of textile production, and subsequently waste. A report published by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in 2022 found that 336,000 tonnes of clothing in the UK are sent to landfill or incineration each year while less than 1% of textiles worldwide are recycled into new textiles (WRAP, 2022, p. 4). Despite the apparent need for textile recycling, the shoddy industry today is largely forgotten in the UK While the industry’s poor working conditions and the abundance of cheaper materials has played a part in this decline, the low quality of the materials ultimately diminished its value. Shoddy is a result of downcycling or cascading, a process which “involves downgrading the quality of reclaimed materials immediately into cheap, low-value end uses rather than maintaining them as a high-value product or resource” (Fletcher, 2014, p. 118).
The proliferation of synthetic fibres at the start of the 20th century also fundamentally altered the composition and therefore the quality and end use of the resulting waste streams. When a fabric is made of blended materials, it becomes almost impossible to separate them and therefore very difficult to recycle or to capture its full material value (Ellen McArthur Foundation, 2017, p. 92). This mix of natural and synthetic fibres meant shoddy could no longer be used as fertilizer or made into woolen cloth. Yet, as academic Cathryn Anneka Hall suggests, there is great potential to build cascading into fibre design to ensure optimization of materials (Hall, 2021). The search for new applications of waste is evident in today’s shoddy industry; Shell (2020) describes a reinvention of shoddy that incorporates synthetic fibres. Although the resulting product can no longer be used as a fertilizer or made into new yarn for garments, it is instead used for stuffing mattresses and making polishing rags (Shell, 2020, p. 167).
Wool shoddy has recently returned to Yorkshire with the founding of iinouiio (It Is Never Over Until It Is Over) by John Parkinson, a veteran of the shoddy industry. Parkinson tasked himself with revitalizing shoddy and educating the modern textile industry about recycling. He has been arguably successful in this endeavour. In 2022, iinouiio partnered with Camira Group, a company who turned over £60 million in 2022 (Croall, 2023, p. 14), to initiate a wool and luxury fiber recycling line—the only one of its kind in the UK Camira now produces a fabric range, Revolution, using waste wool from their virgin manufacturing processes. Revolution is coloured by sorting the waste into existing colour groups and blended with virgin wool fibres for added strength just as the original shoddy fabrics were (Revolution - A Recycled Wool Fabric, n.d.).
Despite this resurgence, contemporary recycling practices of textiles are still problematic, plagued with many of the same issues as the heritage industry.
As discussed, mixed waste streams and how to separate them is one of the biggest hurdles in the recycling of textiles. This was integral to the structure of the shoddy industry with quality control central to the optimization of the process (Malin, 1979, p. 100). Sorting is still highly complex to mechanize and normally requires trained people. In her research, Shell found that the sorting of rags is increasingly outsourced from the UK to other countries where labour is cheaper (Shell, 2020, p. 164). However, the sorting process soon may not require people at all—in 2019, IVL Svenska Miljöinstitutet launched the Swedish Innovation Platform for Textile Sorting (SIPTex), the world’s first fully automated industrial scale sorting facility in Malmö, Sweden (Bolinius, Dämien, & Johann et. al., 2022, p. 6). SIPTex uses near infrared technology to sort textile by material and colour. The machine for sorting by colour that Collet could not imagine in 1891 now exists.
Waste Age
From Victorian Britain through to the present, waste has been a significant topic of interest, simultaneously a repellent effluent and a potential resource. Recent examples of waste as resource were explored by material futurists Franklin and Till in their book Radical Matter, and in the exhibition Waste Age at the Design Museum, London (October 2021 to February 2022) (Franklin & Till, 2018, p. 74; McGuirk, 2021). Both the book and exhibition signal designers and makers as central to our transposing of waste into useful material. These two more recent showcases of ingenuity with waste echo Simmonds’s work from over a century earlier.
Echoes to the methodology behind the Animal and Waste Products collections can also be seen in the 2018 graduate work of Royal College of Art student Alice Robinson’s Sheep 11458, a collection of accessories created using the products of one sheep. Robinson states, “The collection is a collaboration of design and of restriction, working within sheep 11458's pre-defined parameters. With each differing piece sitting beside one another a greater picture is able be unearthed and hidden traces of a former life are to be deciphered: age, breed, time and place of life” (Robinson, 2018). The piece was acquired by the V&A in 2020 (T.17:1 to 12-2020), unintentionally mirroring Simmonds’ displays in its iterative presentation of products from one source (see Fig. 13).
Though historical motivations for using waste often stemmed from necessity and, as in the case of Simmonds, were not always inspired by morality, there are still striking parallels to the modern circular economy. The Animal and Waste Products collections hold potential for the reframing and reinterpretation of materials made from waste far beyond the scope of this paper. Shoddy lives on in contemporary manufacturing but many other processes and materials amongst the collection do not. Further research of the collections could present new ideas and material possibilities in our quest for a more sustainable future. What’s more, these collections capture a celebratory and prolific use of waste as resource not always associated with post-capitalist societies. Though, as Cockayne puts it, “none of the Victorian processes of recycling can be described as an entirely ‘closed loop’” (Cockayne, 2020, p. 156).
Epilogue
In 1928, after the choice pieces had been removed, a final list of objects from the Animal and Waste Products collections that might still be useful to other departments was made (V&A Archive, 1928b). The intention was to salvage items, not for display, but to be sent to the ‘Art Workers’ Room’—an early version of the conservation department. These objects could be used as materials in the restoration and preservation of other more treasured objects, thus putting these ‘waste’ items to use, a purpose Simmonds may very well have approved of. In 2022, as a result of this research, several of these deaccessioned objects were discovered, still in the cupboard of the furniture conservation department of the V&A, waiting to be utilized (see Fig. 14).
Figure 13
Alice Robinson: 11458. The fashion accessories in the collection are all made entirely from the body of a single sheep, including the fleece, hide and bones, 2018 ©. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Figure 14
Deaccessioned objects from the Animal Products collection in the Furniture Conservation department, including pieces of bone and warthog tusk, V&A. Auerbach George, H. (2024)
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Author Bios
Since completing her masters in woven textile design at the Royal College of Art, Hannah Auerbach George’s career within textiles has spanned custom design, industrial production, consultancy, research, museum and archival collections and education. This paper was written as part of her research fellowship in Rethinking Material Resources at the V&A funded by the Business of Fashion Textiles and Technology at UAL, 2021-2023. She is a lecturer in Textile Design at Winchester School of Art, Norwich University of the Arts and Central Saint Martins. She is currently a London Arts and Humanities Partnership funded PhD candidate undertaking a CDA with the V&A.
Article Citation
MLA: Auerbach George, Hannah. “Waste and Wasted Opportunity: Utilizing Archive Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Inform Contemporary Sustainability.” Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2024, 1-29. 10.38055/FST030103.
APA: Auerbach George, H. (2024). Waste and Wasted Opportunity: Utilizing Archive Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Inform Contemporary Sustainability. Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies, 3(1), 1-29. 10.38055/FST030103.
Chicago: Auerbach George, Hannah. “Waste and Wasted Opportunity: Utilizing Archive Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum to Inform Contemporary Sustainability.” Fashioning Sustainment, special issue of Fashion Studies 3, no. 1 (2004): 1-29. 10.38055/FST030103.
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