To celebrate a year in archives for Explore your Archives week, we are taking a look back over the progress we have made with the David Usborne Collection, and the way it has enhanced teaching and learning in the past 12 months. David Usborne is a former architect, designer and collector of unusual things. His collection of tools was acquired by the University Archives and Special Collections Centre in Summer 2015. Over 400 objects are now housed in our Centre at LCC, and some of the collection is held by Heatherwick Studio in Kings Cross. The rest of Usborne’s huge collection remains at his home in London.
What brings these objects together is their functionality and aesthetic value, but they share no single thematic connection, coming from industries as diverse as agriculture, medicine, motoring, sports and cookery. Usborne’s website explains that the objects were chosen for the collection as they combine “utility”, “mystery”, “indifference”, “elegance”, “resonance” and “anonymity”. He warns visitors to the website that “finding beauty in anonymous tools that were never intended to be beautiful may undermine their faith in the canonical masterpieces of Modernism which they are accustomed to worship in museums and galleries”.
The collection is unusual at the Archives and Special Collections Centre as most of our holdings comprise artwork and documents, and the David Usborne collection is entirely three dimensional objects. We decided to use museum classifications to catalogue the items, and so the catalogue will be available on the CSM Museum and Study Collection website, rather than our online archive catalogue CalmView. The collection was first used by Graphic Design students in January 2016 as part of a project creating narrative around archival objects. In June 2016 it formed the centrepiece of a module for MA Culture, Criticism and Curation as they created an exhibition including the objects in the Window Gallery, which was displayed during the summer shows. The autumn term has brought the opportunity for the collection to be a part of object-based learning, and to continue to bring creative inspiration. We look forward to 2017 when a larger scale exhibition of these objects is planned within UAL, and the catalogue will be live online.
Georgia Clemson, Archives Assistant
Image Credit: Celine Marchbanks