Silver Studio

Leading British textile manufacturers included Stead McAlpin, Alexander Morton and AH Lee, Turnbull & Stockdale and Liberty, to name just a few.

The Silver Studio is widely recognised as having played an important part in the development of British Art Nouveau.

The Studio produced several thousand designs for wallpapers, textiles and metalwork in the Art Nouveau style between around 1895 and the early 1900s.

From this point, the contents of the Studio became a ‘Collection’, and it now forms the core of the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, (MoDA), Middlesex University.

The Silver Studio Collection was awarded Designated status in 2008, in recognition of its national and international quality and significance.

The collection also includes an archive of the Studio's daybooks, letters, diaries, visual reference material, trade cards and other printed ephemera.

It is one of the largest collections of original designs anywhere in the country, representing a significant period of time and a wide range of customers.

It is generally considered that during the life of Silver Studio its two most outstanding designers were Archibald Knox and Frank Price.

The completeness and coherence of this archive material existing alongside the designs, wallpapers and textiles themselves, makes the Silver Studio collection entirely unique.

[4] That designers employed by the Silver Studio were able to satisfy the requirements of their clients, the manufacturers, was due in part to the fact that they amassed large amounts of material as visual reference.

As well as examples of wallpapers and textiles by other designers, this material includes press cuttings, reference books and other printed ephemera.

This material greatly enriches the collection both because it is interesting in its own right and for what it tells us about the Studio's design process and sources of inspiration.