Shaping the Body
York Castle Museum
A few months ago we got an opportunity to work on a couple of hoops for the York Castle Museum. They were looking into opening an exhibition based on the various historical methods of manipulating the body into the fashionable shape – hence the title ‘Shaping the Body’ and it was for this exhibition that they needed hoops.
Almost 2 years ago now, there was a hoop that we studied at the Edinburgh Collections Centre that had stuck out strongly in our mind so it was easy to take our inspiration from that one for this exhibition. And the Pocket Hoops that we were requested to make, were from a pair that had also cemented itself into our minds; a beautiful pair from the Nordiska Museum; all in a lovely rich navy blue.
We kind of fell in love with the striped hoop – the original was such a stunner it was hard to not to be overawed at it’s design. Though it was a lot trickier to make than the original hoops in our collection – with the outer top cane half being a separate piece – it was still way worth it as it was these kind of details that made the original so attractive.
The museum has just sent us photos so we’re very pleased to put these up in our Online collection.
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