The Camberwell Collection

(3.31/16mm/2015)

From June to August 2015, I assisted a Museum curator with the selection, cataloguing and re-packing of 600 objects from the Camberwell Collection. The objects were originally purchased by ILEA (The Inner London Education Authority) in the early 1950’s – 1970’s and were used as a handling collection in primary and secondary schools. The original aim of the handling collection was to give children a ‘good sense of design’ and the objects in the collection are a mixture of one off and mass produced items from many different parts of the world.

In 1989 ILEA closed and the collection was donated to Camberwell School of Art, although a parts of the collection has been used at the University since then, much of it is still in the packaging from 1989 and has not been looked for many years. This film documents a small percentage of the objects we catalogued during this time.

The film includes recognisable, mass- produced objects, such as Melaware and Wedgewood Pottery and also, more one-off items by iconic studio potters such as Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie. The cutlery at the beginning of the film is the same cutlery which was used in Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian crime film A Clockwork Orange (1971).

The accompanying soundtrack is called Solomon’s Ring (1971) by Mort Garson from the album Black Mass.