Everyone would expect the Library to have an amazing collection of books and journals, but what a lot of people don’t know is that we also have some really amazing items like knitting patterns.

My colleagues who write the fantastic Untold Lives blog recently wrote a piece on our curator Andy Simon’s work to catalogue our 1930s knitting patterns and some of the weird and wonderful things he has discovered (Carry On themed Barbara Windsor patterns anyone?). 

It reminded me of our knitting event we ran last year for Spring Festival where you could come and see a range of our collections, and have a go at making one of the pieces for yourself (see our video below).

So what exactly is in our knitting collection and how can you access it? These are some of the things you can find in the collection:

• Collections of knitting and crochet patterns from the early 1900s
• Knitting pattern books.
• Knitting and fashion magazines published in the UK

Some of my favourites include Mary Quant patterns, and 1920s glamorous film-style photographs of mittens and hats.

Image: Photo of our curator Tanya Kirk with some of our patterns

If you want to order books or magazines, you need to know the title you are looking for and search for them within our catalogue. To use the Reading Rooms, you just need to come to our building in London and get a Reader Pass.

If you want to see the patterns themselves, we recommend you start by searching in our catalogue using the term ‘knitting patterns’ and then click on ‘journals’ on the left-hand side. It will bring a up a range of records including Lister and Co, Stitchcraft, Jaeger, Rowan and Vogue. 

Although you can’t search by garment type or style (our patterns are currently held in boxes rather than individually catalogued), you can use the links on the left hand side to narrow your search by date or by publisher.

 If you have trouble ordering any of the items, you can get in touch with our Reference teams directly.  Find out more at http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/refteam/refteam.html

Last week we ran our ‘Crafts Lives’ event to show off some of the amazing oral history interviews with designers and makers in our collection. We have been collecting them as part of the National Life Stories project for over 10 years, and we have over 100 recordings. Each one is very in-depth with 8 – 10 hours of interviews covering everything from family background to work processes and inspiration.

Ceramicist Kate Malone’s interview is in our collection, and to bring it to life, she came to talk at the Library about her work.

“I aim to be at the same time both very serious and quite silly, simple and clever, adult and child. My aim to broadcast a sense of optimism through my work, to touch the emotions…”

Her work is inspired by nature and life forces, and she frequently features imagery such as pineapples, asteroids, fish, pumpkins and vessels in her work.

She leads an amazing, creative life, whilst also having a good head for business. She’s travelled extensively (she mentioned India and Japan as places that have influenced her) and has had studios in various places, including Barcelona and Provence.

However her main studio is in Hackney where she lives with her family (including a very cute dog) where she works with her team of five.

She talked a lot about the importance of having a great team to support her and passing on your skills. She takes on new and aspiring ceramicists to teach them the trade, and they in return help bring fresh ideas to her work.  Many of her pieces of huge and incredibly time-consuming, so to make them is a real team effort.

Image: Brighton story wall

Her work includes studio pieces which she sells through her art dealer, glaze research, large scale architecture projects and public projects in schools, hospitals, parks, and so on. She sees the role of public projects as providing an importance service to the local community.

You can see how Kate works in one of her video diaries on YouTube below:

 

As part of Spring Festival 2013, we ran a market on our piazza to showcase the designers and makers who have used our collections for inspiration and our Business & IP Centre to commercialise their ideas.  If you weren't able to come along on the day, watch our video to find out what you missed:

 

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Following on from our blog at the beginning of January, this week we announced the winners of our Spring Market competition as part of our Spring Festival. The market will be taking place on Monday 4 March from 9.30am to 5.30pm on the Piazza. All the designers and makers that have been selected have created great products using Library collections as inspiration as well as attending workshops and gaining advice from our Business and IP Centre. The market will be a one off so we look forward to meeting as many of you there as possible!

Our winners are:

Ali Miller, who produces handmade, vintage inspired home wares.

Anthropoid clothing, created by Abigail Lingford, making bags, home wares, clothing and shoes inspired by her love of science.

Boodi Blu, aka Sarah Marafie with her beautiful bespoke china jewellery.

Euan Cunningham who applies his ink and watercolour drawings of London landmarks to items such as greeting cards, mugs, T-shirts and prints.

Josie Shenoy, an illustrator and designer, who designs clothing and home wares.

Lisa Edoff, a Swedish graphic designer who creates gorgeous designs for home accessories.

Lucy Porter of Lucy Alice Designs, with her illustrated gifts, cards and jewellery.

Alexa Mottram’s Motties, ethically friendly reclamied leather slippers.

Nette’ Leather Goods, by designer/maker Johnette’ Taylor, showcasing bags, laptop accessories and purses.

Alia Qadir, of The English Tee Shop designs and makes a range of luxurious printed t-shirts for women.

Wonderhaus’ Julia Roy-Williams, who designs urban jewellery.

For more information on the winners visit our website.

Last week at the Library we held a workshop with Cockpit Arts called “Make it Sell it: Grow your design business”. This wasn’t one of our usual speed mentoring sessions; attendees were given the opportunity to hear from some wonderful designers and makers, and the aim was to give an insight into how you can grow your business successfully, hopefully with a little help from Cockpit Arts!

Lucy Kyle, the business development manager at Cockpit Arts, started off by introducing herself and a little bit about Cockpit, before introducing the panellists: Rebecca Chitty, whose company “Product of your environment” has been successful from 2006, Sian Zeng, an award winning designer and maker, whose fairytale magnetic wallpaper was seen at our Spring Market in 2012. And finally Emma and Rachael Nissim, two sisters who have utilised Greenwich market and now have their own shop.

All of the designer makers have an incubator package with Cockpit Arts. This means that they have access to workshops and seminars, promotional/selling opportunities, coaching, training and most importantly, a creative space in which they are free to work.

All of the different enterprises that were presented today have different strengths and weaknesses, and all stressed how important it is to actually recognise what you’re good at and what you’re not so good at. As time has gone on, each one of the panellists has tried to focus their business. For example, Rebecca is a designer rather than a maker. She comes up with the great ideas for her products and then outsources the manufacturing. Because her strength lies in the design and concept, she is now focusing her energies on licensing her products to big companies, who have the resources to make them in large quantities – something that she could not afford to do.

Emma and Rachael told us how they view their business as two separate companies, the shop they have by Greenwich market, and then the designing and making side of things, which happens in a studio. Although the two seem very different, there are actually a lot of transferable skills from creative products and having a business, for example energy, passion and dedication. The proof in this is seeing their shop, which was meant to be a pop-up for only five weeks and they’re still there four years later.

Sian Zeng is a brilliant example of these transferable skills. Originally studying economics, Sian decided to retrain at Central St. Martin’s in textile design. After deciding that she wanted one showcase piece, rather than lots of little pieces, Sian started investing in manufacturing her wallpaper on a larger scale. Interestingly, from Sian, we received a slightly different point of view on the designer/maker industry. She is a strong advocate of using online resources in order to help her business, whether it be marketing through blogs or simple admin work through gmail for business.

These tips and more were soaked up by the people who attended the workshop today, there isn’t really a substitute for talking to someone who has experienced what you’re trying to achieve first hand and I hope we see many of them as panellists in the future.

Image: Competition winner Ketchup on Everything at Spring Market 2012

Are you a designer or maker? Have you used the Library to develop your ideas? Win a stand at our Spring Market on Monday 4 March 2013 on the British Library Piazza in London. The Market is part of our Spring Festival and will show off the work of ten of the most innovative jewellery, fashion, homeware and craft designers who have used the British Library.

If you have attended an event, used our Business & IP Centre, seen an exhibition or have a Reader Pass you are eligible to enter. We have up to 5,000 visitors at any one time.

You’ll be able to exhibit and sell your products to our visitors for the day, get experience and training in running a market stall, gain free business advice through our Business & IP Centre, plus lots of marketing and press exposure.

You can find out more on our website

Today we held the latest in our series of 'Make it, Sell it!' speed networking events at the Library. Our experts included Julie Deane, founder and owner of The Cambridge Satchel Company, Amity Roach from Etsy, Sarah Hewett from Craft Central, Christina Richardson from The Nurture Network.

Here are some of the fabulous design from makers at the event:

 

Image: Ali Miller

Image: Bobbin and Bow

Image: Jo Angell


Image: Lisa Critcher

Image: Paper Jay

Last week we interviewed Rosie Tate from Cath Tate Cards who has been taking part in our Innovating for Growth programme here at the Library. She gave us an insight into creating the perfect greeting card and how the perfect caption is a necessity. We are giving you the opportunity to come up with your own card caption for one of their great vintage images.

To win, just leave a comment at the bottom of the page with a witty caption that matches the image below. The funniest caption will win a Cath Tate Cards best sellers pack, a mixed pack of the 12 of the most popular Cath Tate designs and maybe even the opportunity to see your caption in stores!.

The deadline for the competition is Friday 14th December 2012, good luck!