The Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA) houses what is widely regarded as one of the world's most comprehensive collections of nineteenth and twentieth century decorative arts for the home.
Although the museum opened in 2000, the MoDA core collection known as The Silver Studio Collection has been with Middlesex University far longer. It was first bequeathed to Hornsey College of Art in 1967 and over time Hornsey College of Art became amalgamated into Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University).
The Crown Wallpaper Archive was donated in 1989 when Crown Wallcoverings generously gave a substantial part of their wallpaper archive consisting of 5,000 wallpaper samples and pattern books from the early 1950s to the late 1960s.
The Domestic Design Collection was begun in the 1950s by staff at the former Hornsey College of Art at a time when books on 19th and early 20th Century architecture and designs could be acquired very cheaply. In the 1960s the acquisitions policy was extended to include trade catalogues of British and American furnishers, upholsterers and interior decorators.
Both the Charles Hasler (a typographer) and Peggy Angus (an artist) collections are uncatalogued at present and may be seen only with notice and the discretion of the Curator. This situation should be changing in the near future.
MoDA has an outstanding collection of wallpapers and textiles dating from the 1870s to the 1960s. Many of these are the work of the Silver Studio, one of Britain's leading commercial design studios from 1880 to 1960. The Silver Studio was always responsive to the fashions and tastes of the moment, designing in all the major styles such as the flat stylised Art Nouveau of the late nineteenth century, as well as the perennially popular traditional and historical idiom. Its work provides a vivid insight into pattern design in the English home between 1880 and 1960.
Other parts of the collection include trade catalogues of furnishers and interior decorators, the Crown Wallpaper Archive and an extensive library of books on design, architecture and town planning collected by the architectural critic, Sir JM Richards. There is a wealth of other material relating to architecture, interior design, typography and printed ephemera, all of which contribute to MoDA's claim to hold collections of outstanding national and international importance.
Address: MoDA, Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT
Web: www.moda.mdx.ac.uk
