Trudie Bradley, designer of shop windows : papers

Student designs for shop window displays; student typographical designs; student photographs of window display mock-ups (all 1937-1938).

Trudie Bradley (1918-2010) was born as Gertrude (known as Trude) Zunz, at Offenbach am Main, near Frankfurt in Germany. Her family was Jewish and in 1936 she moved to Britain, settling in London. In Germany she had done domestic science training and worked as an au pair; in London she trained as a window designer/dresser, probably at the Westminster School of Art in Vincent Square. After qualifying, she worked in the north-west of England before returning to London in 1940 where she did war work, making radio components. From 1945 or 1946 she was employed by Marks and Spencer as a window designer/dresser in the firm's flagship Baker Street store, and subsequently in Wolverhampton and Birmingham. In 1944 she married Fred Bradley, a medical photographer and later a technical translator; in 1950 the couple moved to Handsworth Wood in Birmingham, and in 1955 to Oxford, where she lived until her death in 2010. After her first child was born in 1951 Trudie Bradley did not continue her design career. Later in life, she developed other creative skills and became a prolific and sought after amateur potter.

This archive collection is available for consultation in the V&A Study Rooms by appointment only. Full details of access arrangements may be found here: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/archives/.

Access to some files may be restricted; these are identified individually with the catalogue.

Given by Anne Bradley, 2013.

For conservation reasons the photocopying of archival material is not permitted. Archives may be photographed for study purposes only, at the discretion of the archivist.