Dreams of wings

A rather whimsical post to ease myself back into my archive related blogging (it's been all about the sewing this summer). I came across this magazine cover (the back cover) when we were doing some recent appraisal work on a large collection. There were some real gems in there and this advert, from a Japanese magazine,  really caught my eye - what does it all mean?! I really can't work it out - the only wings women have that I can think of are from certain sanitary products that I can't imagine men aspire to using! so what? is it just a weird translation? or maybe it means 'men' as 'mankind' and is talking about architecture as a tribute to God and angels? Or could it be to do with the lapels on his jacket?  Any suggestions warmly welcomed.

In a very unprofessional way I forgot to note the date of this magazine, or it's title - but it's too good not to share!

Advert from Japanese magazine

Wednesday Wonders - Together in Electric Dreams - Emancipation from Drudgery'

"As long ago as November, 1924, a small group of clear-sighted women foresaw rapid development of the use of electricity in domestic spheres, and from their belief that it was destined to become the most valuable factor in modern home life, developed the Electrical Association for Women". 

Image from EAW pamphlet, NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education

I don't quite know why but when I first read this on the cover of one of their pamphlets I read it as if I was reading the Star Wars credits and imagined the words rolling down the screen - a long, long time ago, etc.  It's not quite that dramatic but it was still very striking to me that something which we now take so much for granted was then such a novelty.  I have to confess to having little, i.e. no, idea how electricity works, I just accept that I walk into a room and turn the light on, that my washing machine works, that I can plug in a hoover and clean our tiny flat in under 10 minutes etc.  In 1924 though, electricity in the home was only beginning.  The aim of the EAW was 'to eliminate from housekeeping the drudgery which the dirt and grime of mechanical process has brought into it' - sounds good eh?! Their slogan was 'Emancipation from Drudgery' and their purpose was twofold - 1. ensure that all women knew about electricity, how they could get it , and how best to make use of it 2. to put forward women's views on electrical matters. 

Now I am not getting all rose-tinted glasses sentimental about the past here - the more equal sharing of household work now - cleaning and cooking - is something which I am all for of course! What this file of correspondence and pamphlets made me remember was how much harder it must have been before electricity.  It also reminded me that the assumption of these kinds of comforts is of course sadly still limited and in no way equal throughout the world. 

Something else which comes up a lot in the correspondence is the use of questionnaires and experiments with women to test the safety and ease of use of electrical appliances.  Then, and probably still now given the ratio of men to women engineers, electrical appliances for the home would be designed by men, but in the 1920s at least, used almost exclusively by women.  The tests they would carry out would measure things like what height of oven is the most convenient to use, how to make electric hobs safer around children, right through to how to change a fuse and how to wire a plug.

I've included a few more images from one of the EAW publications - the Electrical Housecraft School is where a lot of the testing and training was carried out.  The bottom illustrations I just included because the pamphlet was full of them and I thought they were lovely!

Image from EAW pamphlet, NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education

Image from EAW pamphlet, NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education



Image from EAW pamphlet, NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education



N.B. The Institute of Engineering and Technology holds extensive archives on the EAW -

EAW logo, from NUWT Collection, ref no UWT/D/55/17 © Institute of Education

New Twitter account for Archives project

Just a brief post to say that I have now set up an NUWT Twitter account specifically for my new job cataloguing the records of the National Union of Women Teachers.  It's a project I'm really excited about and I'm already finding lots of really interesting material in the Archive so am looking forward to sharing it through Twitter, and hopefully soon enough, through a dedicated NUWT blog. 

Equal suffrage demonstration in Lowestoft, Suffolk 
©Institute of Education Archive

New Cataloguing Archivist post

I've just started a new job in the Archive at the Institute of Education, London.  It's another project job - this time for fourteen months - and I'm loving it already!  My job is to catalogue the records of the National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT).  The NUWT was founded in 1904 as the Equal Pay League and in 1906 it was re-named the National Federation of Women Teachers. In 1920 it broke away to form an independent union, the National Union of Women Teachers.  I wrote a post about my first impressions and first finds over at the Newsam News blog (the blog of the Institute of Education Library and Archive) so I won't repeat what I've said there except to say that the variety of subjects covered in the archive sounds very exciting, a perfect example is the poster shown below for the 'World Youth Conference' held in Prague in 1947.  The correspondence, pamphlets and posters for this conference were so filled with optimism and hope for the future, for a new peaceful future, that was wonderful to read.  Though at the same time quite sad that the optimism and hopes for peace are still just that, optimism and hope. 

World Youth Festival pamphlet,
UWT/D/28A/2 ©Institute of Education Archive

From what I've read so far the NUWT was filled with strong, independent females and finding out more about them is going to be a pleasure, and a privilege to get to do s part of my daily work!  I've got lots of plans for free publicity I can do and connections and links that can be made with other archives and other organisations, in fact I even had a dream about my plans, on a Friday night - a bit strange granted, but I wouldn't have it any other way, better to over-think and enjoy my work than the other way around.  I think I'll be keeping the majority of posts about the project confined to the Newsam News blog but I'm sure the occasional one will stray over here.  I'm still going to keep this blog up though as there's plenty of other archive related events I can talk about, like a recent exhibition I went to at the Barbican...