![]() ![]() In 1971 she was hired as an entry level curatorial assistant and, over the course of 34 years, was promoted through every position in that department, eventually assuming greater management responsibility as the deputy, then chief curator. By then she already aspired to work at the V&A’s textile and dress department, one of the largest textile collections in the world. Her first museum jobs were at Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery (1969-71), renowned for its Victorian collections, for whom she published her first essay, on tapestry techniques. Photograph: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London ![]() View image in fullscreen Strawberry Thief, printed furnishing cotton, designed by William Morris, 1883. In 1968 Linda moved to London to take a postgraduate course at Central School of Art and Design, where her interest in pre-Raphaelite painting led her to write for the first time on the tapestries of Morris and the artist Edward Burne-Jones. A foundation course in art at Wallasey Art School (1963-65), where she met her lifelong partner, Don Parry, was followed by the study of textile design at Liverpool College of Art (1965-68). As a child, Linda’s interest in art and textiles was fuelled by visiting Liverpool’s outstanding museums and art galleries with her father and older sister, Vivien, by an inspiring teacher at Wallasey technical high school, and by a much-loved holiday job in the fabric department of the Lewis’s department store in Liverpool, as well as by her love of practical stitching. Her parents, Marion (nee Barlow), a tax officer, and Albert Roberts, an engineer, separated in 1950. She was born in Bromborough, on the Wirral. After the 1996 exhibition, there was barely a single Morris or Arts and Crafts exhibition anywhere in the world that Linda was not invited to curate or contribute to, nor a single historic property associated with the Morris family that did not count Linda as a trustee, adviser or patron. Exhibition making, like day-to-day curating in a national museum, is never a solitary activity and relies, as she knew well, on working closely with colleagues with differing fields of expertise. ![]() The catalogue, which she edited and to which she contributed essays and catalogue entries, also reflected Linda’s collaborative nature. View image in fullscreen Parry worked closely with colleagues with differing fields of expertise To these she added a discerning eye for material, texture and colour, a belief that her protagonists had, in her words, “elevated to a higher art form”, and deep empathy with Morris’s dedication to his craft, his integrity and also his politics. While others had published on Morris (less so on related textiles), the depth and rigour of her archival research into the histories of designers and manufacturing firms was combined with her deep knowledge of how textiles are designed and made. Linda established her reputation with two important books: William Morris Textiles (1983) and Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1988), both still in print. Although her expertise ranged much wider than Morris and his circle, she devoted much of her 34-year curatorial career at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and her years of retirement, to researching, publishing and curating exhibitions on those subjects. Anyone and everyone with an interest in those subjects – museums, collectors, dealers and the wider public – came to Linda for help and advice, which she shared with generosity. ![]() Linda Parry, who has died aged 78 of breast cancer and pneumonia, was a museum curator known internationally as the leading expert on the textiles of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. ![]()
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