Blythe House Archive

When I first saw the Blythe House Archive building I thought I had the wrong address, for what I should in front of looked like a prison. Even the way we had to enter the building made me feel this way even more. It was amazing to learn that this resource was at our fingertips. If however I would ever want to use this source though, I have to have something very specific in mind. For you have to tell them a company's name rather than a time period. They were extremely informative. For there were charts that would tell you which were the best sellers during that time. It actually brought me back to my former education at FIT, a lot of the course was focused around hand painting, patterns in repeat, which I always knew as outdated but I didn't realize how outdated it was until I went to the Blythe House.
There were these images that I feel in love with by a German photographer named Elsbeth Juda. The series of photographs I saw were for a magazine called The Ambassador, a British Export magazine. If I go back to the Blythe House I would love to see if they had the actual Ambassador magazines there. But Elsbeth Juda, took a model around with her to different textile mills and took many different shoots with her.
Another company that was inspiring to me was a French forecasting company that had incredible fabrics for apparel. The women who worked there seemed very kind and passionate and knowledgeable. I am shocked that they allow students to use these facilities. Even if I never find a time to use the Blythe House it was very inspiring for me. Especially to see how old school everything was. How everything was hand painted and illustrated.