Repair Design and the RCA / V&A Conservation Programme Between 1989 and 2008

‘Repair Design and the RCA/V&A Conservation Programme Between 1989 and 2008’ was my 20,000 word MA dissertation, completed in 2022 after a delay due to bereavement.

The central argument of the dissertation was that mending is a form of making. It constructed a methodological framework, which I termed ‘repair design’, to guide design historical study of mending practice. It argued that the field has been late to the cross-disciplinary turn towards mending, highlighting that repair-people participate in a reasoned making after making where they collaborate with past, present, and future makers, menders and materials.

This framework was grounded and developed through a history of the graduate Conservation training programme which ran between the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art between 1989 and 2008. I investigated the engagement of this pedagogy with repair design, and the way this practice was shaped by broader material, social and political agencies. Through this case, I argued that we should study repair as a design practice.

This work was supervised by James Ryan initially, and Simona Valeriani after James’ departure from the programme. It was supported by a number of oral history interviews, and I heartily thank ex-programme staff William Lindsay, Alan Cummings, Jonathan Ashley-Smith, and alumni Naomi Luxford, Victoria Button, Elizabeth Anne-Haldane, Kostas Ntanos, Richard Mulholland and Jane Rutherson for their time and contribution.

I cannot host the dissertation on this website due for privacy reasons surrounding the above contributions, but I believe it can be accessed at the National Art Library.