1) “Embroideries and Archives: A Research Journey”, The Annual Bader Archive Lecture at the British School at Athens, 11 May 2026.
In the early twentieth century, a group of BSA students put together significant collections of Greek domestic embroidery. Many of which are now in museum collections across the UK, in particular the V&A and National Museums Liverpool. The primary collectors were R.M. Dawkins and A.J.B. Wace. As the granddaughter of Wace and as a textile conservator, Ann French has been researching how these collections were compiled, studied, exhibited and promoted by them and their colleagues and friends. During her talk (at mins 33-35) we are introduced to some ‘frocks’ bought by the Bents while on Karpathos in 1885, and their slow, circular journey back to Greece (Athens) in the early 1930s. (The tale is also published in the scholarly journal of the Benaki Museum, 2015-2016-2017, pp. 75-90.)
2) “Greek Dress at the Hellenic Centre, London – 4 February until 2 March 2014” – The Bents’ acquisitions and their stories!
Although Theodore and Mabel Bent lived not so far away, Marylebone, in Central London, might seem an unlikely place for an exhibition of Greek costume, but it is the home of the Hellenic Centre, a focus for philhellenes and London’s Greek community. From 4 February until 2 March 2014, there was a rare opportunity to see an impressive range of Greek dress outside its native land. As part of the event (on Friday 28 February, 7.15 pm), Ann French, Textile Conservator at the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester, used selected embroideries from the 1914 pioneering embroidery exhibition (click for the online catalogue) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, to trace their individual collecting histories and reveal the different contexts, interpretations and values placed on them within UK based collections and museums. This exhibition, which drew on the leading collections of the day, primarily from the collection of Theodore and Mabel Bent and the archaeologists R M Dawkins & A J B Wace, of Greek Embroideries displayed, for the first time in the UK, historic Greek Embroideries as an art form. There is a short, but wonderful, promotional video on YouTube (April 2021).
The exhibition features several of the Bent’s finest costumes and pieces, and Ann refers to them in the last five minutes or so of her talk in a fascinating account of how, on Mabel’s death, one of her Karpathos frocks found its way back to Greece! (One other is in store at the V & A, and two more from Nisyros are untraced – if you have them, let us know!)
Click here also for the small collection of ‘Turkish’ embroideries once owned by the Bents and now in the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK, and here for dresses from Anafi in the Cyclades.
(For the Bents in Greece and Turkey, see Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, published by Archaeopress, Oxford, in 3 volumes)
For a 19th-century collection of East Mediterranean costumes, see Les Costumes Populaires…
See also the blog ‘Folk Costume and Embroidery‘ and Alan King’s post elsewhere on the costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades to impress the Bents during their stay on Ios, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens.