Your last chance to visit the last ever exhibition of costumes at Bogan House

Your last chance to visit the last ever exhibition of textiles & costumes at Bogan House is this Friday. 4th October

After decades of displaying thousands of glorious clothes, the Devonshire Collection of Period Costume is moving to Falmouth.

I had a look round on Saturday as part of the town’s Heritage Festival and chatted to one of the volunteers, Alison Alexander.

“It is very sad,” she said.

However the hope is that the textile department at Falmouth University, which will take the collection, will put on exhibitions using some of the stunning garments. The earliest is from about 1650, right up to modern times.

I spotted a Zandra Rhodes dress, an Ossie Clark dress and early Liberty wedding gowns.

There is also a printed dress made by Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher, two women who were life and work partners who were at Dartington Hall in the Elmhirst days. Block printing pioneers, their work is also in the V and A.

(The Pulse hopes to write more about them in a later edition)

The Devonshire Collection began after members of Dartington Playgoers with a large personal trove of period costumes began holding parades, explained Alison. The first was in 1967.
In these early stages the garments were shown in carefully mounted and detailed parades, presented in stately homes in Devon in aid of various charities.

It is very sad.

In 1972 it featured on BBC Collectors’ World.

As a result of this wider publicity, many interesting and valuable items were donated and  it became obvious that a permanent home should be found .
So in 1974 the first summer exhibition was opened at 10a High Street, Totnes.

“ In 1987 it moved to Bogan House. Now the house is up for sale and we are moving out in February.”

No easy job – the hat collection alone fills 100 boxes. Tens of thousands of items, from gloves, shawls and jewellery to floor sweeping gowns, will be carefully packed up and delivered to the experts at Falmouth.

For more information about the collection visit the website of the exhibition of textiles & costumes: Totfm.org

Bogan House, owned by the Mitchell Trust, has been comprehensively restored .