Sewing in situ

Join the first of our Reimagine Residents, Jordan Mitchell-King, as she sets up her sewing room in the House. Drop in for a chat and see her work take shape!

The first of our Reimagine Residents is Jordan Mitchell-King, a dress historian and maker who researches the cultures and the embodied experiences of clothing in the past. Her residency project will see her make a pair of Regency stays, which will then be displayed in the House.

Over these two days, Jordan will set up her sewing room within our current display Jane Austen Undressed. Drop in to see her at work, chat and learn about her practice.

Free with House entry

MEET THE ARTIST: JORDAN MITCHELL-KING

Jordan Mitchell-King is a dress historian and maker who researches the cultures and the embodied experiences of clothing in the past. Her current research focuses on informal women’s clothing in eighteenth-century Britain, exploring how women experienced and understood more relaxed forms of dress in the period. As well as using the traditional approach of archival research, Jordan also experiments with research through the making and wearing of historical clothing.

Jordan studied History and History of Design at the University of York and the Royal College of Art, and over time began to merge these academic interests with her long-time home dressmaking hobby as a means of understanding historical clothing from a different perspective. Through experiencing these garments first and foremost as clothing, rather than distant artefacts, she has found rich veins of knowledge not recorded in the archives. Her PhD project on women’s undress continues to merge the approaches of the historian and the practitioner.