Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating lecture at the National Maritime Museum looking at the clothes worn by WRNS popularly known as the Wrens. Jo Horton outlined her research on Wrens clothing from when they were founded in the First World War to the 1950s. She had drawn on the museum collection and archives as well as interviewing a number of veterans and used touching quotes from those interviews. She looked at the uniforms and how the women adapted them to fit as well the different types of less formal work wear. She also talked about what they wore off duty and how they shared clothes. This talk was to mark Women’s History Month and was paired with another talk by the journalist, Vivien Morgan “Cross Dressed to Kill” about women who had gone to war disguised as men from the 17th century to the 20th. She described some fabulous characters who I want to look up.

Interesting exhibition at the Visitor Centre of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich marking 100 years since the founding of the Women’s Royal Naval Service and looking in particular at the role the college played in their training. This was a small exhibition but told the story clearly and well and made good use of photographs and a few objects. They had used nice quotes hanging from the ceiling. It had been researched by members of the University of the Third Age. It looked at how the service had changed over the years starting in the First World War to provide cooks, drivers and telephonists to free up men for the ships through to the first WRNS to go to sea in 1990 and the amalgamation with the Royal Navy in 1993. There were some delightful and interesting stories. Closes on 3 December 2017