Jim: The Symington Museum of Corsetry, established by the originators of machine/factory production in the 1860s, Robert Symington Ltd of Market Harborough, England, in the 1950s was donated to the Leicestershire Museums, Arts and Records Service in the early 1980s. There are major displays from the collection in the Textiles Gallery of the Snibston Discovery Park, Coalville, Leicestershire, and in the Harborough Museum (which shares the former Symington factory with the District Council offices and county library), as well as in the Wygston's House Museum of Costume in Leicster itself. Symington's at the peak were the largest producers of corsetry and other foundation wear (now termed "contour fashion" - you can do a PhD in it at the former Leicester Polytechnic, now De Montfort University) - around 20 million garments a year under their various brands, including Liberty (and those famous liberty bodices!), Christian Dior etc. They even pioneered inflatable bras in about 1952 - a conservation nightmare incidentally, quite apart from the fact that the wearer tended to squeak indelicately even in a (strictly hands-off) bear hug! More seriously, Symington's production techniques enabled working class and lower middle class women to be truly fashionable for the first time. In the 1850s the cheapest fashionable corset was over five pounds - three months wages for a farm worker; by the early 1870s Symingtons were wholesaling a dozen for less than 1 pound. They were also pioneers in employee welfare - with a full-time female welfare officer for their (predominantly female) 5,000 plus employees by the 1890s. Leicstershire Museums have around 5,000 garments from the Symington Museum - mostly from the 1860s onwards, but with a few earlier pieces, while the collection continues to the present day, with samples of each year's designs (now mostly leisure wear, such a swim and sports wear) still being added on a regular basis right through to the 1990s. Patrick Boylan (Director. Leicestershire, 1972-90) ================================================ On Tue, 28 Nov 1995, JDEVINE wrote: > Do you know of any odd museums or pseudo-museums? I am collecting > oddities for something tomorrow. I am thinking of things like teddy > bear museums, museums of underwear, corsets, pipes, razors, > left-handed tools etc. The dafter the better. If you know of such > could you please tell me, with details of where and when??? Thanks. > > > Jim Devine > Hunterian Museum > University of Glasgow > http://www.gla.ac.uk/Museum/ >