Archives and Museums

Archive and museum collections provide direct links to the past, to inspire and inform. Sometimes, finding information can be a challenge, so I wanted to share some of the rich Romani sources I have come across, in the UK, overseas and online.

The Gypsy Collections, held at the University of Liverpool, comprises The Gypsy Lore Society Archive and the Scott Macfie Gypsy Collection. It spans c1860-1998 and amounts to 226 archive boxes and 35 volumes.

The Brotherton Library, University of Leeds holds a Romani collection of over 2000 items, including the library of Sir Angus Fraser, author of The Gypsies (1995).

Heritage Collections, University of Exeter holds material relating to Rupert Croft-Cooke.

Access to Archives can be used to search UK archives for relevant records.

The Romani Archives and Documentation Centre (RADOC), first assembled in 1962 in London, is now located at the University of Texas (which teaches Romani Studies), and is the largest Romani collection in the world.

The Croft-Cooke Gypsy Collection and extensive archive of Rupert Croft-Cooke are housed at The Harry Ransom Centre, also part of the University of Texas. (In the UK, there's some unease about collections going abroad - and indeed, I can't think what Rupert would say - but I'm glad the collection exists and is safe. If only I could visit!)

British Pathé (formerly The Pathé News) has digitised around 90,000 of its newsreel and documentary clips, made from 1910 until 1970. They are available to watch online and there seem to be more clips about gypsy life every time I check!

For museums in the UK, try The Gordon Boswell Romany Museum, The South East Romany Museum, The Wheelwrights' Working Museum and Gypsy Folklore Collection, The Museum of English Rural Life and Worcestershire County Museum... for a start!

What are Gypsy Crafts?

Craft practices can define cultures: different skill-sets, products and patrons speak of different lifestyles. In England, gypsies are often associated with their traditional serviceable crafts and hand-skills. Many older people remember gypsies selling their  wares from baskets door-to-door; indeed, this was how many house-dwelling non-gypsies (gorgers) encountered them.

When Rupert Croft-Cooke travelled with English Romanies in the 1940s, he discussed their crafts in detail, particularly with his longest-standing companion Ted Scamp.

'Tell me some more things your people make'.

'There's hundreds', said Ted... 'There's ever s'many more things they do'.

Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Moon in my Pocket: Life with the Romanies (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1948), p. 58.

Below I have set out some traditional gypsy crafts, based on his observations:

Artificial Flowers

These were either made from cut and wired crepe paper, or wooden sticks with one end whittled into strands and dipped into coloured wax. They could last for many years.

Baskets
Although Ted thought there were still Romani basket-makers in the 1940s, he admitted he knew no one locally that 'knows the art or has the tools'. 

Beehives
Making beehives (goodlokenners) had been an important business, but, Ted supposed, had died out with the last maker, Billy 'Flood' Quitnin. Flood had used reeds and straw, but wooden box hives had since taken over.

Carpet Beaters
Ted recalled long-handled carpet beaters twisted into wonderful patterns, 'all made by our people'. A family-made beater might be hung in a wagon (vardo) for years.

Clothes Pegs 

Ted called these tograms, but didn't think this was a Romani word. He described how long sticks of even thickness were cut in the woods. Any wood that wasn't too dry, green or knotty would serve, 'But you can't be too particular. You get what you can'. The sticks were shaved and cut to length, then pieces of tin, perhaps begged by the women, were cut into strips and tapped or tacked around one end. Lastly, the other end was split - sometimes with a single cut - and mouthed, leaving it smooth for clothes. Although a skilled peg-maker could turn out around 1000 per day, it was a common skill, and labour might be divided along a workline.

Scented Wood
Ted described pieces of pine being cut into attractive shapes and soaked in lavender. With their long-lasting scent, they were bought by ladies to keep among their delicates, and fetched up to half a crown each.

Ted also referred to:

• Chair rushing (known as 'tiger-hunting')
• Coconut matting string mats
• Horn cups and spoons
• Lace-making
• Patchwork ('patchy-patchy') quilts, for the vardo bed rather than for sale

Gypsies were also renowned leatherworkers, metalworkers ('tinkering' refers to the mending of metal household utensils) and wood-carvers. I haven't mentioned wagon-carving or painting, which was a complex, collaborative venture (deserving its own post!) Skills like dress-making were, of course, widespread at the time.

Suited to travelling, these sustainable crafts relied on found, natural materials, and did not require a workshop. The results would have been welcomed by many gorgers. Industrial production and commerce have diminished these skills - like so many others - but you can still watch demonstrations.

The Moon in my Pocket

  
You are looking at one of the most prolific English writers of the twentieth century. Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903-79) may be a forgotten name, but his 125 books - encompassing fiction, poetry, plays, biography and non-fiction - stand testament to his remarkable life.

Born in Edenbridge, Kent, to Lucy and Hubert Bruce Cooke, Rupert was educated at Tonbridge School and Wellington College, and worked variously as a writer, journalist and reviewer, an antiquarian bookseller, a teacher and a radio broadcaster. In defiance of his middle-class upbringing and his father's narrowminded views, he spent many years abroad - in Paris, Buenos Aires, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia and elsewhere - living cheaply and absorbing new cultures. His autobiographical travel series, The Sensual World, brims with period detail, and whilst focussing on people and places, nevertheless reveals his honesty, optimism and social consciousness.

On my bookshelves I have a copy of Rupert's 1938 work (signed and from Foyles, no less), How to get More out of Life; a guide to maintaining individuality, surviving and even thriving in modern times. Wear a cloak, keep a pet badger, sing on the train, he advises. List all the things you want to do but think you shouldn't, and set about doing them.

Rupert practiced as he preached: in the winter of 1939, he bought a gypsy caravan (vardo) and a horse, and took to the road with a Romani companion, Ted Scamp. From Ted and many others, he learnt about Romani culture, customs, language and crafts. Despite the outbreak of war, these were blissful days.

I came to the gypsies by my own way... I lived with them because I liked it... Among the gypsies I was no lavengro, no word-man. I was too happy.

Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Moon in my Pocket: Life with the Romanies (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1948), p. 1.

To learn from books was not enough; indeed, Rupert did not discover the 'gypsiologists' - the anthropologists, historians, linguists and other successors of George Borrow, who came together under the Gypsy Lore Society - until after his own travels began.

In 1948, he recounted his experiences in The Moon in my Pocket: Life with the Romanies. (You can see pictures of this book in my first post). Ending with a powerful 'vindication' of the gypsies, his own photographs and a list of commonly-used Romani words, it educated and inspired readers. In his follow-up book of 1955, A Few Gypsies, Rupert recalls the letters he received from fans ready to take to the road themselves. But increasingly, such a way of life was no longer possible.

Impossible... to see the gypsies pass with their paint and brasswork catching the sun... without a spasm of envy. For their appointment tonight is with the rising moon, their engagement tomorrow is to meet another day.

Croft-Cooke, The Moon in my Pocket (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1948), p. 181.

I am more than grateful to Rupert Croft-Cooke. He has taught me facts I should already have known, provided wonderful insights into gypsy life and described characters so vividly that I feel I have known them. He has opened a rare window, and encouraged me to look for others.

Murton and 'The Wanderer'

Just now, BBC iPlayer is showing the second series of Grand Tours of Scotland, presented by film-maker Paul Murton. In the spirit of Victorian tourists, who saw Scotland as a Romantic idyll, Murton follows a tattered copy of Black's Picturesque Guide to Scotland and uses as many forms of transport as possible. The first leg of his journey, from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Melrose, is completed in a bow-top gypsy caravan pulled by a single horse, Jack.

On the road, Murton relates the story of the eccentric founder of pleasure-caravanning, 'gentleman gypsy' Dr. William Gordon Stables. Having been invited to see the interior of a gypsy caravan, Stables was so impressed that he commissioned his own version to be built. The result: The Wanderer, a mahogany coach-built vehicle drawn by two horses, which provided everything that Stables required on the road, from his writing desk to running water. The Wanderer is now owned by the Caravan Club.

As Murton discusses with Stables's great-grandson, Stables viewed high living on the road as a precious lifestyle which benefitted the health. He related the first tour of The Wanderer - taken in 1885 from Berkshire to Inverness with his valet, dog and cockatoo - in The Cruise of the Land-Yacht 'Wanderer': Or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan (duly added to my Amazon Wish List - yes, it is available!)

Murton misses a trick by not showing us the interior of his caravan, but there are some nice close-ups of its external paintwork.

Episode 1 is available until Wednesday 14th December.

Welcome

A warm welcome to my blog, which I have set up as a place of musings, chatter and general notes-to-self about my ongoing research topic: the material culture of the English Romani gypsies.

The colour, spirit and warmth of gypsy art has always attracted me, but my fascination was really inspired by a book I found in a charity shop in 2009. Enchanted by the title - The Moon in my Pocket - and the lovely wrapper illustrations, I handed over the slightly breathtaking sum of £25 (which I have since learnt is not expensive). This purchase introduced me to the writings of Rupert Croft-Cooke, a friend of the gypsies in the 1940s. It is to him that I dedicate this blog.

Rupert Croft-Cooke, The Moon in my Pocket: Life with the Romanies (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1948).

The front and spine illustrations are by the British artist Laurence Scarfe (1914-93), who worked in many visual disciplines, including illustration, graphic design, fine art, mural painting and ceramic decoration, at the Royal College of Art, Central School of Art, Brighton Polytechnic and elsewhere. His papers from 1935-83 are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum's Archive of Art and Design.

Incidentally, the chimney of the caravan (vardo) is in the wrong place, which must have irritated Croft-Cooke no end. (In a later book, he mentions losing respect for illustrators who fail to place the chimney to the immediate left of the front door. More on this later!)