The exhibition, 'Narrative Cloth' is the result of a collaboration between social historian Danae Tankard and three artists, Victoria Brown, Shirley Chubb and Rachel Johnston.

The starting point has been Danae’s research on the clothing of the rural poor in 17th century Sussex, which was published as an article, ‘“A pair of grass-green woollen stockings”: the clothing of the rural poor in seventeenth-century Sussex’, in the journal, Textile History, in 2012. This research drew on a diverse range of primary sources, including theft prosecutions, wills and probate inventories (lists of testators’ moveable goods taken immediately after death).

Each artist has produced a series of works in different media reflecting their personal response to the narratives of cloth and clothing explored in the article.