Secrets of the Museum

The curators are searching for untold stories in the museum's objects. Curator Christine is working on a major new exhibition highlighting African fashion, spanning couture, photography and design. But she's also looking for objects with more personal stories. A family has come forward offering their kente cloth to the exhibition. Traditionally made from woven strips of silk and cotton, kente has been produced in west Africa since the 17th century.

77-year-old grandmother Gladys tells Christine that she bought her kente in Ghana in 1960, ready for the christening of her daughter Doris. The family are keen to see the precious family heirloom go on display at the V&A.

Christine has also taken delivery of a new object for the forthcoming show – a colour photograph by London-based Ghanaian photographer James Barnor. The print, from a photograph taken in 1971, is of a well-dressed woman carrying brightly-coloured bottles, and was used as a guide for the correct reproduction of colour. Barnor established the first colour processing lab in Ghana, but he also documented life in the country as it was becoming independent, as well as capturing the swinging 60s in London. Christine and co-curator Hana invite 92-year-old Barnor in to the V&A.

Some of the objects in the V&A's collection are still shrouded in mystery. Curator Nick has recently made a puzzling discovery – an object he's never seen before. Acquired by the V&A in 1855, the large wooden dish or tray was given the attribution ‘Ancient Persian, 17th century', but Nick suspects that may be incorrect. He has a hunch that the highly-decorated tray may be a rare example of a ‘barniz de Pasto' object.

There are no more than 20 known barniz de Pasto objects in Europe, and the V&A holds five. Nick wants to find out if they have a sixth.
Barniz de Pasto refers to a style of decoration applied to a range of wooden objects made from the 17th century onwards in the Spanish colonies of Latin America. It's distinguished by a particular kind of varnish applied to the objects, known as mopa mopa.

To find out if his tray is indeed varnished with mopa mopa, Nick asks senior conservator Dana to take a small sample from the surface, which is analysed to find out if the molecular signature of mopa mopa is present.

Even objects on permanent display have little-known stories to tell. Among the V&A's most celebrated collections are 24 sculptures by Auguste Rodin, on show at the museum since 1914. They include Inner Voice, a bronze statue depicting a young woman lost in her thoughts. Attacked by many critics when it was first unveiled for its daring new approach to the human form, Inner Voice is now considered a masterpiece. The statue is being sent on loan to Switzerland, but before it leaves, curator Melanie wants to uncover the strange story of how so many Rodin works ended up in the museum a century ago.

She tracks down correspondence between Rodin and the V&A, and discovers that the artist offered his works to the museum after the First World War broke out. The director of the V&A at the time, Cecil Smith, admitted that he personally detested Rodin's work, and yet he believed the sculptor would in time be recognised for his huge contribution to modern art.

In Dundee, curators are turning the page on one of their biggest objects – literally. It's a giant pop-up book made by artist John Byrne, used as a backdrop for a touring stage production of the play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, which made a huge impact on audiences across Scotland during the 1970s. The book is on long-term loan from the National Library of Scotland. To protect it from too much light exposure, a team from the National Library and V&A Dundee have devised a plan to carefully turn the page of the huge but fragile pop-up book, revealing a new scene.

The spotlight falls on objects representing industry and design.

Curator Martin is preparing for a new exhibition showcasing a leading postwar photographer, Maurice Broomfield. Broomfield captured British factories, steelworks, laboratories and plants in their heyday, when manufacturing was booming in the 1950s and 60s. Before his death in 2010, Maurice donated his entire life's work of 30,000 prints to the V&A. Martin is choosing the best to put on display. But some of the prints are now 60 years old and need painstaking conservation before they can go on show.

Martin travels to meet Maurice's son, documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, to learn more about his father's fascination with machines and mechanical marvels – including an array of cameras that were the tools of Maurice's trade.

Another new donation gives an insight into a postwar success story – the much-loved fashion brand Biba. Collector Danuta Laughton is donating a range of outfits made by Biba in the 60s and 70s, but curator Jenny is amazed to learn that Danuta also wants to donate a rare survival that reveals how Biba operated. It's a production file, containing orders and instructions to a factory for making 120 different garments. The file shows how very short production runs of garments was one of the keys to Biba's success. Jenny describes the production file as ‘one of the most exciting things I have ever seen' – especially when she learns that the file was saved for posterity from a skip.

Biba's founder, Barbara Hulanicki, flies in from Miami to see the production file and to meet Danuta and Jenny. Barbara was born in Poland but grew up in Britain and founded Biba in 1963. Biba was to revolutionise high street retail, offering not just clothing but a whole way of life to its loyal customers.

The V&A doesn't just celebrate works of Western design and manufacture. Curator Avalon wants to display a work acquired by the museum in 1852 but never exhibited. It's a jamdani stole, a fabric of exquisite and painstaking design made in what is now Dhaka, Bangladesh. Dhaka was home to a whole industry of textile weavers famous for their intricate decorative work. Their fabrics were so fine they were almost transparent, earning them names meaning ‘running water', or ‘woven air'.

But before this unseen textile can go on show, conservator Elizabeth-Anne must remove decades of dust and grime. Despite three hours of handwashing in a custom-made bath using museum-grade detergents, the stole is still looking less than perfect. So Elizabeth-Anne deploys her secret weapon – an ultrasonic wand that releases tiny bubbles to dislodge the stubborn stains.

In Stoke-on-Trent, curators Catrin and Rebecca at the V&A Wedgwood Collection are celebrating the experiments and trial runs of pioneering potter and industrialist Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood transformed English pottery from a cottage craft to a world-beating industry in the late 18th century, and his trial runs show how he did it. Catrin and Rebecca are handing over 500 individual trial pieces to ceramic artist Neil Brownsword, who wants to display them in an exhibition nearby. These small fragments reveal Wedgwood's rigorous approach to making the perfect pottery as he experimented with different glazes and firing temperatures to produce the affordable and robust creamware for which he became famous.

Conservator Adriana is cleaning a beautiful sculpture thought to have been designed by the Renaissance master Donatello and produced in his workshop, almost 600 years ago. Virgin and Child with Saints and Angels is a work known as a relief, in which three-dimensional elements stand out against a flat base. Once a layer dirt is lifted, Adriana discovers ancient varnish, which she must remove without damaging the paint surface below. And as she cleans, she makes a discovery about the piece which helps to explain how it was originally used.

Theatre and Performance curator Simon has just taken delivery of a costume from the 2013 stage play The Audience, in which Helen Mirren played the Queen across six decades of her reign. The dress, a regal outfit inspired by a 1950s gown from royal couturier Sir Norman Hartnell, has a secret that explains how Mirren was able to undertake up to 10 quick changes each night during the show – it zips up at the back like an enormous coat. After conservator Gesa makes a mannequin in the shape of Helen Mirren on which to display the dress, Simon invites its designer, renowned theatrical designer Bob Crowley, to the V&A for a reunion with his royal creation.

In Devon, archivist Christopher is meeting up with a 91-year-old master of his craft, a man whose creations have made all our lives easier. Sir Kenneth Grange designed the Kenwood Chef, the parking meter, the famous blue-and-yellow Intercity 125 train, Parker pens, and a breakthrough Kodak camera – as well as hundreds of other products – in a career as a designer spanning 60 years. Now, he's donating the archive of his life's work to the V&A, and Christopher faces the daunting task of selecting just a few key pieces for a display in the new V&A East Storehouse. Sir Kenneth is also donating his sketchbooks to the museum, containing a day-by-day record of his thinking as he set about creating products that many of us have used for decades.

At V&A Dundee, the team have recruited contemporary artist and designer Yinka Ilori to help them fill the enormous entrance hall at the museum, one of the largest exhibition spaces in Scotland. Yinka, a designer famous for filling public spaces with giant and very colourful works of art, is proposing building a 170 sq metre technicolour maze, for children of all ages, filled with zip-up panels to allow you to slip through from one section to another. But will the result meet with the approval of a focus group of local children?