Full House!

Today we’ve tested our new office to with 4 of us working simultaneously. It made for a really exciting time to have some collaboration on the information we all had and find links. We caught up with Nikki’s projects and talked about her ways into the project on the first day of a placement as part if her MA at UWE Bristol, in Making as Research, and we heard a de-brief from Annette about all her patent searches from The British Library. We talked about the ways in which information can be accessed, but the motivations for these women can only really be speculated on. Annette brought up some really interesting finds and told us what she had been asking herself. What were the benefits for them financially, socially and in terms of their status? Why patent at all as opposed to just making? How political was it to file a patent? We learnt more about the role of changing prices to apply for a patent, patent agents, the limited titles of the women- spinster/ gentlewoman/ dressmaker… and noticed that a few of the women patentees we are interested in have gone it alone. I really look forward to reading Annette’s write-up of her findings. A few revelations occurred when names of patent holders that Annette has favourited turned out to be names we’ve seen in advertising! The rest of our evening has been blissfully productive searching following up where we can find out more- in correspondence held pre patent in the form of as yet unfound ‘patent wrappers’ or US collections that may have some surviving examples we can see.