Welcome to the V&A Museum's “Ali Baba's Cave”
London's temple to decorative arts and design, the Victoria and Albert Museum, opened its new warehouse in the east of the English capital on May 31st. Some 250,000 fabulous artifacts are now fully accessible to visitors. This Times reporter was delighted by her first exploration of the premises.
There's something moving about seeing theatre costumes up close, that blend of glamour and pragmatic considerations that allows a character to magically reappear on stage night after night. And that's what the V&A East Storehouse, the new annex of the Victoria and Albert Museum, makes possible, where you can come and admire objects chosen from the institution's reserves [and not on display in the great London museum devoted to the decorative and applied arts], makes possible.
Hence my careful examination of the tunic worn in 1881 by Henry Irving [a legend of English theatre] in the role of Synorix, the treacherous antihero of Lord Alfred Tennyson's The Cup , played at the Lyceum Theatre in London. Topped with lavish and abundant metal embroidery, this tunic undoubtedly shone brightly under the gaslight and spotlight—which must have disguised its coarse flannel construction, like a cheap blanket.
The actor must have sweated profusely while wearing it to face his enemy on stage several times a week, but at least it was sturdy: 144 years later, only the embroidery is beginning to fray slightly.
The tunic, which can be handled with gloves, was brought to me by the new object ordering service from the V&A's reserves, located in east London [and inaugurated on 31 May 2025]. From specialist researcher to simp
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