For the September edition of the Look What I Found series at the V&A East Storehouse, the institution welcomed multimedia artist, creative practitioner, and researcher Remiiya Badru. The visit served as a core component of Badru’s micro-residency at V&A East, where she spent extensive time examining the museum’s vast collections in direct preparation for her upcoming exhibition at Cody Dock in Canning Town, titled “Common Threads.”
As an Assistant Curator based at the V&A East Storehouse, support for Badru’s research was provided by facilitating privileged access to the physical object stores, operating in tandem with formal Order an Object appointments managed by the V&A Collections Access team. Following her immersive research sessions in the archives, Badru presented the objects, historical connections, and discoveries she had uncovered during a free public show-and-tell event. This engagement highlighted key object stories and thematic intersections that emerged from her archival deep-dive, centering specifically on calico and Prussian blue dyes in relation to the geography of the River Lea.
Remiiya Badru is an avid walker, listener, and practitioner whose artistic output investigates textiles, dyes, and making histories across diverse geographies and historical epochs. Her work maps global connections embedded within material culture through collaborations with prominent institutions, including the University of Leicester, Royal Museums Greenwich, Museum X, and the Museum of London Docklands. Drawing inspiration from her extensive explorations and continuous artistic practices around rivers, Badru developed a signature creative methodology she terms “Rhumblines.” This metaphorical device functions as a conceptual thread that binds complex river-related and interwoven stories together, allowing her to successfully navigate the frequently hidden histories and deliberate silences surrounding specific people and places. As a direct witness to infrastructural change and urban flux in her local environment, she explores these juxtapositions through collective memories of post-colonialism, pre- and post-industrial transformations, cultural heritage, and the evolving dichotomy between natural and man-made environments.
Badru’s previous artistic investigations focusing on the River Thames and broader water histories naturally led to her year-long artist residency at Cody Dock. Situated in east London, Cody Dock operates as a community-led social enterprise dedicated to conserving the banks of the River Lea, preserving its industrial heritage, and delivering robust cultural and educational programs. The organization maintains a core focus on fostering community resilience and leveraging the intrinsic power of collaborative making to build social bonds and facilitate healing within a rapidly changing, bustling sector of the London Borough of Newham.
Bromley Hall
As a primary focal point of her residency at Cody Dock, Badru has dedicated significant time to investigating the deep-rooted textile production histories associated with Bromley Hall in Bromley-by-Bow. Recognized as one of the oldest surviving brick houses in London famously utilized by Henry VIII, Bromley Hall is currently owned and undergoing careful restoration by Leaside Regeneration as part of broader initiatives to revitalize the River Lea corridor. Historical records indicate that the site operated as a hub for calico printing as early as the 1740s, managed extensively by the Talwin and Foster families throughout the late eighteenth century. These historical printers utilized sophisticated copperplate printing techniques to produce domestic furnishings, applying intricate decorative patterns heavily inspired by Chinese artistic motifs and Indian chintz designs.
A major archival breakthrough occurred in 1955 when the Calico Printers’ Association formally donated a historic pattern book originating from Bromley Hall to the V&A’s permanent collection. Upon discovering this direct historical link to her ongoing research, Badru visited the Prints and Drawings Study Room in South Kensington to examine the pattern book. Subsequently, she located numerous matching printed fabrics from Bromley Hall within the collections housed at the V&A East Storehouse, including a notable piece featuring a Peacock and Hen design. These Asian-inspired textiles serve as physical testaments to the broader, dynamic migration of designs and textile production methods during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—an era when both the River Lea and the River Thames functioned as critical maritime waterways connecting Great Britain to its global colonies.
Throughout previous artistic projects, Badru has consistently created works that respond directly to the harsh narratives of chattel slavery and the complex commercial journeys of ships navigating between Britain and its overseas territories, focusing closely on the foundational histories of cotton cultivation and industrial manufacture. Drawing directly from these earlier inquiries, Badru expanded her investigation to encompass historical calico and indigo-related objects preserved within the V&A collections. Her overarching objective was to unearth deeper, often overlooked global connections linking Bromley Hall printers, international trade, and the environmental history of the River Lea.
Calico
Badru initiated her material inquiry by examining historic calico specimens held at the V&A East Storehouse, where she encountered a carefully cut piece of white cotton originating from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, India, produced around 1855. While closely analyzing the tight weave and structural properties of this coarse cotton material, Badru discovered that the cloth had actually been sectioned during the production of John Forbes Watson’s monumental 1866 publication, The Textile Manufactures of India. Watson’s multi-volume work consisted of comprehensive textile books—which the author frequently referred to as “mini-museums”—that were systematically dispatched to textile producers across Great Britain and colonial India. These volumes incorporated tangible samples of authentic South Asian materials intended to instruct domestic weavers on how to replicate these foreign textiles independently.
In the introductory remarks accompanying the volumes, Watson explicitly outlined the economic motivations behind the project, noting that a population of approximately two hundred million individuals inhabited India. He observed that while the garments worn by the vast majority might be sparse, an order to clothe the entire population would severely test the manufacturing capacity of the greatest industrial nation on earth, identifying India as positioned to become a magnificent customer for British industry.
By endeavoring to teach indigenous Indian textile techniques and production methods through standardized imperial publications, Watson’s writings vividly illustrate the mechanisms through which imperial Britain sought to assert total economic control over its colonial markets, ultimately manufacturing and reselling mass-produced iterations of traditional Indian textiles back to their original creators. Through these fluctuating, porous global exchanges governing textile production and export, Badru became intensely fascinated by the ways in which water systems not only dictate the physical transit of raw materials and finished goods, but actively shape the localized making practices, technical knowledge, and commercial markets surrounding textile production.
Ankara
In addition to her comprehensive study of historic calico, Badru directed her attention toward objects dyed using both natural and synthetic indigo, such as an English dress fabric commonly recognized as ankara, which emerged as a widely popular printed textile worn extensively across West Africa. She was particularly drawn to the complex historical trajectory of ankara, a textile format that originated from nineteenth-century Dutch industrial attempts to economically replicate traditional Indonesian batik while bypassing the intricate, highly time-consuming hand techniques required for genuine wax-resist dyeing.
Facilitated by Dutch colonial administration in Indonesia and later accelerated by the fierce European scramble to secure territorial control across the African continent, ankara developed out of intricate global exchanges characterized by the systematic European appropriation of indigenous textile manufacturing techniques. Despite these deeply rooted colonial origins, ankara eventually evolved into a widely recognized visual medium representing African self-sovereignty, cultural empowerment, and identity.
Even though European dominance over ankara production—achieved through cheaper mechanical roller printing methods—allowed nations like the Netherlands and Britain to establish lucrative markets across Africa dependent upon imported textiles, Badru remained focused on examining a specific object within the collection that directly imitated adinkra cloth. Traditional adinkra textiles are block-printed fabrics utilizing plant-based dyes, originating historically from the Asante and Bono peoples across the territories now modernly recognized as Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The iconic symbols embedded within these cloths, also known as adinkra, function as sophisticated conceptual visual forms and narrative devices found widely across Ghanaian and Ivorian material culture, including architecture, pottery, and woven fabrics.
As Badru identified this persistent historical pattern of European industrial reproduction targeting indigenous making techniques alongside calculated attempts to dominate colonial markets via cotton and indigo-dyed goods, she and her curatorial support team explored an adjacent storage drawer. There, they uncovered a striking example of an adire cloth, providing a fascinating comparative study of a traditional Yoruba textile practice that similarly incorporates sophisticated resist-dyeing methods. Such unexpected discoveries highlight the distinct research environment of the Storehouse, where physical exploration frequently uncovers remarkable objects capable of redirecting scholarly inquiry along entirely new trajectories.
Ādirà Cloth
The discovered textile represents a prime example of adire eleko, a notable mid-twentieth-century innovation within traditional adire dyeing techniques. This method involves painting a thin, precise layer of cassava starch onto cotton fabric utilizing a metal stencil to generate intricate, repeating patterns through a specialized resist-dyeing process. By drawing a direct comparison between industrially produced English ankara and traditional Yoruba adire, Badru emphasized the frequently overlooked material intelligence embedded within the work of indigenous makers—qualities that cheaper, mass-produced industrial imitations fundamentally fail to replicate.
These ongoing inquiries concerning indigo-dyed cotton, industrial manufacturing frameworks, and human labor eventually prompted Badru to examine entirely different objects within the collection originating from distinct geographic regions yet manufactured using remarkably similar materials.
Sashiko
A compelling example of this comparative research is a historic firefighter’s jacket and matching hood ensemble preserved from Japan, dating between 1850 and 1900. The garment exemplifies a traditional stitching methodology known as sashiko. While sashiko is conventionally deployed for mending and reinforcing worn clothing, in this specific utilitarian context, the stitching is utilized to quilt multiple layers of heavy cotton together. This technique generated a dense, highly resilient composite fabric designed to provide superior protection against open flames.
Before entering a burning structure, the garment would be thoroughly doused in water, creating a reliable cooling barrier against extreme heat. Furthermore, the accompanying hood incorporates specialized padding integrated into the crown to offer additional structural cushioning against falling architectural debris. For Badru, this early historical iteration of functional, fire-retardant protective clothing underscored the inventive ways in which textile production has continuously adapted and evolved through sheer human necessity, binding the daily labor practices of working-class individuals across disparate historical periods.
Boro
Continuing her thematic exploration of utilitarian workwear and textile innovation born from economic and environmental necessity, Badru studied a traditional Japanese work coat known as a noragi. This garment stands as an exceptional physical example of boro, a Japanese term translating literally to “rags,” which refers to textiles constructed from heavily patched and mended recycled fabrics. The coat was historically worn by an agricultural worker and meticulously repaired over its lifespan using assorted scraps of indigo-dyed cotton.
Beyond demonstrating how recycled fabrics were historically utilized to mend work clothing to extend durability and conserve scarce resources, Badru interpreted the garment as a profound testament to the inherent beauty of sustainable, circular textile practices. The intricate, densely packed lines of hand-stitching highlight the immense care, time, and deliberation invested by the wearer and maker who continually maintained the utilitarian garment.
Observing the physical artifact evokes the presence of the hands that executed the repairs, the physical exertion that imbued the jacket with the narratives of grueling daily labor, and the focused attention dedicated to each individual stitch during evening hours to ensure the garment would endure another season. These minute physical details render the historical bodies of both the wearer and the maker visible across a span of more than 150 years, granting Badru a meaningful opportunity to recover their otherwise hidden human voices through the medium of textiles.
Patchworking Community
Because Badru’s artistic practice heavily incorporates creative facilitation and participatory arts programming, she sought to actively involve visitors and staff members at the V&A East Storehouse in collective making. This engagement allowed participants to construct their own decorative textile patches, which were subsequently integrated into her physical display presented at Cody Dock.
During the public show-and-tell event hosted at the Storehouse, Badru invited attendees to share personal narratives by designing custom decorative patches fashioned from discarded denim and salvaged scraps sourced directly from the Storehouse Creative Studios. Operating with the dedicated support of Honey Birch, a Creative Studio Practitioner for V&A East, Badru facilitated a drop-in workshop that generated significant enthusiasm among visiting members of the public and museum staff alike.
Drawing conceptual inspiration from the iconic high-visibility vests worn as standard uniform by volunteers and staff members at Cody Dock, Badru encouraged workshop participants to pin their completed patches onto a central display piece. This collaborative textile installation serves as a direct homage to the diverse individuals and communities whose collective labor constitutes the cultural fabric of both Cody Dock and V&A East.
The completed jacket, alongside the entirety of Remiiya Badru’s Common Threads project, remains on public display at The Boathouse located at Cody Dock in Canning Town through November 6, 2026. The realization of the project was supported by contributions from Remiiya Badru, Bella Quirin, the broader Cody Dock team and volunteers, alongside Derya Adiman, Sally Barton, and the V&A East Creative Studios team.