For the September edition of the Look What I Found series at V&A East Storehouse, visitors and staff were joined by multimedia artist, creative practitioner, and researcher Remiiya Badru. As part of an ongoing micro-residency at V&A East, Badru spent dedicated time diving deep into the institution’s vast and varied collections. Her archival research served as direct preparation for her upcoming exhibition at Cody Dock in Canning Town, titled "Common Threads." Supported by the V&A East Assistant Curator, who facilitated access to object stores and coordinated appointments with the V&A Collections Access team, Badru embarked on a journey to trace the intricate material connections linking local London waterways to global histories of trade, empire, and textile production.
Following her extensive research sessions in the object stores, Badru presented her findings, uncovered items, and underlying research themes during a free, public show-and-tell event at the Storehouse. This collaborative exploration focused heavily on the material cultures of calico, indigo-dyed cottons, and the historical roles played by waterways such as the River Lea and the River Thames.
Badru is well-known as an avid walker, listener, and practitioner whose work spans textiles, dyes, and making histories across diverse geographies and time periods. Her practice maps global connections in 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 continuous explorations of rivers and water histories, Badru developed a distinctive creative process she terms "Rhumblines"—a metaphorical navigational device that threads complex, river-related, and interwoven stories together. This conceptual framework allows her to successfully navigate the often hidden histories, silences, and overlooked narratives of specific people and places. As a keen witness to infrastructural change and flux in her local environment, she investigates these spatial and temporal juxtapositions through the lingering memories of (post)colonialism, pre- and post-industrial transformations, cultural heritage, and the interplay between natural and man-made landscapes.
Badru’s previous creative engagements with 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 rich industrial heritage, and delivering vibrant cultural and educational programmes. The organisation places a core focus on community engagement and harnesses the power of collective making to build social bonds and foster healing within a rapidly changing, bustling part of the London Borough of Newham.
Bromley Hall
As a central component of her residency at Cody Dock, Badru has focused heavily on investigating the historic textile production landscape at Bromley Hall in Bromley-by-Bow. Recognised as one of the oldest surviving brick houses in London associated with Henry VIII, Bromley Hall is currently owned and undergoing careful restoration by Leaside Regeneration as part of broader initiatives to revitalise the River Lea corridor. Historical records reveal that the site served as a hub for calico printers beginning in the 1740s, operated extensively by the Talwin and Foster families throughout the late 18th century. These early manufacturers utilised copperplate printing techniques to produce domestic furnishings, incorporating intricate decorative patterns heavily inspired by Chinese motifs and Indian chintz designs.
In 1955, the Calico Printers’ Association generously donated a historic pattern book originating from Bromley Hall to the V&A’s collection. Discovering this direct institutional link to her ongoing research, Badru visited the Prints and Drawings Study Room in South Kensington to examine the volume, which contains 144 copperplate engravings for textile design dating between 1760 and 1800. Following this, she explored the V&A East Storehouse, where she uncovered numerous surviving examples of the very same printed fabrics produced at Bromley Hall, including a striking piece featuring a peacock and hen design. These Asian-inspired textiles bear witness to the broader historical migration of designs and manufacturing techniques during the 1700s and 1800s—an era when both the River Lea and the River Thames functioned as vital maritime arteries connecting Great Britain to its global colonies.
Building upon her earlier artistic projects, which frequently responded to narratives of transatlantic enslavement, the journeys of merchant and colonial ships, and the foundational histories of cotton cultivation and manufacture, Badru expanded her inquiry. She sought out additional calico and indigo-related objects within the V&A collections to unearth deeper connections linking the Bromley Hall printers, international trade networks, and the waters of the River Lea.
Calico
Badru’s archival investigation into historic calicos at the V&A East Storehouse led her to examine a cut piece of white cotton manufactured in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, around 1855. While studying the close weave of this relatively coarse cotton fabric, Badru discovered a direct connection to 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 he frequently described as "mini-museums"—that were compiled and distributed to textile producers across Great Britain and colonial India. These volumes contained physical samples of South Asian materials designed to instruct British and colonial manufacturers on how to replicate these indigenous textile traditions.
In the introductory remarks to these volumes, Watson outlined the economic scale of the imperial strategy: approximately two hundred million people formed the population of British India, and while their garments might be sparse, an order to clothe the entire population would test the resources of the greatest manufacturing nation on earth. Watson emphasised that India was positioned to become a magnificent customer for British industry.
By systematically documenting and teaching Indian textile production methods, Watson’s writings illustrated the calculated ways in which imperial Britain sought to command colonial markets, frequently manufacturing and reselling imitation textiles back to the regions of their origin. Observing these fluctuating and porous global exchanges of production and export, Badru became particularly fascinated by the fundamental role water plays not only in shaping the physical transport of materials, but also in influencing the practical knowledge, making traditions, and economic markets surrounding textile manufacturing.
Ankara
In addition to historic calico, Badru pursued objects dyed with both natural and man-made indigo, focusing closely on an English dress fabric produced around 1960. This material forms part of the complex global history of ankara, a popular printed cotton fabric widely worn across West Africa. The history of ankara developed out of 19th-century Dutch industrial attempts to mechanically replicate traditional Indonesian batik textiles, bypassing the intricate, highly skilled, and time-consuming hand techniques of wax-resist dyeing.
Through Dutch colonial dominance in Indonesia and the subsequent European scramble to carve out territorial control across the African continent, ankara emerged from entangled global trade networks marked by European industrial appropriation of traditional textile techniques. Despite these deeply colonial roots, ankara eventually transformed into a vibrant visual medium representing African self-sovereignty and cultural empowerment.
While European control over ankara production—utilizing cheaper roller-printing technologies—enabled nations like the Netherlands and Britain to establish captive markets dependent on imported textiles, Badru noted a specific design reference within the examined object. The fabric displayed an imitation of adinkra visual motifs. Adinkra textiles are traditionally block-printed cloths utilizing plant-based dyes, originating among the Asante and Bono peoples across contemporary Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. These distinct symbols function as sophisticated conceptual and storytelling forms, appearing widely across West African fabrics, ceramics, and architecture.
As Badru observed this recurring historical pattern of European industrial reproductions of indigenous making techniques coupled with efforts to dominate colonial markets through cotton and indigo textiles, she and the curatorial team opened an adjacent storage drawer. Inside, they discovered an àdìràmọ́lẹ̀kà cloth—offering a fascinating point of comparison as a traditional Yoruba textile practice that likewise employs resist-dyeing methods. Such unexpected discoveries highlight the dynamic nature of object-based research within the Storehouse, where physical exploration can guide an investigation into entirely new conceptual territories.
Àdìràmọ́lẹ̀kà Cloth
The discovered textile is a prime example of àdìràmọ́lẹ̀kà, representing a mid-20th-century innovation within traditional Yoruba indigo-dyeing techniques. In this method, a thin layer of cassava starch is carefully applied to cotton fabric using a metal stencil to create intricate, repeating patterns through resist-dyeing. By directly comparing the industrial English ankara with the handcrafted Yoruba àdìràmọ́lẹ̀kà, Badru drew attention to the subtle, often overlooked marks of indigenous makers’ material intelligence—qualities that mechanized, mass-produced imitations fail to capture.
These ongoing inquiries into indigo-dyed cotton, industrial manufacturing, and human labour prompted Badru to examine seemingly disparate objects in the collection originating from entirely different cultural and geographical contexts.
Sashiko
Among these objects was a firefighter’s jacket and hood set from Japan, dated between 1850 and 1900. This garment exemplifies a traditional stitching technique known as sashiko. While sashiko is conventionally employed for mending and reinforcing worn cloth, in this instance, it was utilized on an industrial scale to quilt multiple layers of heavy cotton together, creating a thick, durable fabric designed to resist flames.
Before entering a burning building, firefighters would thoroughly douse the outfit in water, creating a cooling protective barrier against extreme heat. Furthermore, the accompanying hood featured specialized padding integrated into the crown to provide crucial cushioning against falling structural debris. For Badru, this historical example of early fire-retardant utility wear underscored how textile production across different societies has consistently adapted and innovated through sheer necessity, physically embodying the labor and ingenuity of working people over time.
Boro
Continuing her exploration of utilitarian workwear and textile innovation driven by economic and environmental necessity, Badru studied a Japanese work coat, or noragi, dating from the mid-to-late 19th century. This garment represents the tradition of boro, a term describing textiles patched and mended repeatedly over generations. Likely worn by an agricultural worker, the coat was repaired using scraps of recycled, indigo-dyed cotton.
Beyond demonstrating the historical use of repurposed fabrics to extend the lifespan of work garments and conserve scarce resources, Badru viewed the coat as an enduring testament to sustainable and circular textile practices. The dense, intricate hand-stitched lines reveal the deep care, time, and deliberation invested by the wearer and maker. The physical evidence invites observers to visualize the hands that performed the repairs, the exertion that imbued the garment with the labor of agricultural life, and the hours spent mending by hand to ensure the coat would endure another season. These material details make the lives of past workers visible across more than 150 years, offering a direct conduit to recover hidden voices through the medium of cloth.
Patchworking Community
Because Badru’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in creative facilitation and community engagement, she sought to incorporate a collaborative element into her residency. She invited visitors, participants, and staff at V&A East Storehouse to come together and create their own decorative patches, destined to become part of her final display at Cody Dock.
During the public show-and-tell event at the Storehouse, Badru hosted a drop-in workshop supported by Honey Birch, a Creative Studio Practitioner for V&A East. Participants were invited to share personal stories and reflections by crafting small decorative patches out of discarded denim and other scraps sourced directly from the Storehouse Creative Studios.
Drawing inspiration from Cody Dock’s signature high-visibility vests—which are worn by staff and volunteers alike as a unifying garment—Badru encouraged participants to pin their finished patches onto a shared canvas. This collective artwork was designed to serve as a tribute to the diverse individuals and communities whose labor and presence shape both Cody Dock and V&A East.
Remiiya Badru’s completed installation, featuring the collaborative community jacket alongside the broader outcomes of her Common Threads project, remains on public view at The Boathouse at Cody Dock in Canning Town until November 6, 2026.