Heritage and Legacy: the Use of Omega Workshops Prints in Bloomsbury Group “Merch”

Abstract

This article explores the use of prints from the Omega Workshops in the creation of commercial by-products for heritage sites associated with the Bloomsbury Group. The Omega Workshops were an experimental design collective, active from 1913 to 1919. Largely the project of the art critic Roger Fry, the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant also played important roles. The latter two then moved to a house in Sussex, Charleston Farmhouse. The house is now a heritage site maintained by The Charleston Trust. This article begins by establishing the differences between the Omega Workshops, Charleston, and Bloomsbury more generally. The article then considers the visitors’ relationship to by-products as objects and the spatial considerations involved, before finally looking at the items currently available for purchase in the Charleston gift shop and the meaning they hold in terms of heritage and legacy.

Keywords

• heritage
• British art
• museums
• Bloomsbury
• Omega Workshops
• by-products