Full Name: Kendrick, A. F.
Other Names:
- Albert Frank Kendrick
Gender: male
Date Born: 1872
Date Died: 1954
Place Born: Maidstone, Kent, England, UK
Place Died: St. Peter's-in-Thanet, Kent, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): fiberwork (object genre), Medieval (European), and textile art (visual works)
Career(s): curators
Overview
Medievalist and fiberworks authority and Keeper of Department of Textiles, Victoria and Albert Museum. Kendrick was the son of Albert Kendrick. He joined the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1897. The following year he published his first book, The Cathedral Church of Lincoln, an architectural and historical account of the building. Kendrick wrote catalogs for the various exhibits the V&A mounted. He began contributing articles to the Burlington Magazine on tapestries and fiber arts in 1905. The same year he wrote the first of two books on stitchery which would make his reputation, English Embroidery. He soon became an expert on weaving and rugs from around the world, including the middle east, Asia, and South America. Kendrick was put in charge of the reorganization of the new division of Textiles at the V&A, part of a total renovation of the Museum, which reopened in 1909. He built the Museum’s fibers collection into one of the outstanding ones in the world. Together with C. E. T. Tattersall, he authored the standard Handwoven Carpets in 1922. In 1923, when Chequers Court, a country house near Ellesborough, Buckinghamshire, was donated to the nation, Kendrick was assigned to evaluate and write the inventory catalogs. He retired voluntarily from the V&A in 1924, remaining particularly active. The following year, Kendrick wrote the section on Chinese textiles for a primer on Chinese art, a combined effort with other leading British art historians, including Roger Fry, Laurence Binyon, Bernard Rackham, and the Asianists Osvald Sirén, W. Perceval Yetts (1878-1957), and William Wilberforce Winkworth (1897-1991), under the title Chinese Art: an Introductory Handbook. In 1927 he wrote the tapestry entries for the collaborative catalog, with scholars Martin Conway, Tancred Borenius, Campbell Dodgson, and Maurice Brockwell to the Flemish and Belgian art exhibition at Burlington House. He also translated two important German-language books on tapestries. A second book on stitchery, English Needlework, appeared in 1933. He is not related to T. D. Kendrick, keeper and later Director of the British Museum.
Selected Bibliography
The Cathedral Church of Lincoln: a History and Description of its Fabric and a List of the Bishops. London: G. Bell, 1898; English Embroidery. London: G. Newnes,1905; and Tattersall, C. E. C. Hand-woven Carpets, Oriental and European. 2 vols. London: Benn Brothers, 1922; Catalogue of Muhammadan Textiles of the Medieval Period, Victoria and Albert Museum. Dept. of Textiles. London: Board of Education, Victoria and Albert Museum 1924; and Fry, Roger Eliot, and Binyon, Laurence, and Sirén, Osvald, and Rackham, Bernard, et al. Chinese Art: an Introductory Handbook to Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Textiles, Bronzes & Minor Arts. London: Burlington Magazine/B. T. Batsford, 1925; and Conway, William Martin, and Borenius, Tancred, and Dodgson, Campbell, and Brockwell, Maurice. Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition of Flemish & Belgian Art, Burlington House, London, 1927. London, Country Life, ltd./The Anglo-Belgian Union, 1927; English Needlework. London: A. & C. Black Ltd., 1933.
Sources
[obituaries:] “Mr. A. F. Kendrick Authority On Textiles.” The Times (London) July 20, 1954, p. 10; addendum, Smith, H. Clifford. “Mr. A. F. Kendrick.” The Times (London) July 24, 1954, p. 8.