Behind the Seams: V&A East Storehouse Opens the Doors to a Hidden Theatre of Objects
From stage cloths and suffragette sashes to puppet relics and design archives—the UK’s national collection gets a dramatic reveal.
On 31 May 2025, something quietly monumental happened. The V&A East Storehouse—a long-anticipated offshoot of the Victoria and Albert Museum—officially opened to the public. But this isn’t just another museum. It’s part working storehouse, part archive, part backstage labyrinth of the nation’s material memory.
And for anyone whose life touches theatre, puppetry, costume, or design—it’s a wonderland.
A Warehouse of Stories, Not Just Stuff
Forget what you know about museums. This is not a gallery of clean lines and static labels. Instead, think of the Storehouse as a theatrical set itself: layered, complex, and quietly breathing. Built inside the old Olympic media centre at Here East in Stratford and designed by architecture luminaries Diller Scofidio + Renfro, it’s now home to more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 books, and 1,000 archives—many previously locked away in off-site storage.
And they want you to explore them. Really explore.
When you enter, you don’t follow a single curated path. You wander through the Collections Hall, where stage costumes from Vivien Leigh or objects from Glastonbury are nestled among cabinets, racks, and platforms. There are over 100 micro-displays woven throughout the space—some thematic, some personal, some raw.
At its heart, this is a museum about making, storing, and sharing. As a puppet designer, I’m especially thrilled by how many performance objects are here—not just preserved, but waiting to be activated.
Order an Object: A Puppeteer's Portal
Here’s the revolutionary bit: you can now order specific objects to view, free of charge, seven days a week. Want to examine a 1930s wedding dress up close? A Balenciaga taffeta gown? A mask from Southeast Asia?
Or maybe… a puppet or two?
Puppets You Can Actually Order
It’s one thing to know a puppet is tucked away in a national collection… it’s another to sit across from it, trace its seams, study its scale, and consider its legacy. Through the V&A East Storehouse’s Order an Object service, you can do just that.
Here’s a small selection of puppet gems you can request:
Shadow Puppet of a Woman (c. 1930)
Maker: Hede Reidelbach
Origin: Germany
Details: Constructed from intricately cut orange card, jointed with metal studs, and operated using perspex rods. A rare and vivid example of interwar shadow puppetry.
Order and view via this link
Puppet in Star Pleat Dress (2017)
Maker: Judith Hope (puppet), Phoebe English (designer), Rosanna Durham (painter), Livia Haueter (pattern cutter)
Origin: London
Details: Commissioned for the V&A’s Fashion in Motion series. A marionette dressed in a miniature version of Phoebe English’s iconic Star Pleat design—a tactile meeting of fashion and puppetry.
Order and view via this link
Crocodile Glove Puppet (1939, reused 1971)
Maker: Paul Hansard
Origin: Great Britain
Details: First crafted in 1939, this puppet was revived for Hansard’s Sausages show at the Little Angel Theatre in 1971—an event that launched his prolific solo puppetry career.
Order and view via this link
Head here to search and book:
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?page=2&page_size=15&q=puppet
Puppets, Protest, and Picasso
Six epic objects anchor the Storehouse, including:
The largest Picasso in the world (a 1924 stage cloth for Le Train Bleu)
A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen (modernist design heaven)
An ornate 15th-century Spanish ceiling (utterly transporting)
Performance, activism, and everyday design sit comfortably side by side. There are Suffragette banners, protest posters, and musical ephemera. And while puppets aren’t front and centre in the marketing—trust me, they’re in there, tucked into drawers, waiting to be rediscovered.
Your Archive, Your Terms
What makes this place feel different is that it isn’t just about preserving history—it invites you to interpret it. Local creatives, youth groups, and community projects are already co-creating responses: artworks, interviews, provocations.
There’s a sense that the Storehouse is still finding its shape—and maybe that’s a gift. For those of us who work in puppetry or performance, this is a moment to shape how our craft is remembered and accessed in the future.
Useful Links
Order an Object: vam.ac.uk/info/order-an-object
Opening hours: 10:00–18:00 daily, late nights Thurs & Sat until 22:00
More images + press info: pressimages.vam.ac.uk