{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O123630"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O123630/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006BH6992/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006BH6992/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2006BH6992","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O123630/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O123630","accessionNumber":"S.11-2006","objectType":"Costume design","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"<i>The Sleeping Beauty</i>, designed for the Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet in 1946, is Messel's most enduring production. The fairy costumes and fantasy elements are set in a 'real' world, inspired by the soaring architectural fantasies of the 17th and 18th centuries and costumes based upon mid-late 17th-century fashions, mixing English, Spanish and French period styles. \r\n\r\nThe Lilac Fairy is chief godmother to Princess Aurora; when the Fairy Carabosse, angry at not being invited to the Christening, declares that Aurora will prick her finger with a spindle and die, it is the Lilac Fairy who bestows her gift - that she will sleep for one hundred years and be awoken by a kiss. The purple and white shapes on the costume indicate lilac.  \r\n\r\nAlthough people think of a tutu as being a set shape, it is as subject to the vagaries of fashion as the length of a skirt or hairstyle. In 1946, the fashion was for full skirts and heavy decoration, reflected in the bell-shape of the tutu and the amount of trims. When the costumes were revised in the late 1950s, fashions were changing and the pared down look of the 1960s was beginning; the tutu, reflecting fashion, became flatter, like a plate, and the decoration sparser.  \r\n\r\nOliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain’s leading theatre designer throughout the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, mastering every aspect of entertainment - ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue - as well as working in interior decoration and textile design. His lavish, painterly and romantic concepts were perfectly in tune with the times and earned him an international reputation. By 1960, however, that style was becoming unfashionable, and Messel gradually abandoned theatre and built a new career designing luxury homes in the Caribbean.","physicalDescription":"Costume design by Oliver Messel for the Lilac Fairy in Marius Petipa's ballet <i>The Sleeping Beauty</i>, Sadler's Wells Ballet 1946 or later revision. Full-length female figure dressed in a tutu, the blue-pink skirt overlaid with an asymmetric scalloped white fringed top layer, the whole costume heavily encrusted with large green leaves and bunches of purple lilac. The headdress is a close-fitting 'crown' of green leaves surmounted with purple lilac and a white tuft.  In one hand she holds a sketchily drawn wand of lilac.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Messel, Oliver Hilary Sambourne","id":"A4929"},"association":{"text":"designer","id":"x36960"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"paper","id":"x30308"},{"text":"watercolour","id":"x33202"},{"text":"charcoal","id":"AAT12862"},{"text":"pencil","id":"x30347"},{"text":"gouache","id":"AAT70114"}],"techniques":[{"text":"drawing (image-making)","id":"AAT54196"},{"text":"painting (image-making)","id":"AAT54216"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Charcoal, pencil, gouache, paint, watercolour on paper","categories":[{"text":"Entertainment & Leisure","id":"THES48959"},{"text":"Designs","id":"THES48968"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"T&P","id":"THES48602"},"images":["2006BH6992"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"005","id":"THES356227"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"costume design","id":"AAT163423"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"London","id":"x28980"},"association":{"text":"designed","id":"x29338"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1945","earliest":"1945-01-01","latest":"1945-12-31"},"association":{"text":"designed","id":"x29338"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[{"object":{"text":"S.1560-1982","id":"O110432"},"association":""}],"creditLine":"Acquired with the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund and the Friends of the V&A","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"50.3","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"38","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[{"content":"'Oliver Messel'","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"Artist's signature in pencil on the bottom right-hand corner on the front of the sheet"}],"objectHistory":"This design by Oliver Messel is for the Lilac Fairy in Marius Petipa's ballet <i>The Sleeping Beauty</i>, the production with which the Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet reopened the Royal Opera House after its wartime use as a dance hall.  The production was in the repertory for nearly twenty-five years.  Messel revised the designs several times, with major revisions in 1952 and 1960 and he reworked the designs when the production was mounted in 1959 for the Royal Ballet Touring Company.  \r\nLord Snowdon, Oliver Messel's nephew, inherited Messel's theatre designs and other designs and artefacts.  The designs were briefly stored in a disused chapel in Kensington Palace before being housed at the V&A from 1981 on indefinite loan.  The V&A Theatre Museum purchased the Oliver Messel collection from Lord Snowdon in 2005.\n\nHistorical significance: The production of <i>The Sleeping Beauty</i> was an immediate success and established itself as the Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet's 'signature' work, associated with many key events in the company's history.  These included their first sensational appearance in New York in 1949 (which established the company's international reputation in America) and Russia in 1961, when they took the ballet, performed by a British company barely thirty years old, back to the place of its birth in St Petersburg.  Messel's designs were a significant part of the ballet's success.   Sarah Woodcock said of this production  “<i>The Sleeping Beauty</i> was to be Messel’s biggest and most enduring production … The production was performed nearly one thousand one hundred and fifty times, from London to Los Angeles, from Leeds to Leningrad, becoming the Company’s ‘signature ballet’.”  (Pinkham, ed., 1983).","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Costume design by Oliver Messel for the Lilac Fairy in Marius Petipa's ballet <i>The Sleeping Beauty</i>, Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet, 1946 or later revision.","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Pinkham, Roger (ed.) <i>Oliver Messel: an exhibition held at the Theatre Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, 22 June - 30 September 1983.</i> \r\nLondon: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983.  200p., ill\r\nISBN 0905209508)"}],"production":"The design might be for a later revised production.\n\nReason For Production: Commission","productionType":{"text":"Design","id":"THES48872"},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":["<i>The Sleeping Beauty</i>"],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["S.11-2006"],"accessionNumberNum":"11","accessionNumberPrefix":"S","accessionYear":2006,"otherNumbers":[{"type":{"text":"TM Rotation Number","id":"THES50368"},"number":"ROT 3344"}],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-05-03","recordCreationDate":"2006-05-03","availableToBook":false}}