Donald Beeson King, B.A.

Donald King was born in Hanwell, Middlesex, on 13 October 1920 and went to Ealing County School for Boys. At university he read modern languages, for which he showed an impressive aptitude, and began to think of a career in linguistics. He joined the RAF in 1941 and later served in the Intelligence Division of the Air Ministry, adding a working knowledge of five more languages to his fluent French and German. King’s secondment in 1945 to the Monuments and Fine Arts branch of the Control Commission for Germany prompted second thoughts career-wise and, on demobilisation, he used his ex-serviceman’s grant to study art history at the Courtauld Institute. After graduating with first-class honours in 1949, and having gained a basic knowledge of the care of works of art in Germany, King entered an open competition for an assistant-keepership at the Victoria and Albert Museum and was appointed to the Department of Textiles under George Wingfield Digby. There was much to do to re-establish the department after six years of neglect and King set about it with a will. He registered many wartime acquisitions with laudable despatch and accuracy, re-opened the Study Room and helped to reorganize the displays, while researching the structure of historic textiles and lecturing in his spare time. In 1956 and 1957 he attended the first two international courses for textile historians at the Musée des Tissus in Lyons, organized by the Centre International d’Etude des Textiles Anciens (Cieta) with which King was to be closely involved throughout his life; he served as president from 1977-92, relinquishing office only at the onset of a debilitating illness. Recognition as an authority on early woven silks was earned early in King’s career but his 30-year’s service at the V & A was spent largely in the shadow of Wingfield Digby. King succeeded to the keepership only in 1972 and retired in 1980. Two of his exhibitions were particularly memorable: the sumptuous display of English medieval embroidery, Opus Anglicanum, at the museum in 1963, for which he borrowed fragile masterpieces from many European institutions, including the Vatican; and The Eastern Carpet in the Western World at the Hayward Gallery, which he co-curated with David Sylvester in 1983, and also catalogued. The V and A was enriched by several spectacular acquisitions, thanks to King’s discernment and friendly contacts among dealers, collectors and scholars: a collection of late antique Egyptian textiles from University College London; a group of medieval silks found in Iran c.1925; the beautifully embroidered medieval Erpingham chasuble; the sixteenth-century Italian Life of Man tapestry designed by Vasari and a superb Venetian embroidered altar frontal designed in the workshop of Paolo Veneziano. To crown his all too short keepership, the three-volume work edited by King and written in collaboration with his staff, British Textile Design in the Victoria and Albert Museum, was published in 1980, and has since been republished in a series of best-selling paperbacks. Much of King’s work was published in technical papers on methods of production and dating, but he was no narrow specialist and his curiosity and knowledge embraced all periods and types of textile. He was a generous supporter of the Costume Society from its formation in 1965 and did much to encourage the nascent popular interest in the history of textiles. The costume galleries at the V and A attracted a growing number of visitors which gratified King who, as a civil servant, felt he owed a duty to the general public as much as to his fellow specialists and art historians. His authoratative contributions to The Connoisseur Period Guides in the 1950s reflected this commitment. King was an efficient administrator who cleared his desk first thing in the morning before spending the rest of the day studying the collections, but he was always available to visitors and to members of his staff, who felt great affection for him. This affection and admiration was shared by scholars world-wide epitomised in a Festschrift; Ancient and Modern Textiles: Studies in Honour of Donald King, published in 1989 with the help of the Passold Research Fund in Textile History. In retirement King naturally took a close interest in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud in 1988 and was able to produce a close parallel to the twill of the shroud which matched the dating of 1262-1384 AD. He published his findings in the CIETA Bulletin for 1989. Also in retirement he compiled, with his wife Monique, The Catalogue of European Textiles in the Keir Collection 400 BC to 1800 AD (1990). King died on 10 July 1998.