THE BRITISH BAUHAUS? JP HULLY AND AN UNWRITTEN HISTORY OF BRITISH MODERNISM

This is the first refereed article that presents the life and work of JP Hully, a British modernist that worked with Gane furniture manufacturers in Bristol. His design life and tenure at Gane overlapped with that of Marcel Breuer. Both historical and historiographal, this article probes the remaining historical shards of JP Hully’s work, career and life, while making wider historiographical statements about the gaps, absences and silences of history. Keywords: Modernism, Marcel Breuer, J.P. Hully, Bauhaus, cultural history, social history, design history, British design There are people who act and speak but whose gestures and words do not translate out of their moments – and this exclusion, the sweep of the broom of this dustbin, is a movement that in its way is far more violent than any toppling of statues.1 Greil Marcus It is a maxim that we do not know what we do not know. Historians do not know what they cannot verify through source material, evidence, references and citations. If documents do not exist or have been destroyed, then they do ot appear in footnotes. The absences, gaps and silences in history are wide. Epistemological discussions that detail the nature of history have existed since the discipline had a name. Certainly,the impact of women's history and social history has changed the way historical methods are constituted.2 The status of ‘facts,’ ‘sources’ and ‘evidence’ has widened. Concurrently though, the historical discipline has also separated into distinct threads, with cultural history and social history distanced from the 'credible' political or diplomatic histories. The hierarchy of historical research has allowed the main sources of evidence to remain parliamentary papers, newspapers, journals of political organizations and diaries.3 The capacity to handle tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos remains a challenge, but is producing some fascinating scholarship in public history and GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums).4 Instead of asking E.H. Carr's old question 'What is History?'5 it is important to rephrase, reconfigure and reassess the mode, shape and form of the discipline, recognizing how the mode of research, engagement with archives and the nature of evidence has transformed. Greil Marcus has captured the tone of this new enigmatic question.