This indigo blue smock was owned and worn by the artist Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. The smock is worn with use and patched in places. In his 1968 work, Studies in art, architecture, and design, the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner recalls a past meeting with A.H. Mackmurdo (1851-1942) age 86: ‘He walked with me and talked of his economic conceits, his light blue eyes glittering, his wavy white hair blown by a breeze, a black coat slipped on over his butcher-blue blouse or blue shirt – the kind of blue blouse that William Morris wore, and which Voysey wore. The shirt being in this case- as in other cases- a profession of faith.’
