Inspired By The Past

A brand’s heritage is the building block from which it may reach new heights. Nick Hammond meets the archivists cataloguing, preserving and proudly protecting our nation’s retail DNA.

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I DON’T normally show people the originals,’ confides Andrea Tanner in the fifth-floor offices of Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly W1. She hands over a parchment-thin, typewritten inventory from 1914. It lists a bottle of mint bull’s eyes, a dozen bottles of Carlsbad plums in brandy, game-pâté truffles, Black Leicester mushrooms and a tin of vanilla caramels among its contents. ‘It’s from Shackleton’s 1914 transarctic voyage aboard HMS Endurance,’ she says with a smile. ‘It’s one of many special things I’m here to look after.’

Dr Tanner is among a handful of professional archivists working in retail in the UK. She’s a brand guardian, a keeper of the flame, a ruthless haggler and a studier of dusty tomes. 

Judy Faraday is another. She’s the head of heritage services for the John Lewis Partnership. ‘I think the best way to describe our job is that everyone has a box of things from their past that they don’t necessarily look at every day, but which they wouldn’t want to throw away,’ she says. ‘I look after a very big box, which holds the corporate memory of the partnership. Mine is much more than a commercial role—it highlights the cultural value of our heritage and charts the constant development of the business.’