The Maguire Collection within SMOC
Joyce Maguire
Joyce O. Maguire was one of the most committed collectors of children's clothing and textiles in Vancouver. She had been collecting for many years.
She was originally from England and her own interest career wise was music especially classical music and piano.
Joyce was very active with the children's Bach choir here in the city. She was a good teacher, encouraging and never critical. Reassuring and admired by her students.
Her interest in children manifested itself by her developing a collection of children's clothing, toys, games, books and baby furniture. Over a period of about 15 years she accumulated one of the most important collections of children's clothing I've ever seen. Certainly in Canada it was probably without rival.
Her collection pretty much took up the entire basement of her home. When she died, her husband Jerry was kind enough to turn the collection over to SMOC on the understanding that we would sort it out, keeping those items which are considered to be serious artifacts and selling the rest at our discretion in order to support our cause and look after our general collections.
The quality and eccentricities of the collection are spectacular. Once the collection was sorted we set aside 500 items to keep. This includes children's clothing from the latter part of the 18th century and two pairs of underpants that are said to have belonged to Edward VII when he was a baby in the 1840s.
The items that were multiples or of lesser quality or less interest we decided we would sell. Some small things have been sold at SMOC events since 2010 but the larger items like baby buggies and bassinets have not made it to the sale table. We hope to put more items up for sale on our online store at in the near future. Please contact us if you want to know more. info@smoc.ca
SMOC can use the freed up storage space for its collection and put the money raised into the care and upkeep of the collection.
by Denise Jacques
Excerpt from an interview with Ivan Sayers