The Victoria and Albert Museum – known as the V&A – is the world’s leading museum of art and design with collections unrivalled in their scope and diversity. It was established in 1852 to make works of art available to all and to inspire British designers and manufacturers. Today, the V&A’s collections, which span over 2,000 years of human creativity in virtually every medium and from many parts of the world, continue to intrigue, inspire and inform. The V&A’s holdings include paintings, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, furniture, fashion and textiles, theatre and performance, photography, glass, jewellery and metalwork. The collections are drawn from across Europe and include world-class holdings from the Middle East, India, China and Japan. Over a million V&A object records are available to view online through ‘Search the Collections’ at www.vam.ac.uk