Jade Lindo is a Design Historian and a practitioner. Her research focuses on Caribbean design history, with her main aim to uncover hidden stories and untold narratives regarding the Caribbean diaspora.
Jade achieved her undergraduate degree in Fashion from University for Creative Arts, Epsom where her initial intrigue with research based on identity and heritage was realised through exploration of the body as a form of art, design and history.
During her MA History of Design studies, Jade developed her love for research by intertwining her own identity to develop her specialism in material culture anchored in Caribbean history. Her design history research focused on the relationship between race and identity amongst Black individuals in the diaspora and beyond. This was explored in her historiography essay ' Untangling Roots: A Historiography of Black Hair from 1930 – 1980'. Through extensive research, she was able to successfully garnish an understanding of the historiographical perspective of Blackness as a fundamental part of Black and later Caribbean history.
Jade went on to produce an artefact essay, titled 'Jamaican Craftsmanship: An Exploration of Tortoiseshell, Exoticism, and Colonial Influence in the 17th Century' that uncovered the history of a seventeenth-century case and comb made from tortoiseshell housed in the trade section of the V&A. The object-led research was rooted in Jamaica and investigated the social, cultural and environmental factors underpinning the production of the object, restoring to view techniques that were inherited from indigenous practices. During a research trip to Jamaica, Jade worked closely with colleagues in the National Library of Jamaica and Institute of Jamaica to uncover new primary evidence about hawksbill turtle and the design of the case and comb. Her findings resulted in updates to the V&A’s catalogue record for the object, which included the identification of the original maker of the case and comb. In recognition of her achievements, Jade was awarded the prestigious Gillian Naylor Essay Prize (given in memory of her son Tom Naylor) for her accomplished object history essay.
Most recently, Jade completed her dissertation thesis ‘Caribbean Hues: Nadinola Deluxe, Carnival Queens and the Performance of Beauty’ based on the relationship between the Caribbean diaspora of the United Kingdom in relation to skin bleaching. Her research pulls on the beauty standards laid out by pageantry in Jamaica and the migration of identity through the Windrush era of Britain. Reflecting on periodicals such as The Star newspaper and West Indian Gazette and the internal language of beauty that crossed the Atlantic. A snippet of her research was published on Design History Society's 'Provocative Objects/Spaces' blog.
Jade continues to showcase her love of Caribbean history through blog posts and articles, with the hopes to complete PhD studies in the near future.
