What is the Bloomsbury Project?

The Leverhulme-funded UCL Bloomsbury Project was established to investigate 19th-century Bloomsbury’s development from swampy rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life

Led by Professor Rosemary Ashton, with Dr Deborah Colville as Researcher, the Project has traced the origins, Bloomsbury locations, and reforming significance of hundreds of progressive and innovative institutions

Many of the extensive archival resources relating to these institutions have also been identified and examined by the Project, and Bloomsbury’s developing streets and squares have been mapped and described

This website is a gateway to the information gathered and edited by Project members during the Project’s lifetime, 1 October 2007–30 April 2011, with the co-operation of Bloomsbury’s institutions, societies, and local residents

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Cartoon satirising the British College of Health

Bloomsbury Institutions

Bloomsbury Streets, Squares, and Buildings

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Pierotti family (1770s–20th century)

a summary of their Bloomsbury connections

The family business of wax doll making originated in the 1790s (some sources say 1770s) with Domenico Pierotti (d. before 1841) and ended in 1935

Domenico’s elder son Ino (John) D. Pierotti, born in Bloomsbury, a doll maker, was living with his wife Matilda and their children at 21 Gower Place in 1841 and 1851

Domenico’s younger son Anericho (Henry) Cephas Pierotti, also born in Bloomsbury, developed wax modelling techniques further

In the 1841 census he was listed as living with his wife and their four young children at no. 17 Duke’s Row

Henry’s son Walter was described as a model doll-maker in the 1871 census, when he was 17

Another of Henry’s sons, George, became a seaman; of his numerous children, one son, Charles Ernest, also went into the family doll-making business, retiring only in 1935

A doll made by Henry Pierotti (donated by the feminist trade unionist Muriel Pierotti) is in the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood; details are available via the V&A Museum’s website (opens in new window)

The Pierotti family living at 6 Judd Street in 1851 (Charles, a journeyman upholsterer, and his wife Mary Ann) may be connected to the doll-making family