This thesis presents technical art historical research on five Kenning banners of Glasgow Museums Collection, manufactured by the London-based companies of George Kenning, and George Kenning & Son between the years 1883 and 1917. Trade union and society banners are important and representative objects of British socio-political culture. However, their often-unknown historical context and limited understanding of the materials and methods used in their making complicate their interpretation and conservation, preventing several existent banners from being easily available for study and display.

The historical contextualisation of the five Kenning banners of Glasgow Museums Collection allows for the temporal situation and distinction of the banners, the societies that had them commissioned, and the companies that manufactured them. It also shows how they have developed from a long tradition of painting on silk dating back to Cennino Cennini’s fourteenth-century manuscript, with further descriptions found in seventeenth and eighteenth-century European sources, as well as nineteenth and early twentieth-century American manuals for sign painters. These sources reveal the basis for their manufacturing technique, which has not yet been studied in the context of British trade union and society banners.

The technical examination conducted on the five Kenning examples of Glasgow Museums Collection characterises the materials employed in the banners’ production from the two companies. The results are used to produce historically informed reconstructions, which aids in the understanding of the original manufacturing technique. In doing so, this study gives continuity to the previous research on British trade union and society banners and offers a holistic approach to continue with their study in the future.