Pocket-sized treat

Pockets

'Is that a Commodore calculator in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?' Proof that some things were bigger in the 1970s comes in the form of the Pockets exhibition - a retrospective look at pocket-sized gadgets, from 17th-century pocket pipes to the brand spanking new pocket blowtorch.

The exhibition includes a fascinating display of what certain famous people had in their pockets when they died. Virginia Woolf had hers stuffed full of stones (to weigh herself down in the Ouse); Kurt Cobain had the receipt for the shotgun he used to blow his head off; while the drug-addled and paranoid Elvis died on the bog with two cans of Mace and a dagger stuffed in his jacket.

Elsewhere, design guru Wayne Hemingway provides an account of the pocket through history, from early purses to combat trousers, with 1960s Pierre Cardin dresses and 1950s Chanel suits illustrating how the pocket has been incorporated into highfashion as a design feature.

It all makes for an intriguing appraisal of an everyday essential, without which British blokes would be forced to take up the ignominious Continental favourite, the man-bag.