Sophie Campbell

As everyone else in the developed world is frantically trying to empty their attics and hide unwanted stuff under their beds, the V&A (Victoria & Albert Museum) has packed 250,000 objects from its vast treasure trove of decorative arts into a glamorous new East London base, the V&A East Storehouse.

This week, people queued to enter the glass-fronted building on the west side of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, East London. We’d all seen the press images, but it was hard to imagine what it would be like; four floors of open space, the opposite of the V&A’s stores at Blythe Road in West London, which were labyrinthine, anything but purpose-built and completely unsuitable for public access.

In the event, it was a sexier version of that bit of IKEA where you pick up large objects, with miles of open metal shelves and QR codes replacing curatorial labels. For the staff, who have been unpacking, protecting and displaying thousands of objects here for the past year or more, it must have seemed like an invasion, as people poured in to ooh and aah at music instruments, clothes, statues, parts of buildings, forgeries, fashion and furniture.

Everywhere you looked there were things to catch the eye, my favourites being a round plastic armchair, fat and curvy as an orange Smartie (above), a space-saving grand piano strung vertically instead of horizontally (top left), hand-numbered catalogue entries (bottom left) and a huge glass floor that gave you views of yet more objects stored on the floor below.

One of the star exhibits is the dimly-lit, gleaming timber Kauffman Office, a Deco gem designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright for the Pittsburg department store owner Edgar J Kauffman with glowing wooden walls, a two-layer wooden table, wooden slatted ventilation and angular tub chairs the shape and size of witness boxes.

Less glamorous, but intriguing for Londoners, were two slabs of concrete suspended on one side of the atrium (see below). This is the only remaining section of the famous (or infamous, if you were one of its less enthusiastic tenants) 1970s Brutalist council block in Poplar, Robin Hood Gardens, designed by married couple Peter and Alison Smithson. As its lengthy demolition came to an end in 2017, the V&A bought a chunk of the facade, with its white-edged windows, and “street in the sky” design.

Perhaps most surprising of all was a piece of paper pinned on a lobby noticeboard as we arrived, saying that the first six people to turn up in the Fashion Store at 11.10 am would be invited “backstage” to examine a day dress with someone from the conservation department – and to our amazement, we turned up and got wristbands.

This sort of access, including the ability to pre-book a viewing of a particular object two weeks in advance – in the past something only available to researchers and academics – is one of the Storehouse’s most exciting features.

We were met by a member of the V&A team, who gave us protective gloves and took us into the gleaming white and grey spaces normally off-limits to the public and lined with storage units and drawers. Hanging from a wheeled clothes stand were a tiny-waisted, ankle-length, A-line skirt and matching, tight-fitting jacket, both a startling shade of regal purple, with separate sleeves of the finest white mesh and a collar and cuffs of white and purple lace.

Our host made the session into a discussion about the dress. We worked out its age (1870s), its owner (prosperous), its function (probably a wedding dress, kept and converted into a smart day dress) and its colour (aniline purple, then a relatively new discovery). The workmanship was breathtaking, its condition almost immaculate – with exquisite buttons, hooks and eyes, seams and boning – and the design had almost a piratical swagger, with its lace edging and double cuffs.

You could go back to this museum store time and time again, and never get bored. Despite the queues of intrigued visitors, there was room for everyone to disappear in different directions, re-emerging on the open floors to become part of the display. There was plenty of room for families with small children and pushchairs in tow. Not to mention infinite space for showing off objects that may be seeing the light of day for the first time in decades.

Welcome to the Temple of Stuff.