In this week’s blog post, Costume Society News Editor Dr Babette Radclyffe-Thomas reviews Textiles: The Art of Mankind at the Fashion and Textile Museum.
Textiles: The Art of Mankind seeks to celebrate humanity’s ancient and deep connection to textiles, presenting a global selection of objects that communicate individuality and our relationships with nature.
The exhibition is curated by Mary Schoeser, in collaboration with Dennis Nothdruft, Head of Exhibitions at the Fashion and Textile Museum and had been planned for close to a decade. “The goal of the exhibition was to highlight the Jo Ann C. Stabb Design Collection, University of California, Davis. This collection provided some 200 illustrations for the 2012 book, Textiles: The art of mankind, which was the starting point for the exhibition. 139 objects from Davis are on show. Over 85 have come via the School of Textiles, where I'm the patron and which specialises in object-handling seminars,” Curator Mary Schoeser said.
267 items are on show, in addition to videos and imagery, and the majority of items are on show for the first time ever in the UK. One item comes from the Fashion Textile Museum’s own collections, a Kaffe Fassett patchwork. Curator Mary Schoeser was keen to “position textiles as cognitive tools” and explore their role in developing skills such as herding, gathering and ploughing. Shoeser was keen to “stress textile connections around the world. This is a global show and other museums generally divide their exhibitions up to focus on one particular geographical region.”
Abstract Notions © Fashion and Textile Museum
The exhibition commences with materials and techniques used to create textiles and the extensive history of humans creating textiles. In the main exhibition space, the standard exhibition layout has been reimagined, and textiles’ role in communicating individuality globally throughout history is explored. The exhibition aims to explore how textiles have recorded histories, thoughts and feelings.
In this space, a wedding dress from Egypt embellished with mother of pearl, silk embroidery and cowry shells is presented next to a Thai Singing Shawl designed to be worn at a funeral and decorated with beetle wings. An appliqued Turkmen Tribal coat and a Bolivian fiesta hat show how textiles can signify belonging and mark occasions. Garments, panels and ceremonial clothing from Japan, China, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Nigeria and India are on show.
Textiles’ role in depicting humans figuratively are on show, representations of mythological or revered beings. There is a hand-painted Chinese silk-tapestry scroll, depicting a legendary swordswoman to panels from the Ivory Coast showing hunters in earth pigment on hand-spun cotton canvas.
Domestic, mythical and wild animals feature throughout the exhibition. Animals often have auspicious meanings, in some cultures animals gained totemic status as well as becoming cultural emblems. On display are a 19th- century Chinese quail among clouds, stitched in silk floss and gold thread; an immortal peacock door hanging from Thailand and a vivid hand-printed Indian bird scarf. Crocodiles are depicted in both contemporary Aboriginal work and in3D artefacts from India that highlight the threat of water pollution and commercial farming to this sacred animal. Fine ecru linen-lace from Italy features the gentle deer whilst batik garments from West Africa show stylised bats that represent the power to communicate with the spirit world. Mythical beasts like dragons are also present, as well as appliqued iguanas and tortoises, Tibetan snow leopard puppets and the lucky Chinese goldfish, butterflies and crabs that adorn a silk collar.
The upper galleries explore abstract pattern in textiles such as Ikat, plaid, gingham and tartan patterns from across the globe. A Waste Not Want Not section explores the ancient practice of inventive remaking with materials and the many variations of recycling. Technological innovations of the loom and the many scientific inventions inspired by the loom are explored, as well as chemistry and mathematics in the Complex Notions section of the exhibition.
In the studio space, Connecting Threads displays work by renowned textile artist Lynn Setterington. Schoeser highlights “the red dress by co-curator Adele Zhang, who is in charge of the Davis collection and for 25 years has had her students creating red dresses to highlight women's heart health in America.”
The exhibition runs until 7 September 2025.
For more insights from the Fashion & Textile Museum, revisit our blog post reviewing one of their previous exhibitions.
Textiles on display © Fashion and Textile Museum
