The Materiality of Textiles and Clothing - Under the Surface

The second CCCC Workshop, May 27th - 28th, 2014

Organised by Vivi Lena Andersen, in collaboration with Charlotte Rimstad, Maj Ringgaard and Paula Hohti

This workshop was the second meeting of the Centre for Textile Research/National Museum research programme, Costume, Clothing, Consumption and Culture (CCCC). The aim of this meeting was to focus on the materiality of textiles and clothing by concentrating on objects themselves. The workshop centred especially on objects that were discarded as refuse in the early modern period, but retrieved from the soil by modern day archaeologists. Focusing on the collections of these archaeological finds, we addressed questions such as: How can the method of experimental archaeology help academics in historical research? Can archaeological finds support and/or challenge written sources in art history and other disciplines - and vice versa? How do we go about creating meaningful multidisciplinary approaches?

During the two days, we looked at artefacts in the Museum of Copenhagen and National Museum of Denmark, as well as discussed methods and approaches to textile research, inspired by Prof. John Styles’ plenary talk ‘What was cotton in eighteenth-century Britain?’. We also had two experimental sessions, where we heard first Alice Dolan to talk about her project of growing linen, and then learned about techniques of shoemaking in the early modern period from the local Danish shoemaker Kenneth Elsgaard.

Programme
Photos

For the full description and photos, see here