CONTEXTUAL TEXTILES

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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Having worked with museum textile collections quite often over the last year and a half, it has come to my attention that textile collections are consistently inconsistent. Even when preparing for my own exhibition—which is entirely textile-based—I found that I spent more time getting lost amongst the clothes and fabrics than actually finding what I set out to find. This could be due to my own shortcomings, of course, though I doubt anyone could simply ignore splendid gowns and garments when given the chance to freely look at them.

These baby trousers are made of grey wool
and red crochet trim. They close at the front
in a "Y" shape with buttons to make dressing
a baby easier. Photos courtesy of Rachel Dice. 

Some of the greatest challenges of working with textile collections involve curiosity. For example, if a garment is buttoned, suddenly you want to know what it looks like unbuttoned and laid flat, or the opposite; an unbuttoned, flat garment creates the desire to know what it looks like completely put together. This goes beyond simple things like shirts or coats. If the face of a garment changes because it is fastened or unfastened, wouldn’t it fascinate you to see? While working at the Aurora Museum & Archives, I found a tiny pair of wool trousers, obviously meant for a baby.

They were horribly bug-eaten, and just as clearly home-made. The little trousers are entirely one piece with no seams at all and join in the front with rows of little buttons. They were designed to be buttoned onto a baby without having to force little legs through pants, much like snap-together baby rompers work now. In short, playing around with the teeny trousers to see how they work was irresistible, but how can you know whether or not some textiles can stand up to the abuse of use?

Most of the time, the textiles will tell you themselves.

Wool and thick cottons are usually very sturdy; they retain their strength and functionality even in the face of bug-eaten holes. They rarely become stiff or immovable - we can save that for leather - and usually will not rip without concentrated effort. Sturdy velvets with short pile also fall under this category, as well as thickly woven silks. Many of these fabrics were made to withstand use and wear, so they hold up well even after a century or two of disuse. Wool is my favorite textile to work with. Yes, it is often bug-eaten, but the fabric is sturdy and

This late 19th century black wool vest with butterfly sleeves
in still in amazing condition. If it wasn't part of a museum
collection, you'd hardly believe it wasn't new. Photo
courtesy of Rachel Dice.

colour-fast. It’s resistant to all kinds of use and is even self-extinguishing! Aside from bug-eaten holes or discolouration, wool garments are most likely to suffer from the thread giving away in the stitching rather than the fabric itself tearing apart.

Oftentimes, it’s silk and sheer cottons that suffer the most. Both are made from plant fibre and are much more sensitive to changes in their environment. Additionally, unlike wool, silk or cotton are not self-extinguishing. In fact, they are likely to go up in smoke in very short amounts of time. Silk also tends to dry out faster than any other fabric; it can become so dry and brittle that it begins to flake or tear apart under its own weight or even the most negligible amount of stress. Sometimes it feels like even looking at a brittle piece of old silk too intensely will tear it. It makes conservation work tricky, and, for some reason, it is often some of the most beautiful pieces that are far too delicate to ever be displayed. Such is the burden of textile collections.

This beautiful jacket is lined with cream silk. The silk is extremely fragile and brittle, and has began
ripping apart as if it was attacked by a particularly enthusiastic cat. Now, the garment needs special
supports and a backer board - it can't support its own weight, even lying down. Photo by Rachel Dice.

What makes these collections even more interesting, however, is considering how fashions today will fit into them. Will future generations centuries from now curse me for not saving an old sweater, or for recycling old shoes? At what point do we decide what kinds of fashions are representative of an era? Will schoolchildren one day cluster around a faded pair of mom jeans like we cluster around Victorian gowns and World War uniforms today?

Here we have the classic museum student, wearing mom jeans
and a colour-blocked sweatshirt. Are these the kinds of textiles we can
expect to store in the museums of our future?
Photo courtesy of Rong Zou. 

Nobody can tell the future, but we certainly try our best to create stories of the past. If it ever comes down to it, which of your outfits would you put in a museum?