Description
Book SynopsisWeaving Europe, Crafting the Museum delves into the history and the changing material culture in Europe through the stories of a basket, a carpet, a waistcoat, a uniform, and a dress. The focus on the objects from the collection of the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin offers an innovative and challenging way of understanding textile culture and museums. The book shows that textiles can be simultaneously used as the material object of research, and as a lens through which we can view museums. In doing so, the book fills a major gap by placing textile knowledge back into the museum.Each chapter focuses on one object story and can be read individually. Swooping from 19th-century wax figure cabinets, Nazi-era collections, Cold War exhibitions in East and West Berlin, and institutional reshuffling after German unification, it reveals the dramatically changing story of the museum and its collection. Based on research with museum curators, makers and users of the textiles in Italy
Trade ReviewComplex, enriching and beautifully written,
Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum is a key, interdisciplinary text composed of compelling stories, distinctive case studies and unique archival materials, entwined with textiles as carriers of meaning, migration and politics. * Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *
A pioneering effort of museum studies craftwork that weaves together Europe’s West and East and its histories of colonialism, nazism and socialism; disentangles shifting notions of ‘folk culture’; and highlights the challenging task faced by curators inheriting ambivalent historical collections. * Erica Lehrer, Concordia University, Canada *
Weaves together a fascinating series of textile stories, narrated through the woven fabrics housed in German ethnographic collections … This book expands our understanding of museums, collections and materiality, and will definitely appeal to a wide range of scholars, including anthropologists, museum curators and textile historians. * Graeme Were, University of Bristol, UK *
Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Abbreviations
Introduction Textiles beyond the folkloric Fieldwork trajectory Textural ethnography The problem of crafting collections Outline of the book
1. Sample collection: Dreams and archives Encounter A place for the museum Textile archives World stage Conclusion
2. Carpets: Knotted histories, recurrent patterns Nationalist folklore School and museum Regained Territories Post-war reconstruction Truly Polish craft Scraps Recurrent patterns Conclusion
3. Woven basket: Untethered art Trader in exotica Survivors Waiting Thread On demand Valuing work Stubborn survival
4. Waistcoat: Colour and Cold War Language island Go West Perforating the Iron Curtain? Vestige Conclusion
5. Cook’s uniform: Refashioning the social fabric Renewal Reorientation Blue-collar museum House ghosts Costume/fashion Conclusion
Conclusion: From unification to prefiguration Collection reconceptualized Other futures Prefigurative acquisition Conclusion Bibliography Index
