Abstract

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.

What does it mean to study textile objects? Is it possible to use the textiles themselves to illuminate issues of production, use and interpretation? This is the main questions discussed in the article, taking a category of interior textiles from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in museum collections as a starting point. By using phenomenology as a method, the researchers’ experiences of the studied objects are seen as away of understanding the textiles to be able to contextualize them in time and place. When studying the textiles, the process of weaving, the creation of the patterns and the design of the fabric that follows by the use of them, are some of the aspects to analyze. What do things communicate and how is it possible to understand the message?

Keywords

home decorating, museums, textiles, materiality, weaving

Publisher Notes

• This article was previously published by Museum Tusculanum Press.