Handling Textiles: Rebuilding Object Lives in Museums

Abstract

Textiles are imbued with the multifaceted and complex values, beliefs, and ideals of the cultures in which they were produced and consumed. They have been used as clothing, shelter, and ornament, and are often remade and repurposed throughout their ‘lives’, constantly acquiring new layers of meaning along the way. Among the oldest technologies in the world, textiles are also among the most accessible, due in part to their highly tactile nature and sheer ubiquity. As such, they are ideal media for museums attempting to widen their audience reach and more effectively represent world history and culture. Employing textiles as catalysts for deeper engagement with visitors and potential visitors, museums can become more relevant, helping to remove the perceived barriers of ‘elitism’. Yet, how can visitors understand the meanings and values of textiles that are displayed in environments so far removed from their original contexts? How can museums rebuild the stories and lives of textiles in exhibits? This essay explores the possibility of building connections between visitors and textiles through haptic interpretation. It suggests that multisensory engagement with textiles is not only possible, but also crucial to the making of meaning, and thus to the remaking of the museum experience.

Citation: Levick, Emily A. “Handling Textiles: Rebuilding Object Lives in Museums.” The Jugaad Project, 31 May 2021, thejugaadproject.pub/handling-textiles [date of access]

Textiles have been produced and used throughout the world, throughout time. One of the most fundamental necessities of human survival since prehistory, cloth’s significance and value to individuals and groups across the globe continues to this day. Metaphorically, and often ritualistically, a textile is ‘born’ on the loom, but such is the transformative and regenerative power of cloth that it has the capacity to be re-born, or remade, many times in the course of its life. Cloth, like people, can be damaged by circumstances; but it can also heal and be rebuilt. This rebuilding imbues textiles with multiple layers of meaning, which shift according to context. The material fragility of cloth, compared to the more durable stone or metal, makes it both transient and capable of getting closer to the human body than perhaps any other article of material culture; almost like a second skin. A textile is a tangible object with intangible properties, inviting us to handle and explore its surface to learn more about its making, and, simultaneously, contribute to its remaking.

Cloth is a fact of life. It clothes us, provides shelter, and can be used as currency. Decorated and luxuriously woven textiles suggest wealth and prestige, while colour, motifs, and cut can denote gender or social status. Furthermore, textiles can comfort and console, as well as play a central role in celebrations and festivals. Talismanic tunics, covered with Q’uranic script, were worn by Muslim warriors as a form of protection (Gillow 2003: 96). For millennia, textiles have acted as silent witnesses to history, absorbing the emotions, values, and beliefs of those who create and interact with them, acquiring powerful properties, and commanding deep reverence.

Fig. 1. Talismanic tunics were worn by high-ranking Muslim warriors. The Q’uranic script covering this textile provided protection. British Museum, London, UK. Photo by the author.

Aside from its physical and material properties, cloth also has the capacity to communicate on a spiritual level. Indeed, it is, in many world cultures, crucial to the materialisation of beliefs: Navajo weaver, D. Y. Begay, tells how ‘Spider Woman bestowed the gift of weaving to the Earth People’ (in Webster et al 2017: 113); while folk tales of the Asante of central Ghana recount how these peoples learned weaving from the spider god, Anansi (Clarke 2015: 25). Capable of acquiring and retaining the spiritual, practical, symbolic, and material values of a culture, textiles are also among the most accessible of objects due to their sheer ubiquity. Such intangible qualities are especially important during rites of passage and other religious occasions.

A people’s production of, and interactions with, material culture, both reflects and reinforces their beliefs and notions of what is valued in society. As an object of material culture, cloth embodies this notion. It is a product made by people, thus revealing vast amounts of information – about their choices and thought processes, knowledge and skills, environment, and aspirations. As Frei (2014: 87) asserts, these aspects of textiles ‘contribute with tiny fragments of information that together unravel key features of past societies and thus bring us a step closer to the past’.

These powerful properties of textiles make them ideal media for museums to utilise in their efforts to effectively represent history and world cultures, providing opportunities for immersive experiences in which visitors not only gain a deeper understanding of the processes of making, but also take part in the active remaking of meaning through their interactions with textiles. The many ‘lives’ (discussed below) that textiles have experienced prior to their admission to the museum ensure an almost limitless supply of narratives and provide multiple perspectives through which cloth can be used to view the world and its history. These multi-layered meanings, uses, and perspectives create what Chechinska and Watson (2016: 288) refer to as a ‘sense of accessibility that opens up the possibility of “multivocality”’.

Textiles in one form or another are already familiar to visitors, ensuring a point of reference that makes these objects more ‘relevant’. Indeed, this ‘familiarity of textiles, their presence in everyday life, closes the distance between curator, artist and audience’ (Chechinska and Watson 2016: 288). Engaging with a familiar-yet-unfamiliar textile opens up the possibility of creating new meanings. How might the audience interpret a patched or stained garment or wrapper? What does the worn-out pile of an ancient carpet suggest about its use? The wear and tear on textiles gives a lot of valuable information about patterns of use, but also can act as a point of entry for visitors, who bring their own experiences to the museum and can relate those to what they encounter in a display of faded, worn, or torn textiles. Furthermore, an article that has clearly been mended or reinforced at some point in its history speaks to the value – both monetary and cultural – in which it was once held. In other words, when necessary, the textile was partially restored or totally rebuilt, an act that testifies to its significance to those who made and used it. We only need to think of the tapestries that once covered the walls of the wealthy in the medieval and early modern periods. The textiles’ enormous cost, both financially and in terms of labour, made them so valuable that even when they no longer suited the purpose for which they were produced, they were cut up and refashioned for new uses. We see here how cloth, which provides a ‘tangible and factual link with the past’ (Eastop 2000: 26), can be used as a means of bridging the time and/or space between one culture or set of peoples and another. It is an excellent medium for engaging with a potentially much wider demographic, including those who currently view museums as places that hold no relevance to their own lives and circumstances.

Fig. 2: Immensely expensive tapestries in the early modern era were frequently remade to fit new purposes, thus extending their lifespan and demonstrating their value. Ham House, Surrey, UK. Photo by the author.

Textile collections in museums, then, have the capacity to bring communities together, promote equality, diversity and tolerance, and facilitate deeper and more lasting engagements with material culture. This potential speaks to the notion of the New Museology by allowing perceived barriers of elitism to be broken down. The museum becomes more relevant to more people when it removes the obstacles that stand in the way of multisensory interaction with its collections and enables visitors to make their own meaning rather than being guided solely by the Authoritative Voice. Through engagement with highly relatable objects, new pathways of knowledge and learning are made possible and what was perhaps previously perceived as irrelevant can develop meaning in a multitude of ways. Yet, how can museums harness the powerful properties of textiles in an environment that is historically and culturally far removed from the context in which these pieces originally held meaning and status? Can the essence of a textile be conveyed advantageously in a static, visual-only display? To what extent does their decontextualised status in the museum influence how they are interpreted and understood by visitors, and how can we recontextualise the objects in order to facilitate greater appreciation of the beliefs, values, and ideals of those who once made and used them?

Fig. 3: African kanga textile wrappers often contain phrases in Swahili, which have meaning in specific contexts, and are made to be worn on the body. How does their display as visually attractive but ultimately static fabrics impact on visitors’ understanding of these textiles’ uses and meanings? British Museum, London, UK. Photo by the author.

If we consider Dilley’s (2002: 452) argument that ‘different constructions of the concept of context rest upon different bodies or forms of knowledge’, we might perceive the possibility of multiple contexts for a single textile or group of textiles in the museum. The context that was created by those who produced the cloth, and used it in particular ways in particular situations, gave it meaning, value, and power in that environment and to the peoples involved. The textile and the community to which it belonged interacted in ways that generated and reinforced the specific properties, powers, and forms of knowledge that contributed to the context of this process. To recreate that context in its entirety in the museum would not only be undesirable, but also a physical impossibility. Indeed, due to the differences between the old context (the textile’s ‘source community’) and the new (the museum), factors such as categorisation and classification processes, sets of knowledge, and even terminology, ensure that any attempt at direct transferral from one environment to another will be, at best, problematic. In this environment, if we wish to harness the powerful meanings and values that are embodied in and by textiles, it is necessary to create a context for these pieces in which they are allowed to demonstrate their properties to a new audience. Moreover, if this demonstration is a two-way process, with visitors translating their own experiences, values, and beliefs onto a textile, its meanings and powers are transformed in this new context. As cloth is capable of holding multiple meanings for multiple peoples, the generation and regeneration of meaning only adds to its value and significance; it is never deleterious.

It is helpful here to view the textile’s (or textile group’s) position in the museum as representing the current stage in its ‘cultural biography’. As Appadurai (1986: 34) points out, this term ‘is appropriate to specific things, as they move through different hands, contexts, and uses, thus accumulating a specific biography or set of biographies’. Furthermore, as Kopytoff (1986: 90) elaborates on this notion, ‘an eventful biography of a thing becomes the story of the various singularisations of it, of classifications and reclassifications in an uncertain world of categories whose importance shifts with every minor change in context’ (emphasis added). Therefore, while at an earlier stage the textile ‘lived’ elsewhere, had a different role, and potentially represented different values and meanings, in its current context – defined and framed by the concepts of power, authority, and knowledge embodied by the museum and its personnel, which in itself can be ‘construed as a political act in the light of the other possible definitions or moves that could have been made’ (Dilley 2002: 453) – it has accrued new meanings and values. The latter do not obliterate the former; rather, if we view these meanings and values as accruing over time and inalienable once acquired, a textile in a museum, which has been through several different contexts and life stages already, is a multi-layered and immensely rich opportunity to engage audiences on numerous levels.

Given this potential, how can we actually facilitate understanding and meaning-making in visitors through museum textile collections? After all, the traditional display format forbids touch and limits the exploration of a museum object to that of sight alone. While necessary from a conservation perspective, this largely single-sensory experience is especially detrimental to the understanding of textiles due to their extremely tangible nature: to truly experience a textile, we cannot rely on sight alone, for that restricts us merely to its aesthetic properties. We also want to engage with its texture, its softness against our skin, the subtle sounds it makes as we manipulate it in our hands or wear it on our bodies. Even the smell of a textile contributes to our personal meaning-making. As Hemmings (2012: 3) asserts, ‘“Reading” the textile, rather than “feeling” the textile, means the textile is judged against a value system that does not always respond to its strengths’. The multifaceted nature of textiles can be appreciated more substantially through physical involvement with them. Visitors who are allowed to handle these items are likely to develop a more intimate engagement with them than simply by looking at them behind glass. How, then, can we bridge the divide, allowing visitors to experience textiles in all their multisensory glory without jeopardising the physical integrity of these objects for future generations?

Fig. 4: Implements for the production of bark cloth. How might this display be transformed through demonstrations of such tools in action? Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK. Photo by the author.

Scholars have repeatedly argued for the benefits of a more multisensory approach to learning in the museum. Indeed, as Pye (2007: 13) observes: ‘Pressures on museums to widen audiences and provide increased access to their collections have underlined the importance of touch and handling as a form of access to museum collections’. Lacey and Sathian (2014: 28) argue that programmes that allow visitors to handle objects ‘may lead to more elaborative processing, thus enabling better understanding and improved recall of the museum experience and its intellectual content’. Their suggestion that handling items should be limited to either ‘original artifacts’ with ‘minimal historical value’, or ‘detailed replicas’ (Lacey and Sathian 2014: 28), could be beneficially adopted by museums wishing to bring visitors and textile displays closer together, physically and intellectually; to build connections. To what extent might the museum experience be transformed for visitors of all ages if they were encouraged to engage with the exhibits on a deeper and more interactive and meaningful level? Touch and narrative are ‘a complementary duo in their abilities to provide physical and cognitive access, as well as effective engagement with history – making the past visible, doable, and real’ (Levent and McRainey 2014: 69). Together, viewing and feeling textiles in the museum helps to bring history and other cultures much closer to the visitor’s own worldview.

While no-one is advocating the use of fragile, precious, one-of-a-kind textiles in a handling collection, it is suggested here that nevertheless, authentic pieces can be utilised in the museum to complement the said fragile, precious, one-of-a-kind textiles. In addition to on-site interpreters and educational staff, written text, audio-visual media, and other interpretation methods, the weavers of particular textile traditions could be invited to produce new pieces based on originals in the museum collections. Such activities could be incorporated into the overall experience of the gallery, enabling visitors to see for themselves how the textiles they see on display would have been originally created, thus facilitating understanding by forming a conceptual link between the act of production and the finished piece. The cloth produced in this process could then be handled and appreciated by visitors. It would be a reproducible article, but in design and execution, faithful to the original. The original, we might call ‘authenticating’, features of the textile would effectively remain, while the context – and, therefore, the power – is recreated, allowing visitors to take part in the meaning-making process themselves and gain a deeper understanding of how and why such values and properties are created and reinforced through textiles.

Lewallen’s study of Ainu textiles demonstrates the value of such an approach for both weavers and museum visitors. Reproducing ancestral textiles from museum collections allows Ainu women weavers to ‘cultivate somatic and affective memory and bring the return of knowledge, heritage skill sets, and a nuanced understanding of changes in cloth technology to the broader Ainu community’ (Lewallen 2016: 208) – a form of rebuilding. The words of the organiser of an exhibition of fukusei (reproductions) suggest wider-reaching benefits of combining traditional and modern textiles (Yamasaki Koji, quoted in Lewallen 2016: 194):

‘Fukusei allowed us to put forth the message that tradition is connected with the present. Had we concentrated only on older pieces, many viewers knowing nothing about contemporary Ainu would have come away with the message that “Ainu culture is a thing of the past”. On the other hand, focusing on new pieces alone would have made it difficult for viewers to feel this link with the past. We sought to explore the invisible space between the older objects and newer fukusei.’

Furthermore, this approach is applicable in many contexts. McClain (2021) highlights the way that Chilkat weavers today ‘are creating vibrant and unique pieces that pull from studying old pieces, but also play with tradition and standard forms as they flex their knowledge of the artforms to reflect and express their individual talents and identities’ in “We’re Still Here”: An Interview with Lily Hope — The Jugaad Project. Where Lacey and Sathian’s original artefacts of minimal value (see above) are unavailable, then, authentic modern reproductions could provide museums with the opportunity to deliver highly meaningful, haptic, enjoyable, and long-lasting experiences for visitors through their textile collections.

Fig.5. Kantha cloths of Bengal, historically used as coverlets for babies and children, were deliberately soft, warm, and comforting against the skin. In the museum environment, such textiles are protected by glass, forbidding touch. Reproductions could help visitors better appreciate the meaning and associations these cloths had in their former ‘lives’. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. Photo by the author.

Interpretation methods involving touch have ‘the potential to revolutionize the museum experience and increase access to the object for everyone’ (Onol 2008: 94). Touch is a crucial way in which we can build and rebuild. Developing a more haptic approach to museum displays presents visitors with possibilities for connecting with the new, while also reconnecting with themselves. They can be involved in both the making process and the process of remaking their own meanings, ideas, and understandings. Textiles unite us all, wherever we come from. They connect us with each other and with the changing world around us. They can assist in building new relationships with visitors. Let us harness this unique power of textiles to transform the museum experience for everyone.

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