Embroidery and textiles I visited – part 1

While on my holiday, I saw as much embroidery and textiles as I could reasonably squeeze in. There were a few places that I had to pass on seeing, such as folk costume museums that were not in the capitals, and therefore a long way away from where I was going to be. 🙁

So, where did I go?

Landesmuseum Zurich – Swiss National Museum, Zurich, Switzerland

According to their website, they have the largest reference collection of Swiss traditional costumes. Well, that may be so, but it was not evident in what was on display. There seemed to be very few traditional costumes on display. Maybe they’re all in storage somewhere. It was disappointing to go there in order to see this, and find that they weren’t on display, but there were other gems that surprised me that I enjoyed seeing, such as some very fine whitework, tapestries, and samplers.

Tapestry display, Landesmuseum

Münster, Freiburg, Germany

This wasn’t actually an embroidery stop, however in the huge Gothic cathedral in Freiburg, when the war was on, someone had the foresight to arrange for the stained-glass windows to be hidden and saved before they were bombed. Because of this, we can still enjoy their beauty. Some of the windows were funded by the different guilds of the city, including one by tailors. You can see this in some of the imagery that is used in the window, such as the big shears.

Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes – Museum of Printed Textiles, Mulhouse, France

My main interest in Mulhouse is actually that it is the birthplace of DMC. There is a DMC museum, but unfortunately it is not open to the general public. However, the Museum of Printed Textiles is! This museum showed the history of printed textiles in the area, with displays of different classifications of textile decoration, and the different types of printing processes for fabric, including wood blocks right through to various machines on which the textiles were printed. There was also historical information about the people who were involved in the industry, including some of my relatives! The museum also houses temporary exhibitions, in addition to the permanent displays. I have quite an interest in museum shops, because often they stock interesting books on the subject matter of the museum, and sometimes they have high quality design souvenirs. This museum’s shop didn’t really take my fancy.

Press for printing toile fabric.

Design Museum Danmark – Design Museum Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

The Design Museum Denmark has an excellent textiles collection, and while much of it is in storage, they also have an excellent Fashion and Textile exhibit in the museum. We saw clothing – embroidered and non-embroidered, purses, household linen etc. But the part that I like best were the cabinets with drawers. The labelled drawers held flat embroideries within them, including lots of whitework. Denmark’s most famous whitework embroidery style would have to be hedebo, and they had a few examples of that on display. The museum’s shop is excellent, with many interesting books and quality design souvenirs. I was a little disappointed that there were no books on textiles or embroidery though.

reticella bands in one of the drawers in the Fashion and Textiles exhibit