Textiles: The Art of Mankind celebrates the ancient and deep entanglement between textiles, people and our world. Through the beauty of textiles, you will encounter human ingenuity that can be traced from pre-history to our digital age.
Textiles reveal the human desire to engage with texture and colour, record histories, thoughts and feelings, and preserve skills to hand down generations. Across the globe, they carry sacred significance, express our cultural regard for animals, while other’s symbolise life’s mysteries.
Told through themes spanning materials, identity, collaboration, and sustainability, Textiles: The Art Mankind explores how craft and creativity connects society. This is a rare chance to see objects never before exhibited in the UK; a vibrant textile from Panama depicting a mermaid to represent fertility, a stunning wall hanging reflecting on Sardinia’s history of occupation, or an ingenious ceremonial bag shaped like a human hand suggesting a welcome gesture.
We look forward to welcoming you to this evocative exhibition exploring the identities, meanings and ideas captured in textiles.
Also, on display is Connecting Threads:
Collaboration is at the heart of textile making and this idea is explored in a display of work by UK based artist Lynn Setterington. Through textiles Lynn challenges contemporary issues in society and how stitch can be used to commemorate people and communities.
About the curator
Mary Schoeser MA FRSA has authored some 280 publications large and small. Books related to the Fashion and Textile Museum exhibition include World Textiles: A concise history (Thames & Hudson: 2003/2023), Silk (Yale University Press, 2007) and Textiles: The art of mankind (T&H, 2012/2013).
Formerly Archivist for Warner & Sons, since 1991 she has been consultant archivist to firms such as Liberty of London, as well as advising museums in Britain and America, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over 40 curatorial projects range from the contribution to Chintz: Cotton in Bloom at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London (2021) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Off the Wall: American Art to Wear (2019).
She lectures widely, since 2018 at Textilmuseum St Gallen, National Museums Scotland, University of Lisbon, Textile Center Haslach (Austria), Winterthur Museum (Delaware USA) and the Wellcome Institute, London. She is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the V&A and also Patron of the Bernat Klein Foundation and School of Textiles, Coggeshall.
This exhibition brings to London a range of ethnographic garments and textiles from the Jo Ann C. Stabb Collection at the University of California Davis, where Mary was taught by Jo Ann during her first degree (a BSc in Design) and developed her interest in global and interdisciplinary studies.
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In place of a permanent display, the Fashion and Textile Museum hosts a diverse programme of temporary exhibitions, displaying a broad range of innovative fashion and textiles from designers and makers around the world.
On arrival: Please ensure you arrive within the first 20 minutes of your chosen entry time, for example if your ticket is for 11am please arrive between 11.00 and 11.20am. Please do not arrive early as you will be refused entry. There is no waiting area in the museum. Upon entry, please present your ticket(s) on your device or a note of your booking reference number.
Eating and drinking: No food or drink is permitted in the Museum, other than bottled water. The Fashion and Textile Museum is located in the heart of Bermondsey Street, surrounded by award-winning restaurants, cafes and pubs. So, if you would like to enjoy a meal or a drink before or after your visit, there is plenty to choose from.For more information, check out our plan your visit page or our FAQs.