Textiles are part of our lives every day– in our clothes, the upholstery that cushions our furniture, the tires on our automobiles, filters that clean the air, and in countless other ways we seldom stop to consider. Each fabric, whether decorative or utilitarian, is the product of a complex combination of human creativity, technology, and skill. Textiles in America shows through textiles, tools, machines, photographs, advertising ephemera, and other artifacts how people have used art and science over the past 250 years to create beautiful and useful textiles.
More than 500 artifacts from the Museum's collections are used in both imaginative period settings and in gallery displays which tell America's story through the art, science and history of its textiles. A brocaded silk dress shown near a warehouse façade illustrates the importance of imports in early America.
A New England kitchen and Pennsylvania weavers' workshop display show the wooden tools and equipment used as part of the complicated process of textile production.
A man's gold silk robe from the late 1830s embodies the period's sense of the value of textiles. This is explained in the old fold lines and stitch marks that show the fabric's use in an earlier time as a lady's dress.
Sheet music for a song popularized by Ozzie Nelson in 1933 tells about an Old Spinning Wheel now "covered in the dust and forgotten." Enlarged photographs of textile workers, both posed in studios and on the job, provide an immediate connection to these faces from America's past.
Visitor Services staff conduct tours for groups and are available in the galleries to answer questions.