The varied and often very powerful meanings attached to textiles and clothes are one of the themes explored in this issue of Textile History. We open with an article, ‘Dressing and Addressing the Mental Patient: The Uses of Clothing in the Admission, Care and Employment of Residents in English Provincial Mental Hospitals, c. 1860–1960’, which considers the factors influencing the nature of the dress worn by patients residing in English mental hospitals in the century before the radical reforms of the mental health system in the 1960s. Using the previously inaccessible records of three Devon hospitals, Nicole Baur and Joseph Melling argue that, while not unmindful of the welfare of patients, the needs of the institution always tended to trump inmates’ consumer desires or preferences. The regulation of dress is also at the heart of the next article, ‘“Saide Monstrous Hose”: Compliance, Transgression and English Sumptuary Law to 1533’, which offers a reassessment of English late medieval sumptuary legislation, usually dismissed as ‘dead letters’, both unenforced and unenforceable. Marshalling evidence from probate documents and the archaeological record, as well as the laws themselves, Hilary Doda argues that the legislation was largely complied with, rather than ignored.
We move away from England for our next article, ‘Silk and Propaganda — Two Ottoman Silk Flags and the Relief of Vienna, 1683’, which takes us to the seventeenth-century battlefields where the wars between Habsburg and Ottoman Empires were played out. Focusing on two Ottoman flags captured during and after the relief of the siege of Vienna, Barbara Karl shows how such relatively simple textiles acquired new meanings as they changed hands: from symbols of military might to signs of defeat. Captured flags, however, did not bring only prestige to the victors. As Karl demonstrates, they could also be the cause of confusion, political discord and outright hostility among erstwhile allies. The theme of the political role of textiles continues in Koenraad Brosens’s study, ‘Botta Adorno, Empress Maria Theresa and Brussels Tapestry in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’. As Minister Plenipotentiary of the Austrian Netherlands between 1749 and 1753, Antoniotto di Botta Adorno conceived a bold plan to sustain the Brussels tapestry industry by persuading Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, to purchase them for use as impressive diplomatic gifts. The first of a two-part series, this paper uses new archival data to explore the growth of the plan and relationships between tapestry weavers who would supply the actual tapestries. Jacqueline Field’s Object Lesson changes the focus from the international to the personal while still exploring the importance of textiles in defining identity. ‘Mud Silk and the Chinese Laundress: from the South China Silk Industry to Mud Silk Suits in Maine’ starts with the rediscovery of Toy Len Goon’s trousseau of four suits made from mud silk, a little-known type of Chinese silk named after the mud treatment which gives it the characteristic shiny brown-black bi-coloured appearance. Building on a detailed analysis of the suits, she goes on to evaluate their role in Toy Len’s life as she moved from China to America before providing an historical and technical account of mud silk as an important regional textile produced in Guangdong, China.
As always, this issue of Textile History includes Conference, Exhibition and Book Reviews. The Conference Review introduces a new student-led initiative, the Lace Research Network, based at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. The conference on ‘Lace: The Transgressive Thread’, was the first event organised by the network. We also have three Exhibition Reviews, which span historic clothing in Australia, dress in Elizabethan England and twentieth-century artist-designed textiles. Dinah Eastop, the Exhibition Reviews Editor, says: ‘Readers will notice the recent inclusion of reviews of “online exhibitions”. This reflects recent changes in ICT which have enabled innovative online dissemination of textile-related research and also new ways on generating collections, for example the e-collection formed via the Australian Dress Register, which is reviewed in this issue’. The Exhibition Reviews Editor is also keen that each issue should include a review of an international exhibition. She welcomes suggestions and reviews. Her email address is [email protected]. The Book Reviews show once again the variety and depth of research currently being undertaken in the field of textile and dress history, including not only in-depth studies of individual collections, but also wide- ranging international and comparative studies. Chris Boydell is the Book Reviews Editor. Please contact her on [email protected] to suggest possible books for review and send books to her at School of Humanities, Faculty of Art & Design, Fletcher 2.3, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester le1 9bh.
Textile History is the journal of the Pasold Research Fund, which supports innovative research in textile and dress history. Suggestions for future conferences should be made to the Director, Giorgio Riello (Global History and Culture Centre, Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry cv4 7al, United Kingdom; Tel: +44 (0)24 7652 3350; email: [email protected]). The Pasold Research Fund also offers grants that include Research Activity and Research Project Grants (smaller activities and larger projects), the Raine Grants (which have an extended brief to support staff working in museums and related institutions undertaking object-based research into textile history) as well as supporting publications and postgraduate study (MA and PhD grants). For information about these grants, see the Fund’s website at: www.pasold.co.uk. This website also includes links to other organisations and institutions exploring textile history. The Fund is keen to extend these links. If you would like to suggest relevant organisations or make a link with your own organisation, please contact [email protected].
As usual, we conclude this note by inviting contributions of original research articles in any field of textile history and of shorter contributions that can be published in the form of Object Lessons or Research Notes. Articles, Object Lessons and Research Notes should now be submitted via the new on-line submission system, which can be found here: http://www.editorialmanager.com/tex. The Instructions for Authors are also available on-line: http://www.maneyonline.com/ifa/tex. The Editors are always happy to discuss ideas for papers; contact either Laura Ugolini on [email protected] or Mary Brooks on [email protected]. We would like once again to remind current and potential authors of the annual prize of £400 for the best article published in Textile History as judged by members of the Editorial Board.
Mary M. Brooks & Laura Ugolini