Visit to the Deutsches Museum, Munich, October 2013

Once again I find myself apologising for not writing for a ridiculously long time. Pretty ironically, despite doing a post in September about the therapeutics of stitch, things have been feeling very overwhelming since then, and whilst I have thankfully found escape through various textile related exploits, the sitting down and writing about it part has rather fallen by the wayside… A recent resurgence of writing motivation coupled with a few days off work, however, means that I am determined to get this thing up to date!

Way back at the end of October, my Mum and I went to visit my brother in Munich, Germany. After somehow navigating the S-Bahn from Germering to Isartor one morning I took a little solo trip to the Deutsches Museum. The Museum is absolutely colossal, with exhibitions dedicated to just about all imaginable forms of technology, from microchips to crystal making, musical  instruments to space travel – it was pretty overwhelming! My main focus and the purpose of my visit, however, was to see the part of the museum dedicated to Textile Technology. Unfortunately the Museum's policy does not allow me to post pictures from its exhibitions, and given that I spent over three hours in just one textile technology room, it is hard to do justice to anything without droning on for thousands of words here... So I will simply try to give a brief overview of my highlights! 

This exhibition particularly intrigued me as it was unlike anything I had seen before. Rather than the focus being on textile artefacts from an aesthetic or historical point of view, the exhibition is instead about the tools, machines and methods used to make the textiles themselves. As such, it offered a very different and valuable opportunity to learn about just how much intelligent engineering and centuries of invention and industrial development lie behind the textiles we so often take for granted. I was able to learn about all aspects of textile production, from the production of yarn from cotton, wool, silk, flax and synthetic sources, to spinning, weaving, knitting and printing of fabrics. Much of this learning was facilitated through interactive displays, my favourite of which were microscopes through which you could examine and compare different types of fibres, and simplified weaving frames that I found really enabled me to understand how different fabrics are industrially manufactured.

The exhibition featured an amazing array of industrial machinery used in textile manufacturing, ranging from the ancient Egyptian to the modern day, and I was awestruck by the sheer size and complexity of many machines. My definite highlights were the Jacquard Loom, which creates complex woven patterns through the use of punched cards that control which warp threads are woven over, the William Lee Stocking Frame, as I had seen some absolutely gorgeous scarves produced by this invention at Sandringham Arts and Crafts Fair earlier in the year, and Arkwright’s Water-Frame, as it was a machine I had been aware of for many years due to many visits to Cromford, Derbyshire, my Grandma’s childhood home and the location of Arkwright’s Mill.

The majority of the machines on display were English inventions, which did leave me wondering at one point why it had bizarrely taken a trip to Germany for me to finally see these things in real life! Ultimately, I can only put it down to the fact that such exhibitions just haven’t been the type I have thought to search for in the past – something I’m feeling pretty stupid about right now! The industrial aspect of textiles is something which connects them to all of us, due to the profound role of textile manufacture in the industrial revolution on our social history and future technology. So, for those of you seeking similar exhibitions in the UK, I have found a few here which look very promising, and which I hope to visit myself (although I am gutted I’ve only discovered them AFTER I’ve moved away from Manchester and the North!!) If anyone out there has visited them, or knows of any others, do let me know! 

Bradford Industrial Museum

Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills

Helmshore Mills Textile Museum, Lancashire

Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester