9 research outputs found
Book Review: Colouring the Nation: The Turkey Red Printed Cotton Industry in Scotland c. 1840-1940
Fabric-covered cars: motor engineering and fashion
Fabric coverings for cars were a short-lived phenomenon of the 1920s to early 1930s. Designed to reduce weight, give flexibility, and supress noise, fashion also played a role. The inventor Leopold Ward trialled printed textile coverings coated with transparent varnish in 1924, and changeable silk was even seen offering an irridescent sheen. But the desire for curvaceous vehicle shapes and improvements in nitrocellulose paints meant that by 1929, fabric exteriors rapidly declined in popularity and production
Fustians in Englishmen's dress: from cloth to emblem
This paper examines the nature of the textiles known as fustians, originally imported but later manufactured in England. The focus is on eighteenth-century England when fustians underwent further development into modern cloth types. Evidence of the use of fustians for men's dress, and the status of those who wore them, is explored to shed further light on the developments leading up to the association of fustian with working-class men. The paper is based on a presentation delivered at the Costume Society Symposium: Town and Country Style in 2007
Abundant images and scant text: reading textile pattern books
This publication focuses on the interrelationship between archival and bibliographic research and the study of extant objects. Papers consider how archival and bibliographic research can inform our knowledge of textiles and dress, in terms of their production, consumption, dissemination and deterioration and in turn, how the study of extant objects can give added depth to this analysis. The authors include conservators, curators, historians and conservation scientists
Hot press printing of worsted cloth: a precursor of roller printing
In the 1695 edition of Camden’s Britannia, the editor was obliged to update the account of Manchester’s wool cloth manufacture claiming it « is of late very much improv’d by some modern inventions of dy[e]ing and printing». British historians, in their concentration on the cotton industry, have ignored this early occurrence of textile printing in Manchester. French historians, most notably Pierre Dardel, have avoided a similar omission, but concentrate on the printed wool manufactures around ..
Les archives de l’invention
Les historiens ont longtemps privilégié le facteur technique dans l’approche des révolutions industrielles. Dans cette logique monocausale, le progrès technique était assimilé à une succession d’inventions apparues dans des secteurs pionniers, moteurs de la croissance, entraînant le reste de l’économie, dite traditionnelle, dans son sillage. L’un des paradoxes de cette approche consistait à valoriser l’innovation tout en évitant d’interroger les pratiques inventives. La dynamique interne du progrès technique et les traits de génie des inventeurs tenaient lieu de modèles explicatifs. La remise en cause de ces approches suscite bien des interrogations de méthode. Comment repérer les formes de l’invention ordinaire, en cerner les acteurs ? Comment assigner une origine à des nouveautés dont l’antériorité se perd dans la mémoire commune ? Comment appréhender des savoirs pratiques instables et non codifiés que ne livrent pas les corpus constitués de sources ? Comment concilier les définitions construites de l’invention et de l’inventeur, les catégories déjà forgées par les institutions et le corps social, et les mentions informelles ou indirectes de l’invention ? Ces questions débordent l’écrit. Cet ouvrage, issu d’un colloque international tenu à Paris en 2003, élargit le concept de sources : au-delà des « sources-textes », il considère les dessins, les enregistrements sonores, les instruments et outils, les installations, les échantillons, les modèles, les prototypes, etc. Il propose une réflexion originale sur le statut des archives de l’invention, sur leur mode de production et sur les méthodologies mises en œuvre dans leur exploitation