The exhibition showcases previously unseen or rarely seen items from the museum’s textile collection which illustrate the skill and care taken by makers of Domestic Crafts from the late C19th into the C20th century.
Crafting skills including hand-spinning, weaving and sewing to produce clothes and coverings were essential in Scottish homes from at least medieval times. Handlooms and spinning wheels retained their importance in more remote coastal and rural communities long after they became almost decorative “props” in wealthier urban houses but over the course of the nineteenth century, industrialisation made shop-bought goods including textiles more widely available and enabled more time to be allocated to less utilitarian home-making.
Women in fisherfolk and agricultural communities always had extra jobs to do including net-mending and sock-knitting – rarely getting to the point of being “haund-idle” but as we move closer to the more mechanised era, we find examples of craft for decoration and thus evidence for at least a little leisure time.
What we are looking at here in this exhibition is the development of craft for purposes other than the practical ones of being dressed and keeping warm – craft to demonstrate knowledge and virtue, craft for decoration, craft to “civilise” and “feminise” the home including rugs, quilts, samplers and tapestries.
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