Emotional Textiles: An Introduction

Abstract

This special issue brings together material culture and the history of emotions to explore the emotive properties of textiles in Northwest Europe from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. It is the first detailed study of the changing emotional meanings of a particular type of material - textiles - from the metallic lace adorning christening robes, to union cloth burial clothes. The six articles are contributed by historians and museum professionals from a range of disciplines. These authors harness a variety of sources and methodologies to interrogate the emotional repertoire of textiles, and the emotive process of research itself.