Output details

'Threads of Feeling': Exhibition

‘Threads of Feeling: The London Foundling Hospital’s Textile Tokens, 1740-1770’ is a mixed-media research output. It comprised a physical exhibition of the tokens along with re-creations of eighteenth-century textiles and garments at the Foundling Museum in London from October 2010 to March 2011, a CD of eighteenth-century songs played during the exhibition, a short book (72 pages) accompanying the exhibition that explained and contextualized the display and a permanent online exhibition (www.threadsoffeeling.com). The idea for ‘Threads of Feeling’ came from Styles. He selected and interpreted the objects, curated both exhibitions, wrote the book, and selected the songs for the CD and the textiles for reproduction. It is difficult to appreciate the research design and the research process from any one element of ‘Threads of Feeling’. The format had to fit the requirements of the Museum, a small charity with limited funding for exhibitions. It was not possible to include full scholarly apparatus either in the exhibits or the book. The book was able to illustrate only two-thirds of the textiles displayed in the exhibit, while much of the contextual information provided in the book could not be included in the exhibition display panels. Most importantly,it was only in the physical exhibit that it was possible to offer:- (i) the juxtapositions of objects through which the exhibition developed its argument about the diversity of design in the period and the impact of fashion across materials which differed in cost. (ii) a range of objects demonstrating the ways in which parents of Foundling children used textiles to convey the emotional impact of separation and loss. The submission represents the research dimensions of the entire 'Threads of Feeling' output more fully that would be possible through the book alone.

‘Threads of Feeling’ required a multiplicity of research approaches because it comprised a complex combination of outputs – a physical exhibition, an online exhibition, a book, a CD of songs, and re-creations of textiles and garments. It involved systematic research into all 5,000 of the surviving textiles in the Foundling Hospital archive. Styles conducted some research on the Foundling Textiles for a single chapter of his The Dress of the People (2007) concerning fashion. ‘Threads of Feeling’ addressed a much broader range of research questions, including infant clothing and health, textile design, and materiality and emotion.