On-line catalog.

Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design

The URI Historic Textile and Costume Collection

The URI Historic Textile and Costume Collection, located in Quinn Hall, contains almost 20,000 objects.  The mission of the Collection is threefold: teaching textile, costume design, historic costume, and historic textiles classes in the TMD department as well as other departments on campus; research by students, faculty, and visiting scholars; and exhibition in the Textile Gallery and loans for exhibitions in other museums.  

Images and descriptions of selected artifacts from the Collection are featured in our On-line catalog.  These descriptions are based on student research papers.

Recent donation: the Bainbridge Lace Collection 

Dr. Ordonez  presented a paper at the CSA meeting in Houston TX in May 2004 on "Conserving the 20th Century".  
Renee Walker presented a poster "Conserving 20th Century Plastics in Historic Collections".

1890s photograph and a suit worn by Fred S. Crosby, ca. 1893 published in Historic Fashions of Women & Children: A Costume Calendar for 1999. Arlington, VA: Sally Queen & Associates, 1998.

 

 

 

200 years apart—1768 wedding shoes and 1970s Italian-designed Raphael slippers

 

Objects in the Collection include both costumes and textiles from all over the world.  Besides a few pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles and early Egyptian cloths, the earliest holdings are late eighteenth century.  Several collections of handwoven textiles and clothing from Rhode Island families date from this period.  Early everyday wear is one of the strengths of the Collection.

 
Early 19th century Kashmir shawl, hand woven of cashmere fibers in twill tapestry weave.  The fat, short-necked buta motif is typical of early Kashmir shawls.

 

Nineteenth-century clothing and accessories for American women, men, and children are well represented in the Collection.  The Accessions Committee is judiciously adding twentieth-century objects, particularly designer garments.  The ethnographic textiles and costumes come from many cultures that have a strong textile heritage.  Recent additions to the Latin American and African collections have begun an effort to increase the holdings from those areas.

Jody Baldwin, 2001 TMD graduate and now costume designer 
at Astor’s Beechwood Living History Museum, Newport, 
researching Collection’s nineteenth-century periodicals for background 
information about 1891 dress and customs

 

Researchers, quilters, private collectors, and others interested in historic costumes and textiles are encouraged to use the Collection.  Appointments can be arranged by calling the Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design office at 401-874-4574 or Collection Director Margaret Ordoñez at 401-874-5481 or emailing her at mordonez@uri.edu.

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