Combined Perspectives on Textile Durability in 18th and 19th-Century Europe

Abstract

Abstract: Cowritten by a historian and a textile conservator-restorer, the article proposes to look at practices of durability as a way of understanding the specific intersection between technology and resources different societies depend on. Using our combined perspectives, we reflect on the particular juncture between resources and techniques which changing practices of durability in Europe between the 18th and the 19th centuries interrogate. The article is based on close reading of written archives as well as first-hand detailed observation of textile artefacts in the study collection of the musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. Attention to objects shows that despite the advent of the so-called consumer revolution it witnessed, the 18th century remained very much part of the traditional material economy that had prevailed until then in which recycling and textile reuse were ubiquitous across social classes. However, empirical observation of later pieces shows the relationship to durability definitely changing around the second quarter of the 19th century. Whereas pre-industrial societies relied on long-term textile durability embedded in solid, stable fabrics which were integrated into forward-looking assembly techniques and design solutions integrating future “cascades of uses,” the 19th century saw the emergence of more short-sighted assembly solutions in which garments seem to have been made in anticipation they would retain their initial form and shape — whether or not they actually did. The shift, which is hardly visible in written archives, is made manifest in material sources, calling attention to the types of sources we harness to understand the past.