Plant Fibres: Materials, Techniques, Problems. Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology, Mayen, Germany, 3-9 November 2014.

This year saw the switch from a September to a November date for the Textile Forum - with the possibility to use the heated indoor workrooms and lecture room, we were not limited anymore to the warmer half of the year as was the case when having the conference hosted by open-air museums. Many colleagues had also mentioned in the last years that September is an especially bad time of year for them, since there are many other events taking place, making good use of the end of the warm season.

Our focus topic in 2014 was "Plant Fibres: Materials, Techniques, Problems". Plant material in textiles is especially vulnerable to decay in the soil, and plant fibres pose their own challenges and have their own merits in comparison to wool and silk fibres. This was a topic with many aspects, including but of course not limited to: differences in working with plant fibres as compared to animal fibres, problems and possibilities of dyeing the material, conservation issues of plant materials on their own or in combination with animal fibres, garments or other pieces that were preliminarily made from vegetable fibres.

Programme of the Textile Forum 2014

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