Nov 20, 2025
What’s in a carpet? A great deal according to the historian and carpet scholar Dorothy Armstrong, who has just published a book called Threads of Empire: A History of the World in 12 Carpets.
For centuries carpets have been the most coveted and expensive of textiles, they have even attracted carpet forgers, and...
Oct 16, 2025
It is hard to think of a greater contrast than the opulent style of the ill-fated Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and the misery of decades of clothes rationing under Cuba’s Communist regime. But this month Haptic and Hue’s Travels with Textiles considers both, and also takes a look at the forgotten French...
Sep 18, 2025
Danish Design is globally famous and has been exported around the world. But what about Danish textiles? For the first time the renowned Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen has an exhibition devoted to the textile designers of the past 100 years who contributed so much so the Danish design movement. We talk to the...
Jul 17, 2025
Five thousand years ago, weavers in southern Egypt were given one of the oddest commissions they must ever have received. Please make a linen shroud for an elephant. Why were they asked to do this, and how long did it take them? This is just one of the themes that we are exploring in this month’s episode of Travels...
Jun 19, 2025
A new project is just getting underway in Western Norway to document the craft skills of the Arctic peoples that enabled them, down the centuries, to create beautiful handstitched clothing perfectly fitted to the environment. The University of Bergen is working in collaboration with people from the European Arctic,...