The Visual Dynamic of the furnished Domestic Interior

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 16th October 2012

Videos:

Aims:

to bring together a range of different textile-based artefacts to examine the visual dynamic created by different surfaces, colours, shapes, imagery and texts.

Research questions:

• What range of objects, textures, colours, forms, shapes, images and texts could be found in the early modern domestic interior and how were they displayed?
• Are there significant differences in how pattern, imagery or iconography is represented in different textile items (and hence different ways of looking at different items)?
• Can we formulate an approach to decorative textiles and other domestic artefacts that encompasses the study of a body of objects as a cohesive whole, rather than a collection of individual items?
• How far can we ascertain and therefore recreate the original condition and quality of an object’s colour, texture and surface? How can conservation analysis contribute, alongside Workshop 1’s technologies, to this understanding? How might digital recreations inform research and museums presentation?