Museum of Textiles, Lyons

Le Musée des Tissus, Lyons, France. Le Musée des Tissus, Lyons, France.

The Museum of Textiles (Musée des Tissus), Lyons, France, is one of the world’s most important museums dedicated to textiles and dress. It is actually half of a double museum, one of which is called the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Decorative Arts Museum), and the other the Musée des Tissus (Museum of Textiles).

In 1864 the Lyons Chamber of Commerce established the Museum of Art and Industry to teach craft and industrial design and techniques, to staff and students from the region. Since 1946 the Museum of Textiles, which developed out of the Art and Industry Museum, has been housed in the seventeenth century Villeroy Mansion.

By the end of the twentieth century the Museum included many thousands of items dating from the second millennium BC to the present. The Museum is particularly geared towards the history of European silk manufacture from the Renaissance to the present day. In addition, it has collections that reflect textile forms and production techniques from around the world, especially Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The costume section (mainly Western urban fashion) of the collection includes embroidery and lace making.

The Textile Museum is also home to CIETA (Centre International d'Études des Textiles Anciens), which was founded in 1954. It is an international group dedicated to coordinating the working methodology and terminology used by specialists in ancient and historical textiles. The Bulletin de CIETA, the flagship of CIETA, is regarded as one of the most important journals on archaeological and historical textiles. In addition to the main group that concentrates on weave and weaving technology, there is also a special sub-group called Groupe broderie de CIETA that, as its name implies, specialises in embroidery.

In 2015 the Museum of Textiles was threatened with closure due to a lack of funding from the government and the local municipality. Despite an massive international effort to save the museum, it is still not clear (September 2017) whether the museum will be closed or not.

Address: 34 rue de la Charité, 69002 Lyons.

Museum website (retrieved 27th March 2016).

Wikipedia (retrieved 27th March 2016).

Digital source of illustration (retrieved 19th June 2016).

GVE

Last modified on Wednesday, 20 September 2017 09:23