As our neighbours, Factory International, explore the world of fashion runways in Vogue: Inventing the Runway, we take a look at how cotton and the textiles industry transformed Manchester. Join us for a strut through the museum’s Textiles Gallery for some surprising stories.
This year, Manchester Science Festival is exploring the theme of extremes. Amongst the range of events and experiences on offer, visitors will be able to see one of the museum’s newest acquisitions, a jacket enhanced with Manchester wonder material graphene, the world’s strongest, thinnest, lightest and most conductive material.
What connects a lab coat, a loom and the ancestor of modern computers to sci-fi classic, The Matrix? We dive down the rabbit hole to highlight the world-changing collections at the Science and Industry Museum that were part of the creative inspiration for our new neighbour Factory International’s opening show, Free Your Mind.
In this blog post, Science and Industry Museum Collaborative Doctoral Partnership student Alexander Appleton shares his research into the 19th century Manchester textiles firm Langworthy Brothers and Co., the business records of which are held in the collections.
Senior Curator Katie Belshaw explains more about Global Threads, a collaboration between the museum and UCL exploring Manchester’s global cotton connections.
Historic Working Machinery Operating Technician Pippi Carty-Hornsby explains more about sustainable textiles, the current topic in our Textiles Gallery Conversation Space.
Is ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ a new idea? Associate Curator Abi Wilson delves into the history of sustainability in the textiles industry.
We’ve probably all felt the frustration of ordering clothes in ‘our size’ only to find they don’t fit—but can maths help?
Or, how a bunch of children helped us re-interpret our Textiles Gallery…
Archivist Jan Shearsmith takes us on another sneak peak into the Science and Industry Museum archives. Here, he discusses how cataloguing descriptions can never quite live up to the experience of finding an unexpected and mysterious collections gem.
What does it take to create stunning images from behind the scenes at a museum?
One of the most poignant objects to be added in to the textiles gallery is a tiny pair of leather children’s clogs dating from around 1870.