Opening of the exhibitions “The Hermitage Encyclopaedia of Textiles. History”, and “The Hermitage Encyclopaedia of Textiles. Conservation”
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On 28 July 2017, two exhibitions opened in the state rooms of the Winter Palace, one devoted to the history of fabrics, the other to their restoration. The exhibitions have been organized with the support of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
“Today we are opening two amazing exhibitions, full of different kinds of beauty and different meanings,” Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, said at the opening ceremony. “We are showing some amazing collections and also the work of the restorers in this sphere, where it is absolutely vital. Fabrics are a mystic and very ancient thing: human destiny is decided by the Parcae, who spin the thread of fate. These textile exhibitions have become to some extent a summing up of achievements: they are connected with the 80th anniversary of the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Fabrics and also timed to coincide with the congress of the Centre International d’Etudes des Textiles Anciens that will take place in St Petersburg in September. And today we are providing the opportunity to see the collections of fabrics in all their splendour.”
The display in the St George and Picket Halls, belonging to the exhibition “The Hermitage Encyclopaedia of Textiles. History” presents for the first time the Hermitage’s textile collections in all their great variety, from prehistoric examples to 20th-century fabrics, from Antiquity and the Orient to present-day Europe. The Hermitage possesses one of the world’s richest collections of fabrics, carpets, costumes, embroidery and lace. In its diversity, the museum’s textile collection can lay claim to encyclopaedic coverage of both historical periods and geographical areas, where fabrics were produced at any time. The author of this exhibition is Tatyana Nikolayevna Lekhovich, Candidate of Art Studies, senior researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of Western European Applied Art.
In the Armorial Hall, the exhibition “The Hermitage Encyclopaedia of Textiles. Conservation” presents objects whose life has been repeatedly extended thanks to restoration. There are banners and standards, tapestries and decorative embroideries, church vestments, civilian and military clothing, and also memorial articles once worn by Russian rulers. Of great interest is the history of the restoration and conservation of archaeological fabrics. The choice of exhibits for display was determined not so much by their uniqueness and high artistic quality, as by the opportunity to demonstrate clearly how difficult restoration tasks are tackled and how the approach to the conservation of articles itself gradually changed over the past 80 years.
The exhibition curator is Marina Vladimirovna Denisova, head of the Laboratory for the Scientific Restoration of Fabrics and Water-Based Paintings in the State Hermitage’s Department of Scientific Restoration and Conservation.
The exhibitions have been organized with the support of
