About Us
Our Mission Statement:
The ‘Threads of Life’ online exhibition explores the significance of linen in ancient Egyptian life and culture. This textile shaped everyday life - through agriculture, the economy, dress, and textile-making practices - and in death, through its use in mummification and afterlife rituals. Utilizing object analysis, our team investigates how these linen artefacts reflect these themes and demonstrate the methods used to preserve them for thousands of years. This online exhibition platform allows us to navigate the practical challenges of theoretically handling these objects for exhibition while striving to not further separate these objects from their cultural contexts and country of origin.
The majority of the objects featured are housed in three major institutions: the British Museum, the Petrie Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through these institutions, we investigate the ethical and historical implications of Western Eygptoloy, including the complex and controversial history of how these objects were removed from Egypt. We understand that featuring these objects and using the research done by Western curators creates limitations in our work, which may not fully represent their cultural origins.
By highlighting the cultural significance and practical uses of linen, we hope to inspire our audience to reflect on their own relationship with textiles. We aim to provoke thoughtful conversation about modern society’s disconnection from textiles and to renew appreciation for sustainable, natural materials that are meaningful and capable of fostering deeper connections.
The ‘Threads of Life’ exhibition was created by a group of Fashion History and Theory students at Central Saint Martins in London. For our final year group project, we were tasked with creating a holistic portrait on a flax culture of our choice to explore the multiple ways in which flax and the textile it produces, linen, has been able to reach into and shape fashion, society, environment, place, and lives at a particular moment in time.