Museum of the Home Set to Host London Textile Month
Fourteen percent of Shoreditch's open space once sat behind the walls of a set of almshouses built in 1714, funded by the legacy of Sir Robert Geffrye. When the London County Council bought the site in 1911, artists and architects were petitioning for exhibition space of their own, and by 1914 the almshouses had become the Geffrye Museum, now known as the Museum of the Home. Today it sits at the heart of Hoxton, one of East London's most significant cultural hotspots, and remains the only museum in the world dedicated to exploring what home means and how it has been lived, through period rooms that run from a 1630s Tudor hall to a loft apartment imagined for 2049.
This September, the museum becomes one of the hosts of Selvedge London Textile Month, running a full programme of its own events alongside the wider festival. From guided tours to protest banners, from Palestinian embroidery to a rug installed in a reimagined 1690s parlour, the month asks what textiles have done to shape domestic life, labour and belonging across four centuries.
Althea McNish, Rubra, 1961. Featured at Museum of the Home.
The tours are led by Curatorial Officer Echo Godfrey, who trained in knitwear and holds a Masters in Textile Conservation. Her Textiles Through Time tour (multiple dates, 11am to 12pm) moves through the period rooms tracing fabric, furnishing and craft from the 1600s onward, while her Introduction to Intarsia workshop (27 September) teaches the colourwork knitting technique through hands-on charting and bobbin work.
Slow stitching runs through several sessions led by embroidery artist Cris Prete, a Diploma student at the Royal School of Needlework. Her Poppet-Inspired Brooch workshop (5 September) draws on dolls in the museum's collection, while her Victorian 'Crazy' Quilt workshop (13 September) reworks a c.1890 patchwork piece from the collections through foundation piecing and embellishment.
Textile heritage becomes political territory in two workshops. The Tatreez Collective, founded by Dina Asfour, teaches the history and stitching of Palestinian embroidery (13 September), while lettering artist and activist Alice Gabb leads a banner-making workshop (12 September) exploring the visual language of trade unions and peace campaigns through appliqué and hand stitching. Behind the scenes, Textile Object Encounters (8 to 12 September) opens the Collections Library for a rare look at pieces including an embroidered Bayeux-inspired panel.
The centrepiece is a new installation Woven Lives in Spitalfields, in the museum's 1690s period room, reimagining the world of a Huguenot family newly settled in Spitalfields. Rug makers Christopher Farr have worked with architect Chris Dyson on a design informed by a fragment of Huguenot silk tapestry, opening 22 September. A closing conversation entitled The Weavers of Spitalfields (30 September) brings Farr's Matthew Bourne, Dyson, Godfrey and Collections Manager Ailsa Hendry together, chaired by Tamsin Blanchard.
Two performance events round out the month. Researcher Vanessa Houlder's talk Rhythms of the Loom (26 September) traces the ballads and work songs of Britain's textile workers, and loomeweight II (26 September), a performance for loom and two voices by Hestor Dart and Patricia Auchterlonie, turns weaving itself into a live act of sound.
Across the whole month, this is a programme that treats textiles as living history rather than museum footnote - work made by hand, sung about, protested with, and passed between generations of makers. Whether you come for a single tour or work your way through the full programme, the Museum of the Home offers a rare chance to trace the thread from a 1690s Huguenot loom to a banner stitched in the present day, and to see how much of what we call home has always been woven, knitted or sewn into being.
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Further Information:
For tickets, please visit the event pages linked throughout this feature, or visit the London Textile Month event page at Museum of the Home.
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Image Credits:
Lead: A period room inside Museum of the Home.
All images as credited in captions and courtesy of Museum of the Home.