THREADS OF HISTORY PROJECT 2021

We are thrilled to receive a City of Kingston Heritage grant to support the project “Threads of History through the Limestone City.” Kingston has long been a site of textile labour and innovation. The building known today as the Woolen Mill was once home to the Kingston Cotton Manufacturing Company, parachute fibres were produced here during World War II, and most recently dozens of makers donated their time to create fabric masks for the coronavirus pandemic.

Kingston is also home to a growing number of fibre arts groups, where experienced makers pass on knowledge and skills, as well as treasured objects, to new audiences. However, to date, there has been no formal accounting of these groups’ contributions to the Kingston community.

Our project aims to explore this “quiet history” by collecting the oral histories of Kingston’s fibre artists, photographing and cataloguing the objects and records they have produced, and making this material accessible online to the public through a digital archive and series of online exhibitions.

 

Check out the Threads of History online exhibition  here.