The Interpretation of Surface: Boundaries, Systems and Their Transgression in Clothing and Domestic Textiles, c. 1880-1939

This article examines the surface qualities of textile objects in the 1880 to 1939 period, analyzing representations and descriptions of both highly finished and maintained textile surfaces, and degraded and ill-maintained garments. It is argued that the finishing techniques applied in manufacture were carefully replicated in domestic processes, and that qualities of surface and finish in textiles were important both materially and symbolically in the stratified social systems of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Theoretical insights from Julia Kristeva and Mary Douglas are used to understand the meanings of textile objects in use and wear, in their relationship to the bodies that wore them, and in the processes of maintenance to which they were subjected.

This paper has been reprinted in Catherine Harper (ed.), Textiles: critical and primary sources, Bloomsbury, London, 2012