Material Memory: World Textiles from the Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum and Gerhardt Knodel
June 17 - December 30, 2007

Drawing from Cranbrook Art Museum's collection of historic textiles and the collection of Gerhardt Knodel, this exhibition includes works that range in date from the first to the late nineteenth century, and come from every corner of the world-from the tropical islands of the South Pacific, the mountains of India, the deserts of Egypt, and the moors of England. The textiles on view, many of them fragments, have been used in Catholic church services in Renaissance Italy, have served as burial shrouds in pre-Conquest Peru, and have clothed the wealthy and adorned their houses in pre-Revolutionary France. Knodel presented many of these textiles in his lectures on fabric history at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where they influenced many of contemporary fiber artists whose work is included in the Hot House exhibition.