We have identified an extensive number of archival sources in libraries and four archives (Siena, Florence, Venice, Copenhagen) as well as printed sources in various archives and collections in Europe and North America. The creation of our core dataset is completed, and it includes:
• 1227 archival inventories of textiles and clothing (with reproductions, transcriptions, data analysis sheets)
• Online database containing 36,664 garment and textile entries (made available for general public in 2022)
• Dataset of 644 printed manuals (including transcription of 1055 historical recipes)
• Qualitative historical evidence (visual and material evidence, documentary sources, literature) that allow us to contextualize our core data and carry out qualitative analysis
This extensive historical data, combined with our pre-existing archival data, ensures effective results and has provided the scientific basis both for our publications as well as for the methodological historical and digital experiments.
In the second and third stages of our research, our goal has been to focus on creating a new methodology by combining our historical data with methods of scientific textile analysis, reconstruction, and ‘hands-on’ experimentation. Merging ‘making’ with ‘knowing’ allows us not only to access historical information in new ways, but it also enables us to make our data visible, and to explore historical technologies that were involved in the production of these objects. To achieve this objective, we have implemented the following research activities:
• Three international scientific and six experiment workshops, organized at University of Padua, Wellcome Institute, University of Uppsala, Aalto University labs and Columbia University, with invited experts.
• Four exhibitions, making the results of our material experimentation, historical findings, and new methodology for public access.
• Training in new methods, including courses in historical textile technologies and six research training sessions with museum conservators.
• Historical garment reconstruction project, in collaboration with School of Historical Dress (London), in order to reconstruct a 17th-century male doublet.
• Citizen science project, with 35 voluntary knitters involved in the reconstruction of 17th-century knitted stockings.
• Historical lace reconstruction project, made in collaboration with the Ratti Textile Centre at the MET, New York.
• Digital animation on early modern tailoring.
• Four scientific textile analyses (fibre and dye), done at Aalto Nanomicroscopy Center and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
• Greenhouse, set up on our university campus where we tested growing our own dye plants.
In order to ensure effective dissemination of our results, we have organised three academic seminars and convened a series of four conference panels around our research at the Renaissance Society of America conference in Canada (2019). We halve also participated in many academic events; given key note lectures and presentations about our research in international conferences, seminars, and internal and external workshops, in total close to hundred. We have also participated in several training sessions. The results of our data collection and experimental work have also been disseminated through five published peer-reviewed open access articles and one monograph. In addition, we have four further open access publications in press, and we are currently preparing the rest of our publications, including a Special Issue, 8 articles/chapters, and an edited volume, published by Manchester University Press. The PI's monograph won the SCSC Bainton Prize for the best book in art history in 2021.
In addition, we have taken an active approach in sharing our research with the general public through our website, blog posts, social media and podcast. In order to communicate the goals, methods and findings for the broader public, we also made a video of our project, which will be published online in 2022.
