| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores the visual representation of Norwegian women’s textile skills
before and after the turn of the twentieth century. It focuses on four forms of visual
culture made between the 1880s, and around 1905: painting, photography, woven
textiles, and the embroidered dress. By asking what textiles can reveal about
Norwegian women’s lives, and the country in which they lived, the thesis considers
what lower and middle-class women’s work with the loom and needle discloses about
women living in rural and urban regions during an age defined by two significant
issues. Firstly, the fight for Norwegian women’s rights; secondly, calls for national
independence from Sweden. To address these questions, the dissertation examines
the construction, circulation, collection, categorisation, and critique of painting and
photography showing embroidered, woven and sewn goods. It also considers the
textile items that women created by hand and by the machine.
By comparing and contrasting the expertise and experiences of women from
poorer farming backgrounds based in inland and coastal areas of Norway, their
working-class counterparts in Kristiania (now Oslo), and women of the bourgeoisie, the
thesis investigates a segment of society which has, hitherto, received little attention
from British art historians. It breaks new ground by analysing textile objects alongside
imagery, and aims to comprehend how traditional and ingrained practical and
decorative techniques mastered by a woman’s hand may have played a critical role in
the modernisation of a country. Whether this was through the cultivation of a new
identity, as much as through the natural evolution of a lifestyle, is considered.
Furthermore, the assessment of ordinary, unremarkable handiwork, alongside prized
textile pieces, is presented as re-evaluating what defined women’s taste, their day-today activities, and their physical contribution within an emergent nation which became
sovereign in 1905. It is suggested that Norwegian women may have been conscious of
using ideologies connected to women’s domestic textile work when furthering the
cause of their own gender, as much as their own country.
A socio-historic approach drives the research. Attention is paid to accessible
and less available, privately and publicly owned primary sources, as well as interviews
and regional field work. Rather than providing a stylistic survey of textiles, a discussion
is advanced that contextualises imagery and item. This method addresses the extent to
which women’s textile-related abilities, both artistic and applied, may have been
necessary for historic and social reasons on a regional, national and international
scale.
Resting on a narrative in which regional and metropolitan women and their
textiles are prominent as subject matter, the dissertation is divided into three parts. The
first provides an introductory overview of the coinciding socio-political, economic,
geographical and cultural circumstances influencing women and country. The second
assesses how rural women made textiles in rural regions, and surveys what was made
for the interior, for market and for the body. The third addresses the experiences of
women who were involved in textile work in Kristiania. For instance, in their capacity as
factory hands, seamstresses and artists. The conclusion serves to show that
metropolitan-based ideologies concerning nationalism and feminism, commercialism
and consumerism, led to rurally-inspired pieces adopting different meanings when their
makers and owners relocated elsewhere. | en |
