THE PASOLD RESEARCH FUND CONFERENCE 2012
NORDISKA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN. 27-29 September, 2012
“Innovation before the Modern, Cloth and Clothing in the Early Modern World”
Jointly organised by the University of Uppsala, Stockholm University,
K.A.Almgren Sidenvaveri & Museum and the Nordiska Museet. In English.
41 speakers with 3 Plenary lectures, introduced by 15 chairmen; mostly from UK and Scandinavia, others from France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and USA.
The lectures were held in the Nordiska Museet with two concurrent sessions split between the lecture theatre and a conference room in a different building. The museum’s restaurant provided delicious lunches and teas and an evening reception by invitation of the K.A.Almgren Silk Mill Museum housed in its original mill building with contemporary machinery, was visited by ferry. These friendly sessions provided the usual entertaining discussions.
Papers were very varied, from dog-skin Maori cloaks to the finest silk ribbons from Italy, Scottish linen processing to Finish sumptuary laws, and all types of textile areas and organisation. Only two of us spoke specifically about knitting but one keynote lecture stimulated discussion of the trunk hose worn by Tudor men. Each ordinary paper was restricted to 25 minutes which restrained those (often PhD students) with a lot to say in a very short time. The plenary lectures were longer and very well presented.
There were problems with the split locations as the conference room, in the stable of a nearby house, was too far away to rush between the papers in each session. It was difficult to cross the double road, negotiate gates, garden and mud between the sessions themselves. Luckily abstracts had been circulated beforehand but several attractive papers were under-supported by this difficult damp walk.
Stockholm has many attractions, sadly there was little time to explore them on this visit but it was an interesting, well organised conference with a truly international flavour giving eye-opening information. I did manage to visit Uppsala to see the Sture clothing with the tiny silk glove which Lise Warburg introduced to us in 2009 as the earliest knitting in Sweden.
Kirstie Buckland