Tara Hamling

Looking at Domestic Textiles: An Eye-Tracking Experiment Analysing Influences on Viewing Behaviour at Owlpen Manor

Decorative textiles were once ubiquitous and important, occupying a significant social and cultural space in the early modern interior, yet their impact upon how individuals engaged with domestic spaces is largely unknown. One way of approaching their impact is through an exploration of how present-day individuals engage visually with them in relation to other objects as they walk around an historic space. This article reports on one such investigation, an eye-tracking study which explored responses to the narrative hangings in Queen Margaret’s Chamber at Owlpen Manor in Gloucestershire. Using eye-tracking equipment, we compared the viewing behaviour of two groups of participants, to whom we gave key information before they entered the room. We found that both the expertise of the viewers and the information provided influenced their viewing behaviour. Our findings highlight the importance of individual understanding and information provided to viewers when engaging with historic spaces, and can inform museum and heritage practice as well as enhancing our comprehension of how viewers engage with such textiles in historic spaces.

Domestic Culture in Early Modern England

Gender relationships are further explored in the next two chapters, which narrate and analyse how motorcycles were important elements in the transformation of gender roles. Chapter six notes how women motorcyclists struggled against the notion that femininity necessitated passivity and dependence. In Germany and elsewhere, the 1920s were a time of sexual liberation, and motorcycles were featured players in that unfolding drama. Yet their role was an ambiguous one. For some women, both married and unmarried, acquiring a motorcycle was an act of personal liberation. However, as noted in the next chapter, for some men motorcycle ownership was a means of ensnaring women into sexual relationships that did not always work to women’s advantage. The Devil’s Wheels is not aimed at readers interested in the technical development of motorcycles, the rise and fall of individual manufacturers, or racetrack exploits. In some places, the author demonstrates a lack of understanding of motorcycle technology, but in fairness it should be noted that she never claims a personal history with motorcycles. Rather, The Devil’s Wheels is based on a thoroughgoing reading of a plethora of books and magazines published during the Weimar era. Sasha Disko has done an admirable job of assembling these materials into a coherent narrative that is as much about modernity in the Weimar Republic as it is about motorcycles.

Ways of Seeing Early Modern Decorative Textiles

Abstract The article introduces and contextualises this special issue on ‘Ways of Seeing Early Modern Decorative Textiles’, which comprises a series of essays that draw on the activities, research findings and insights of an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research network, ‘Ways of Seeing the English Domestic Interior, 1500–1700: The Case of Decorative Textiles’. Critically evaluating the results of the network’s findings, the paper situates them within a broader investigation of the role of decorative textiles in shaping the experience of domestic interiors in the past and present, and explores new ways of reading such objects in the context of the household. It examines the historiography and current range of approaches to the study, interpretation and exhibition of historic textiles, and analyses the insights offered by bringing together different disciplinary and professional perspectives. It argues for the key significance of these textiles for both historical and modern perceptions of the domestic interior and for the importance of collaborative, cross-disciplinary approaches to researching them in order to understand how they functioned in the early modern period and to inform new directions for their display and presentation in the present.

The Fabric of Domestic Life: Rethinking the Humble Painted Cloth

This exhibit is a set of painted cloths in ‘Queen Margaret’s Chamber’ at Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire. They are painted in distemper (a tempera technique where earth pigments are bound with glue size) on 42-inch unbleached canvas-linen strips, with an expansive stylized landscape of trees, foliage, conical hills and white buildings (Fig. 1). Within this landscape setting are figures and animals representing scenes from the biblical story of Joseph (Genesis 37:1–36). Duty stamps on the reverse side are consistent with a date between 1712 and 1719. The cloths were acquired for another of Owlpen’s rooms with similar dimensions but later repositioned in this space, so their current presentation retains a sense of their original form and appearance as expansive wall coverings.