Our museum houses one of the world’s most significant textile study collections ever assembled. Nearly 4,000 fragments from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas offer insights into human creativity from antiquity to the present. Cornerstones of the collection are fragments from Japan, China, pre-Columbian Peru, and 16th- to 18th-century Europe. Textile Traces represents a lifetime of collecting by business leader and philanthropist Lloyd Cotsen (1929–2017).
Yoshiki Hishinuma and Junichi Arai, Yuragi, Japan, 1994, T-2338
Textile fragment, China, Ming dynasty, 15th century, T-2682
Textile fragment, Japan, late Edo period, 1800–1850, T-0699
Box, England, c. 1650, T-1084a-c
Textile fragment, Peru, south coast, c. 750–900, T-1132
Furnishing fragment, Greece, Naxos, 17th–18th century, T-1155
Robe, probably for a doll or an infant, Chilkat style, Alaska or British Columbia, northwest coast, 19th century, T-1798
Probably S. Nazarevich for the Ivano-Voznesensk
factories, textile design, Moscow, early 20th century, T-2102.068b
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Learn more about the artworks featured on this page and other examples from our collections.