Surface, Textile, and German Material Culture

Bodies, Interiors, and Architecture, 1830-1914
Investigates the intersections between body, textiles, clothing, soft furnishings and architectural surfaces in the German speaking world from the 1830s to the outbreak of the First World War.

This volume explores the intersections between the body, textiles, clothes, soft furnishings and architectural surfaces in the German-speaking world from 1830 to 1914. While the continuum from bodies to clothing to architecture was present in popular culture across Europe and North America, it assumed a particularly influential role within German disciplines such as philosophy, cultural history, art history, linguistics, and hygiene. By bringing these disciplinary discourses into a dialogue with popular conceptions and practices surrounding fashion, fabrics, textile embellishments, and dress, the book offers a narrative of textile materiality that conflated bodies, interiors, and architecture.

From architect Gottfried Semper to cultural historian Jacob von Falke, hygienist Max von Pettenkofer, designer Margarethe von Brauchitsch, and many others discussed in this book, the modern surface was largely conceived in terms of textile materiality. Different facets of this materiality—including textile fibers, tactility, crafting techniques, ornamentation, tailoring, and function—became central to modern art and architectural discourses, shaping debates on topics ranging from style, fashion, gender, and ornament to tectonics, health, mechanization, and abstraction.

Drawing on a wealth of both well-known and unusual primary sources in architectural theory, design criticism, costume histories, art history, hygiene, as well as decorative arts journals, women’s and humor magazines, domestic advice manuals, fabric sample books, letter correspondence, memoirs, travelogues, this longue durée weaves the materiality of textile and dress into the genealogies of modernism.

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