The Museum Collections of Craft Teacher Training. Cultural heritage serving education and research

Abstract

Craft science only got its name in the early 1990s. Its field of research combines science, art and technology. The Collections of Craft Teacher Training in the Helsinki University Museum present the link between tradition and modern science. The first school of women’s handicraft in Finland was opened in Helsinki 1881, and four years later the teacher training was started at the school. In 1975 the school was integrated with the University of Helsinki, and today the section of craft science and textiles teacher education has two professorships. The teachers in the school collected and donated textile objects for teaching demonstrations and research. Today the collections comprise some 6,000 objects ranging from adults’ and children’s clothing accessories to textiles made by using various techniques. The oldest of these textiles date from the mid-1800s. In 2003 the Museum Collections of Craft Science were transferred to the Helsinki University Museum. The collections are now taken care of by professional museum staff in close cooperation with craft science lecturers. The lecturers still use the collections in their teaching and research, and theses have been made about museum textiles. The collections are used in teaching designing and making of textiles, costume and textile history, and object-based research to examine crafts skills in different periods, the relationship of such skills to art and fashion as well as the relationship between hand-made and machine-made objects. This collection is, in fact, one of the rare museum collections in the Helsinki University, which still are in educational and scientific use.