Today I was treated with a personal tour of Ancient Coptic textiles from Shippensburg University’s very own collection from the Fashion Archives and Museum. Undergraduate intern Steph Craven has developed a focus on textile analysis and restoration, and brought out four boxes of these sumptuous embroidered fragments from Egypt’s earliest Christian communities for me to gape at/study. As Director Karin Bohleke discussed with us, the dating of these pieces is very tricky without chemical analysis, and so these articles could have come from the 2nd through the 9th centuries CE. However, some of the motifs are clearly Christian, which makes the dating more likely after the 300s. For instance, the upper right-hand corner depicts priests holding bells in an asymmetrical position, a fact that Dr. Bohleke identified, because I couldn’t have guessed what the pattern was on my own.
Steph Craven talked with me about the potential sources of dyes for the various reds, yellows, and blues, identified various animals on the embroideries, and spoke with me about the common practice from this era of weaving using linen and wool (one for the warp and the other for the weft).
The Fashion Archives is really a unique source of research and historical preservation that the university provides.
