Online archive of TEXTIL FORUM magazines
When by the end of 2013, Dietmar Laue and I, stopped publishing the magazine Textile Forum, we wrote: “a positive consequence of our magazine issues published from 1982 to date is that they read like the diary of a generation of textile and clothing designers, their lecturers and the guardians of our textile heritage”.
Until shortly the magazines were still available as back issues which now is no longer possible. But there is a new possibility to read the magazines: The 126 German and the 80 English issues are now digitized by the Textile Centre Haslach, headed by Christine Leitner and Andreas Selzer, the new organizers of the European Textile Network (https://member.etn-net.org/textileforum-magazines ). The magazines are now available as an online archive, where not only each single magazine can be read in full length in both languages, but all the magazines together can also be searched for special keywords, or artists names, textile techniques and so on. For example if you enter the keyword “Indigo” you will find nearly one hundred articles and notes we have published on that subject, between 1982 and 2013.
This digitizing and entering keywords was a huge amount of work and therefor it will be only available to ETN members as a special advantage of being a member. As the membership fee for one year is only 58 Euro per year, I do hope that students and researchers will become members in order to have access to this archive (https://etn-net.org/become-a-member.html)
Looking back, I am myself surprised how much information we have been able to collect and publish on textile art, craft and design; textile heritage and textile education. We did focus on the professionals from the different fields and their interests, that is why you will not find any “do it yourself” instructions, nor cooking receipts nor pet photos. (we once had our cat Rosa on a title more or less by accident- the issue was about books and Rosa kept sitting on the books to be photographed- and thereupon became some critical comments from readers).
If you are unsure if there are any articles of interest for your area of research, you can enter your subject and get the results from all the magazines, even without being a member! Availabe for full reading in that case is only the last issue number 4/ 2013 on Indigo resist printing, the issue Jack Lenor Larsen liked so much that he wrote us a kind letter, as he had done several times in the past . Apparently we sheared ideas about the role of craft in a modern society.
Beatrijs Sterk, Hannover, 30 April 2020
