Right when I walked into the Textile Museum the first thing that caught my eye was the huge bale of cotton that had a rope creeping through the ceiling above it. Some people might say I embarrassed myself when I tried to pull it, as it reached nearly one inch off the ground. The thing that was fascinating about the Textile Museum was that as you turned each corner to enter a new exhibit it felt like you were moving forward a few decades each time. The first exhibit began with what a persons living room for the 1800's looked like, along with an example of an apprentice shop, where they would train young men and women to acquire a skill. As I turned right down a thin hallway, I found myself inside of a replica general store from the 1800's. It was pretty unique seeing what people used to go to the store for then compared to what we go to the store for now.
Exiting the general store exhibit I walked a few decades further into the era known as the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution went directly against Karl Marx's ideas of a classless society. Mill owners and overseers struck it rich while rarely stepping foot in the mills. Mill workers on the other hand, worked awful hours, in grim conditions for a very low wage. Despite Marx's ideology sounding pleasant for many people, it simply would not work in the industrial era. Nobody would want to do harder jobs for the same wage as people who do simple meaningless tasks.
As I began walking through the Industrial Revolution exhibit, I vividly remember a blurry photo of the America's first mill of the Industrial Revolution in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It's hard to believe that all of this history happened within a one hour radius from my house. Moving further through the Industrial Revolution exhibit Lowell started to take a major role. Lowell is infamous for having three quarters of the mill workers population being female and even more infamous for the conditions they had to work in and the wages they were paid. Surprisingly these women still managed to find time to write and publish several works of literature, and magazines. There was also a strike advertisement being shown in the exhibit to get people to stop working. The coolest part of this exhibit I thought was the bell that was created by Paul Revere. You never really think about how he was a skilled blacksmith, because of the famous midnight ride he went on when the British tried to take over America in the 1700's. We truly live in the most historical state in America. 
After I traveled through the Industrial Revolution era I arrived on the second floor of the museum. The whole left wing of the second floor was dedicated to many different varieties of beautiful clothes and fabrics. It really emphasized the amount of money invested into the textile trade, and why these mills were so successful in generating a powerful economy. The demand for beautiful clothes, fabrics, and dresses were greater than ever before with new high powered machines. Before having beautiful pieces of textile was a privilege, but now since an abundance can be made in such a short time everyone can buy them. This allowed for a larger population of people to pump money back into the economy. 
Walking further through the second floor you walk into a modernized textile room that shows new textile technologies used in the world we live in today. For instance, on display was the 2004 USA Women's Olympic Team swimsuit from Athens, Greece. They thinness, lightweight, and shape of the swimsuit made it possible for the swimmers to shave at least a fraction of a second off of their finishing time, and in that sport a fraction of a second is huge. Another piece of textile I thought was interesting was the difference between a 1940's raincoat, and the raincoats we use today. In the 1940's raincoats would repel water by dipping the cotton in oil and creating something known as oilcloth. Nowadays rain coats are either made of nylon, polyester, and microfibers.
Approaching the last room in the museum is where I found my personal two favorite segments of the museum. Of course one was the baseball piece, which showed how textiles were used to make the inside of a baseball. I honestly didn't know that the reason they used wool was because when the ball hits the bat, the ball becomes deformed and wraps around the bat, but the make-up of wool causes the ball to reform to its normal spherical shape and able to use again. I guess I never hit the ball hard enough to notice. My other favorite piece was the video piece right outside of the plane. It was a quick five minute movie about what was going on in the textile mills of Lowell during World War II. I remember one women mentioning how whenever a new wave of immigrants arrived they always stuck together. For instance, the Irish stuck together, the French Canadian stuck together, the Portuguese and so on. Then all of a sudden when the war broke out and everybody was the same, they were American. All of the women in the mills united and worked together to make parachutes for the paratroopers. She then explained how important it was that they got inch of the parachute right with no holes, and how they had to make the seams so tight that they would cut someone if they tried to rip it with their bare hands. They were dealing with someone's life so everything had to be right.So that concludes my trip to the Lowell Textile Museum, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially with my father. It's pretty cool to see how cities surrounding my own came about and established themselves throughout time. Seeing where we've been and where we are now is amazing. It really gets you thinking about how technology will continue to advance in the future, and what will come of it. I would without a doubt come back sometime by the end of the year to see what new exhibits and features the Textile Museum added on.
Jake,
ReplyDeleteA phenomenal write-up. There was some solid writing in there. 10/10