About

Connecting Threads is a collaborative digital history project dedicated to amplifying the contributions of Indian weavers and African Caribbean consumers to global histories of dress.

Drawing on the work of an interdisciplinary team of researchers, the project has re-examined the history of the Madras handkerchief, an internationally popular dress accessory made of brightly coloured checked cotton.

The Connecting Threads website has three main components: a digital exhibition, a database, and lesson plans. The exhibition uses Connecting Threads research to explore the influence of Madras handkerchiefs on 18th and 19th century dress. The story begins with the origins of Madras in South India before exploring Madras fashions in the Greater Caribbean, and the impact of those fashions in Europe and beyond. The database includes object and archival records we have examined from 2022-2024. And the five lesson plans provide guidance to educators who want to make use of this project and associated research materials in their classrooms.

Project Partners

  • Victoria & Albert Museum
  • The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum
  • University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections
  • Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
  • Louisiana State Museums

Ethics Statement

Connecting Threads is committed to exploring the contributions of people of colour to global fashion histories through the study of Madras textiles. In particular we focus on the skills of textile artisans in southern India and the creativity of consumers of African descent in the Greater Caribbean. In so doing, we have begun to explore a south-to-south connection that has been largely ignored in global histories. Through the digital exhibition, database, and lesson plans, this project highlights textiles and dress styles that have also been overlooked in fashion histories.

Thus far research for the project has relied on colonial archives and collections. We are aware of the limitations of such repositories. In particular, the textual documents and visual images we have discovered and used reflect the biases of the sources’ authors and creators. Many of the sources are products of colonial systems of power and contain dehumanising language with regards to the people who made and wore Madras textiles. We have tried our best to not amplify this language while still being attentive to the violent and unjust history of colonial regimes. At the same time, we also want to provide the public with uncensored reality of these records, so we have transcribed excerpts from the original documents as they appear in the documents.

Textile terminologies along with place names are fluid in the time periods included in the project. We have standardised some of these, especially place names, but this is a work in progress. We are also continuing to revise the materials, particularly in the database, and will continue to do so in the next phase of the project in 2025–2026 so please be aware that the database might have human errors. We are working on rectifying these. If there is an egregious error, please let us know.

This project has been funded since 2022 with multiple grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in the US. Our website and data is hosted at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

A significant part of our mission is also to make our historical research and digital humanities methodology fully open access. To this end, in addition to making all our sources, research, and interpretation accessiblem, we are also making our technology replicable and accessible. While we are working on a tech repository, we are offering the following experimentations with API for those who want to take a peek:
https://observablehq.com/@hepplerj/working-with-the-v-a-api
https://observablehq.com/@hepplerj/cooper-hewitt-api

Contact Us

If you have questions or have corrections and other feedback, please email Dr. Deepthi Murali at dmurali2@gmu.edu

How to Cite this Project

For Exhibition Pages & general citation: "Connecting Threads: Fashioning Madras in India and the Caribbean Exhibition" in Connecting Threads, www.connectingthreads.co.uk [accessed October 11, 2024].

For Database: "Database" in Connecting Threads, www.connectingthreads.co.uk/database/ [accessed October 11, 2024].

For Lesson Plans: "Lesson Plans" in Connecting Threads, www.connectingthreads.co.uk/lessons/ [accessed October 11, 2024].

Project Team

Acknowledgments