Soft Cultural Heritage

The proposed project departs from an inventory of Swedish Textile Folk Art, carried out by Lilli Zickerman (1858-1949). The inventory was carried out 1914-1931 and resulted in 24,000 photographs, films, manuscripts and one published book. The photographs and manuscripts are archived in the Nordic Museum.

Part of it has been digitised and published online, but already in the inventory stage, dissemination was part of the plan. In this project we use Zickerman’s work in all its material aspects but also its ongoing effects. The inventory, despite being well known and widely distributed, has not been subjected to critical research.

We believe this to be in line with how female archive creators in the cultural heritage field have been overlooked by academic researchers.

The inventory’s focus on textile arts and crafts was then, and is now, crucial for the formation of a cultural sphere created by and for female practitioners. With an intersectional perspective, we examine the origin, implementation, content, form and effects of the inventory as examples of how gender, ethnicity and class are continually being made.

This contributes to an understanding of how inventories of the early 20th century are still used by museums and in popular history to confirm or perhaps refute normative notions of “the old rural society” of the past. “Soft Cultural Heritage” recontextualizes women pioneers in/on the textile field and points to ways to keep heritage flexible.