776 PIECES OF CLOTH is a project to re-evaluate, re-document and rehouse a collection of textiles that connect Manchester and West Africa through long histories of trade and manufacture, power and resistance. It’s a project that asks fundamental questions about the inherited structures of knowledge and value that underpin the museum, and takes on the challenge of developing culturally appropriate approaches for better understanding of the rich significance of this material. 

 

The collection comprises hand-dyed and printed cloth made across several west African countries and collected by Manchester manufacturers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, alongside an archive of factory-produced textiles made in Manchester for export to western Africa. It has a particular resonance in the context of Platt Hall, a former textile merchant’s house. It embodies aspects of the trade that generated the wealth that built this house. It reflects the working-class history of the neighbourhood which once housed textile workers. And it connects the global diversity and cultural complexity of historic and contemporary communities in the area today.  

 

The collection has been in storage for most of its Gallery life. It has minimal documentation, is unphotographed and poorly housed, all of which make it difficult to access and at risk of damage. The limited information on record reflects the legacies of colonially infused knowledge structures and needs sensitive redress. These conditions stem from the low value the material has been accorded since its original acquisition, and low priority in terms of limited resources of care. But they also work to reinforce a lack of value as the collection remains constrained by problematic knowledge structures and physically inaccessible storage. The 776 Study Group was formed to address some of these challenges. 

  

The Study Group comprises six freelance creatives, academics and activists with a deep passion for West African textiles, alongside conservation, learning, curatorial and collections management staff. Together we are working towards an inclusive methodology and framework for the re-evaluation of a collection that evades fixed definition, held as it is in the complex legacies of historic global trade and power.  

 

Following a six-month programme of initial conversations and exploration, the Study Group received a grant from the University of Manchester’s Simon Industrial Fellowship programme to co-research archives associated with the collection at Manchester Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and The British Museum. This research is outlined in the 776 PIECES OF CLOTH Visual Record and will support how the collection is understood, valued, re-situated and used within Platt Hall. It will also inform critical review and development of our approach to research, documentation, housing, use and development of the wider global textile collections in the future. 

 

776 PIECES OF CLOTH forms part of a programme collective knowledge and research that levered a £38,000 DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund grant for creating a new textile storage and study space in the Hall opening in 2027.