Textile Hive was founded to engage and preserve the rich history, intricate techniques, and stunning visual beauty of the Andrea Aranow Textile Design Collection. Comprised of over 40,000 textiles spanning fifty countries, Textile Hive enables a wider conversation around textiles globally through immersive physical and digital experiences.
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Comprised of over 40,000 textiles spanning fifty countries, the collection was assembled by renowned fashion designer and textile scholar Andrea Aranow, and for more than twenty years served as a vital source of inspiration for fashion and interior designers globally.
“I've always enjoyed textiles. I am entranced by their colors and patterns, love their touch and plasticity. The stories of these fabrics make them even richer.”
Andrea Aranow has created fashion and studied textiles since the late 1960’s, receiving a degree in cultural history from Brown University in 1967. She then went to New York to open Dakota Transit, a custom leather and snakeskin apparel shop in the East Village. In 1973 Aranow left New York to live in the mountains of Peru for five years, and began collecting pieces for her textile library of living cultures. From Peru, Aranow relocated her family to London, where the British Museum took interest in a 400-piece part of the collection she had compiled in South America. From London, Aranow traveled to Asia, spending years in outlying districts of China and Japan. Andrea’s full story including her biography can be found here.
“This project demonstrates the bright future for the Andrea Aranow Textile Design Collection as an empowering platform and cultural material both in person and online. Throughout the project we strived to seamlessly combine the physical, digital, and contextual aspects of the collection. The potential for this unique digitized archive to be used and expanded upon in an educational setting is massive, creating exciting new possibilities for learning and exploration for future generations.”
In 2009 the collection was moved to Portland, Oregon by Caleb Sayan to digitize the contents of the Andrea Aranow Textile Design Collection so that it might be utilized by a wider audience. With the help of a talented and diverse team the project aimed to redefine how collections of cultural material could be accessed and utilized in the digital age.
The ultimate goal for the project was to find a permanent home for the physical and digital collection with an educational institution, cultural organization, or other partnership to ensure that the collection be fully utilized, built upon, and preserved for future generations.
Each item in the collection was captured in high resolution and catalogued using an in depth, 2,300 term custom hierarchical taxonomy describing objective information and visual characteristics of each piece. An innovative and highly visual interface was then designed and developed for the collection as a web application featuring a custom database and integrated knowledge base.
