Threads of Feeling; The London Founding Hospital's Textile Tokens, 1740-1770 by John Styles - 2013

England: Foundling Museum, 2013. softcover. very good. Catalogue from an exhibition and historical study of eighteenth century textiles of "ordinary people" from the archives of the Foundling Museum. The author and historian, John Styles tells the reader that"very few pieces of eighteenth-century clothing have survived that can be identified with any condifence as having belonged to the poor. Ordinary people's clothes were worn and re-wron by a succession of owners until they fell into rags, or were cut up and reused for quilts, baby clothes and the like". Styles discovered, in the Foundling Museums archives, 5,000 small textile items dating from the middle decades of the eighteenth century, pinned to the registration documents that recorded the entry of each baby to the Hospital. The fabrics were a means of identifying the child with its mother. This small and charming 70 page books shows many plates of the samples as well as documents the history of the textiles and the museum.