Reading Textiles as Text: An Examination of Pre-1750s Survivals at MHS

This project sets the experiences of fashion, consumerism, and consumption within a cosmopolitan Atlantic world that carried the elegant fancies of fashionable London to the gentility of provincial British America. The garments and textiles housed at the MHS offer insights into the ongoing debate over the process of Anglicization in pre-Revolutionary America. Particular attention will be paid to the textiles associated with the Byles and Hancock families in Boston.