Karen Finch OBE
Welcome to Karen Finch Textiles, a website celebrating the life and career of Karen Finch OBE (1921–2018). Karen was a leading advocate for textile conservation worldwide, transforming the profession through her teaching, workroom practice and writing.
This site is run by Karen’s family as a place for everyone to access Karen’s writings and works, and for Karen’s friends and contemporaries to keep her memory alive. We welcome contributions and discussion.
Who was Karen Finch?
Karen was born in 1921 on a farm in Jutland, Denmark, and trained as a weaver and textile designer at the Kunsthåndværkerskolen in Copenhagen. She met Norman Finch in 1945 and came to England a year later.
In 1975 she founded the Textile Conservation Centre, which became a leading institute for education and research, where pioneering advances were made in the remedial conservation of a whole range of textiles, including tapestries, painted silk banners, upholstered furniture and archaeological textiles.
Karen’s aim that conservation should preserve historical information led to a strong emphasis on technical documentation and preventative care. She believed in a collaborative approach bringing together conservators, curators and scientists in the understanding of textiles as historical documents.
Karen’s textile pursuits were based on a profound interest in historical techniques and the meaning of textiles in daily life.
What’s on the website
This website was launched in 2019, on the first anniversary of Karen’s death. The aim has been to make the website represent the whole of Karen’s life and work, reflecting the exceptional woman that she was, and the profound impact she made on the world of textiles.
The main sections of the site – the Archive, a section on Karen’s Life, a section on her Legacy, and the Blog – are detailed here.
The Archive
Karen left a considerable archive containing: published and unpublished papers, photographs and slides, correspondence, diaries, teaching samples, not to mention creative works, and a classified collection of ephemeral literature on topics that she saw as relevant to textile history and textile conservation. In short, a mass of material that illustrates her distinctive approach to teaching and research.
Work on Karen’s archive, currently stored at the University of Glasgow Archive and at her home in Walthamstow, is ongoing.
The Archive section of the website is where you will find information about the content of the archive, with links to articles and papers, lectures, and conservation projects.
Karen’s Life
The Life section focuses more directly on Karen’s biography. It includes two important Oral Histories – one conducted by the American Institute for Conservation in 1985, and another set of interviews undertaken by the family between 2010-2011 for the Life Journey video produced for Karen’s 90th birthday.
Karen’s Legacy
The Legacy section demonstrates the personal impact Karen had on the textile world, in particular the field of textile conservation. This is also a place for Karen’s “diaspora”, who influenced or were influenced by Karen, including her former conservation students, and subsequent students at the Textile Conservation Centre at Hampton Court and Southampton University, the Centre for Textile Conservation at the University of Glasgow, and now at the Kelvin Centre for Conservation and Cultural Heritage Research, also at the University of Glasgow.
The Blog
The Blog is maintained by Karen’s family and we make every effort to post regularly about matters relating to Karen or the world of textile conservation. We also regularly publish blog posts by guest authors – usually Karen’s friends and contemporaries. If you’d like to write something for the Blog please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
More
The website is continually evolving and there are many other sections beyond those mentioned above. The Galleries, for example, offer an extensive look at Karen’s life and career through photographs. The Bibliography provides a comprehensive overview of all of Karen’s published writings. Finally, we encourage all visitors to share their thoughts throughout the site by using the Comments sections below each post.
Latest blog posts
We make our best efforts to keep the blog regularly updated with posts related to Karen’s life and the world of textile conservation. These are the latest posts.
2 commentsLatest comments
We welcome visitors to share their thoughts below the line on the various articles, lectures or blog posts on the site. These are the latest comments.
Dear Mr Ferguson, It was so interesting to read your comment on the reed article. It adds another dimension to…
I came across a display of reeds in a display at a former linen factory in Dungannon Northern Ireland. The…
Thank you Auntie Ruth for that story which I can supplement. Our son Jacob is also a Sunday’s child and…
I, too, am a Sunday’s child. You will understand that, when you read on and see, that in the end…
Thank you very much Kirstie for those memories. No doubt that Karen considered you to be a friend and a…
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Karen Finch OBE
Karen Finch (OBE, D.Litt, FIIC, FRSA) was a leading advocate for textile conservation worldwide, transforming the profession through her teaching, workroom practice and writing. She founded the Textile Conservation Centre which became a leading institute for education and research, where pioneering advances were made in the remedial conservation of tapestries, painted silk banners, upholstered furniture and archaeological textiles.
Latest lectures
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Latest Features
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