Textildruckmuseum Mittelweiherburg von Aussen

Textile Printing Museum Mittelweiherburg

Art and culture, Museum

Address: Mittelweiherburg 3

6971 Hard

Austria
Phone number: +43 5574 697629
Email address: textildruckmuseum@hard.at
Homepage: www.hard.at/de/textildruckmuseum-mittelweiherburg

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Description & Infos

The Mittelweiherburg is Vorarlbergs only moated castle.

Spread over three floors, the museum is as full of chequered history as a richly patterned blanket. It covers the entire period from the opening of the earliest cotton factory to the cessation of textile manufacture; the entrepreneurial personalities and strike leaders; the flourishing skilled handicrafts; the rise and fall of the textile industry; to the building’s final re-emergence – like Sleeping Beauty - from its relapsed dilapidated state and its rebirth as Vorarlberg’s only textile museum.

This is a world of fine designs and craftsmen working under pressure; of the importance of the village stream, skilled handicrafts and precious fabrics. Mould engravers displaying meticulous and laborious manual dexterity produced print modules for the designs. The industry’s heyday saw many millions of metres of fabric being printed for factory bosses Jenny and Schindler: valuable commodities in Turkish red with splendid patterns. The village was characterised by factory chimneys and housing estates for the workers. Inextricably linked to the much sought-after fabric was child labour, extreme poverty and enormous wealth.