Summary Collection plan 2014-2018 Highlights of the museum collection

Introduction Housed in a very fine former industrial building in Ghent, the MIAT museum brings industrial heritage to life by means of exhibitions, workshops, film Sundays, matinées and soirées. Industry, labour and textiles are seamlessly interwoven. The collection plan is a manual for museum staff members, lenders, borrowers, sponsors, other heritage institutions and the wider cultural heritage community, which explains how the MIAT puts its collection together and uses it to fulfil its mission. This document is a summary of the detailed collection plan. It is intended as a clear and concise introduction to the MIAT’s diverse collection. It provides an overview of the most important parts of the subcollections within the current collecting policy. It explains how those sub-collections came about and their current and future position within the policy. The collection plan ties in with the museum’s mission, as described in the general policy plan. •

The MIAT is the reference museum on industry, labour and textiles and the contact point for tangible and intangible industrial heritage in Flanders.

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The past, present and future all have a place here. The MIAT FACTory knowledge centre bridges the gap between the scientific collection and the wider (inter)national heritage community.

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The MIAT shares its passion for industrial heritage, both inside and outside the museum walls, and increases the general public’s admiration and concern for this extraordinary heritage and its love and appreciation of it.

Collection history The MIAT is the pioneer of Flemish Industrial Archaeology. The museum was founded in 1977 in a bid to safeguard the future of a number of machines from the first industrial revolution. Given the importance of the textile industry for Ghent and the surrounding area, the MIAT concentrated on that branch of industry when building its collection between1977 and 1989. In the 1990s the museum widened its focus and also started looking at the material culture of the industrial society. That meant building its collection according to objects rather than themes. Until then most of the museum’s collecting had been done passively, i.e. by accumulating items gifted to the museum rather than actively going looking for items missing from the collection. Thirty-five years of ‘passive’ collecting have resulted in more than 30,000 objects and 37 sub-collections. What follows provides an introduction to the MIAT’s current collecting policy. The museum is still in consultation with the heritage sector on a number of other sub-collections. For more information about this, you may like to consult the detailed collection plan.

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An active collecting policy based on the industrial chain These days the MIAT’s collecting policy is very much an active one. The museum tries to fill gaps in its existing collection by means of specific acquisitions and it seeks out collection areas not covered by other players in the heritage field. It implements what in Dutch is dubbed a ‘SLIM’ (CLEVER) collecting policy. This acronym stands for: • • • •

Sector consultation and cooperation Lively and accessible Innovative, intangible and international Mobility and multicultural

The industrial chain is the guiding principle behind the MIAT’s current collecting policy. The museum wants to be able to answer the following questions for each sub-collection: INDUSTRIAL CHAIN Producer

Who are the producers?

Production process

What are the raw materials? Which machines are used? How is the product made? What are the working conditions like?

Product

What is the end-product?

Distribution

How does it reach the marketplace?

Consumer

What does the consumer think of it?

Last but not least, the collection should provide an answer to the question of how industry impacts on society. The MIAT pursues a contemporary and future-oriented collecting policy. It links up with modern-day industries, closely following the latest developments. In so doing it asks these three questions: • • •

What was it like then? What is it like now? What will it be like in the future?

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What does the MIAT collect today and what will it collect in the future? The MIAT’s most important collections are still those relating to textiles and printing. These collections contain items that are unique on a national and international level. The collecting policy extends to the consumer society, including Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and marketing. The MIAT also endeavours to represent the tertiary sector which covers the service-producing industries or the administration which supports industry.

Textiles The MIAT has its origins in the textile collection. It is its largest and most important sub-collection and includes two showpieces (which feature on the Flemish Community’s Masterpiece Decree list), namely the eighteenth-century twiner and the nineteenth-century Mule Jenny. The textile collection traces the production of textiles, from raw material to finished product. Consequently, the collection is arranged according to the industrial chain sequence. Given the international character of the industrial textile heritage, the MIAT plans to put even more emphasis on this international aspect in the future. Raw materials The MIAT has a bank of natural and artificial raw materials. Particular attention is drawn to ecological aspects, like recycling and the cradle to cradle products programme. Spinning machines A small collection of spinning wheels is used for demonstrations to help visitors visualize the principle of spinning. The spinning collection consists of a cotton spinning machine and a flax spinning machine, but the pièce de résistance is the Mule Jenny (c18), a semi-automatic spinning machine which has been on the Flemish Community’s Masterpieces list since 2010. There are only two other working examples in the world. The other machines in the collection illustrate the complete production process, from fluff to thread. Volunteers demonstrate the industrial looms on an almost daily basis. The MIAT has a near-complete production unit for flax spinning, apart from the card. The showpiece here is the twiner or the oldest surviving flax twining machine with reel in north-west Europe. It was added to the Masterpieces list in 2010. At the MIAT flax spinning is only shown statically. Weaving machines The looms in the collection span the period from the first half of the eighteenth century up to and including the first half of the twentieth century. The wooden passementerie or braiding looms, which belonged to purveyor to the royal court ‘Passementerie DeBacker’, are exceptional, as are the large looms for weaving interior textiles. All the looms are shuttle looms. Gripper and air-jet techniques are not represented. Textile finishing This covers the colouring, dying, bleaching, printing and pressing of textiles. The machines used in this stage of the process are often large and messy, so only suitable for showing passively in a museum context. The collection contains pilot machines, a velvet press (c19), a glazing press and a fragment of an open-end indigo dying machine. The different processes are illustrated by means of a large collection of samples. Textile research The instruments in this collection derive from laboratories or research departments of textile factories. They are used to carry out daily quality control tests on the products and include regularimeters, yarn weighers, torsionmeters, roltex and tensiometers. Several of the instruments were made by Etbl. M. Defraine, the only known Belgian manufacturer. 4

Technical textile as end product In building this collection the museum endeavours to keep abreast of developments in the textile industry. Technical textiles include textiles for the agricultural, fishing, construction, defence and medical industries. The MIAT concentrates on new processes and representative examples/end products. Special attention is paid to technical textiles used in industrial and protective clothing/uniforms and to the link with the raw materials used in the manufacture of technical textiles. Clothing textiles The MIAT acquired a small clothing collection from various workshops, including a sewing atelier, corsetmaker’s, milliner’s and glover’s. The museum’s prime concern here is to document the production techniques by putting together a sample card of the end product. Unlike the fashion museums, the emphasis at the MIAT is on ordinary garments worn by the man in the street or workers. The working clothes/uniforms section presents an aspect of working conditions in industry, but it also establishes a link with the technical textiles sub-collection.

Printing works The printing collection is the MIAT’s largest sub-collection after textiles. It comprises printing and typesetting machines. The wooden hand-presses dating from the early-nineteenth century are of international importance, for it is believed that fewer than 70 have survived worldwide. The museum also has fascinating examples of nineteenth and twentieth-century lithography, cylinder and platen presses, most made in Belgium. It is building a collection of printable material with international potential and so is actively looking for wooden and lead letters of various bodies. Linking up with the marketing/advertising collection, the MIAT collects printing blocks and lithographic stones with original advertising matter. With its collection of typesetting machines (Intertyp, Linotype, Monotyp and Ludow) the MIAT has a mechanized composing room in operation. The strength of this sub-collection is its technical cohesion and completeness and the fact that it includes exceptional pieces, both on a national and international level.

The consumer society and its Fast Moving Consumer Goods These products characterize the mass production and consumption that are synonymous with the industrial society. Because they have a short lifespan, are non-durable and lack aesthetic and residual value, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) usually fall outside the remit of the ‘classic’ museum. Hence the scarcity of such items. The sub-collections which belong to this cluster are domestic appliances (small electrical, white goods) and household products and products relating to personal hygiene and well-being. Marketing and advertising and the packaging industry are also part of it. Domestic appliances and products This sub-collection illustrates the mechanization of domestic chores and is subdivided according to the purpose the item serves in the home, e.g. bathroom and kitchen requisites, cleaning and household appliances, lighting and heating. The museum’s preference is for Belgian makes with the emphasis more on technical improvements to the products than on their aesthetics. Personal hygiene and well-being This sub-collection comprises products, tools and machines which contribute to our personal hygiene and wellbeing. It includes baby, hair and oral hygiene products, soap and beauty products, sanitary towels, incontinence products and sauna and massage appliances. They all fall outside the medical and professional context. Fitness and sports equipment also falls outside this collection area.

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Marketing and advertising Communication between producer and consumer is an important link in the industrial chain. Advertising is one way of reaching out to potential customers. Catalogues, prospectuses, telephone directories, pricelists, calendars and diaries are very valuable when it comes to studying the industrial society. The MIAT actively collects publicity in all its forms, including signboards, posters, radio spots, moving images, digital advertising and advertising gadgets. The MIAT does not collect marketing and advertising material in which other heritage institutions have specific expertise. Packaging and the packaging industry The museum attaches importance to original packaging when acquiring new items for its collection. This applies both to food and non-food packaging. This sub-collection covers the technical aspects of packaging. Think of the materials and technologies used, conservation requirements, and shape requirements for transportation. Marketing and branding and packaging’s aesthetic qualities also play a role. In the future sustainability and ecology will be an important aspect of this sub-collection.

The tertiary sector: administration This cluster relates to administration, the tertiary or service sector, which supports industry. It covers office equipment and supplies and telecommunications, audio and video. Office equipment and supplies This sub-collection comprises all the products developed since the beginning of the eighteenth century to facilitate administrative tasks and includes requisites for writing and filing, making copies and bookkeeping. The MIAT endeavours to document the technical evolution in this sector. It also looks at the history of the computer. Telecommunications, audio and video This sub-collection presents an overview of all the telecommunication systems (semaphore, telegraph, telex machine, telephone, radio and television, pager and Google Glass) developed since the eighteenth century. Here the museum’s collecting policy is geared towards continuing the chronology of existing exhibits. An appeal to the public enabled the museum to acquire the first generation of mobile phones, as well as two public telephone booths.

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