The European Textile Forum is a small conference about historical textile techniques, with a strong focus on the crafts aspects and practical work. Our aim is to connect practical and theoretical aspects of textile research: Craftspeople and archaeotechnicians profit by learning about new textile finds and detailed presentations of them, while archaeologists, conservators, historians and other researchers can get valuable input about the craft background of the pieces they work on, how they are made, and the limits and possibilities of the textile techniques employed.
The conference in its current format runs for one week, with Monday for arrival, setup and preparation for tools or experiments that need some preparation time, and Sunday as departure day with the option to stay until Monday. From Tuesday to Saturday, we aim for a conference programme with plenty of time for discussion and in-depth exploration of topics. Our usual format for the programme is a presentation, followed by a demonstration, a workshop, or a round-table discussion that offers the opportunity to discuss and explore technical aspects in detail. This includes the possibility to do tests and reconstruction trials with several pairs of hands and eyes right at the conference venue.
This format is unique and has already proven to be enormously helpful, especially if an object confronts you with a technique that you have no practical experience with yourself. Our venue this year is once more the Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology in Mayen, Germany. Our focus topic will be "Knots in All Their Aspects - Knots that hide, knots that show, knots that stay, knots that go". This is a broad topic that ranges from knots used to hold together textile tools to temporary knots such as ties for tie-dyeing to knots that form the textile as in nalbinding or the various forms of netting. The Forum is planned to take place November 2 to 8, 2026.
As the Forum is an international event, our conference language will be English. Talks outside of the focus topic are just as welcome. Due to the format and space restrictions, we are a small event, with only up to about 18 participants. The conference fee covers full board (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) with food, tea, coffee and water for the whole week. Our venue also provides beds in shared rooms. With the European Textile Forum, we want to give academics and craftspeople working with historical textile techniques a place and opportunity to meet with each other. This is the perfect surrounding and the perfect place to solve technical questions regarding your textile and to get input from others working on similar pieces - both on the academic and on the craft side.
We are currently working on the last logistics to prepare for the event. Please stay tuned for the Call for Papers to come soon (or subscribe to the newsletter to keep informed not only about this, but also about other historical textile-related events).