Tracing Patterns Foundation

Preserving
Documenting 
Sharing Knowledge 
of the Textile Arts

Tracing Patterns Foundation is a community of international scholars, educators, and textile makers who contribute toward building a body of research on traditional practices related to fiber and textiles around the world.

Tracing Patterns Foundation
Berkeley, California 
USA

Museums for the 21st Century is a series of professional development workshops and webinars that focus on three critical activities in museums and heritage centers: conservation, curatorial and research, and education. The program brings together scholars with the aim of helping provincial museums in Indonesia develop their future directions.

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The Collection

The Tracing Patterns Collection represents gifts from our patrons. Our collection aims to build knowledge of traditional textiles and their technique through material cultures. Objects that we collect tell the stories about global cross-cultural influences. They also exemplify the local practices, uses, and values held by the indigenous groups who make them. We use these objects primarily for teaching and research purposes. We incorporate them into lectures and demonstrations, and we use them to create educational content to inspire people to learn more about textiles. In addition, we are donating and loaning some of these materials to assist other educational institutions outside of the United States to build teaching collections.

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Fiber, Loom and Technique Journal

The Fiber, Loom and Technique Journal (FLT) is an online journal that publishes peer-reviewed papers about textiles and fiber technologies, from historical, archaeological, and ethnographic studies. It covers loom and non-loom techniques, and woven and non-woven materials, including basketry and bark cloth. It encompasses a global scope that is not restricted by geography and is aimed at academics as well as laypeople with an interest in textiles.

The journal is open-access, and there are no publication fees. 

Submissions are welcome!

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The O.W. (Bud) Hampton Archive

In December 2020, we received a large gift of Papua materials from the Hampton Family, collected by Dr. O. W. Hampton in the Highlands of Papua, Indonesia, over an 18-year period (1982-1999).

The gift comprises approximately 1000 artifacts from daily and ritual lives, including stone tools and fiber materials. In addition, there are more than 20,000 color slides, 200 sounds recordings on cassette tape made in the field, and meticulous research notes.

Today we are cataloging and conserving the collection for future generations, and we are trying to find a permanent home for it…

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The Annual Report