The European Collections
The Museum's collections contain well over two hundred items of European costume and textiles. Their origins range from Britain to Eastern Europe and from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia and Arctic Greenland. Clothing from the British Isles includes an English shepherd's smock from the Folklore Society's nineteenth century collections. From Arctic Europe, there are Inuit fur and skin garments from Greenland, including those donated by the British Arctic Air Route Expedition in 1931. Sámi material from Sápmi in Northern Scandinavia forms an outstanding area of the collection - nineteenth century clothing collected by anthropologist Ethel Lindgren is complemented by a complete Sámi outfit commissioned by Sharon Webb during doctoral field research in 1999. Sir Henry Bulwer's collection of nineteenth century garments from Cyprus is unique in Britain. In 1991, an elaborate boy's circumcision outfit from Turkey was collected by Cathy Alexander. The Eastern European collections include a complete Albanian costume from the early twentieth century, and in 2005 Nicolette Mackovicky acquired examples of Slovakian embroidered clothing and lace.
