Travels with Textiles July 2025

Five thousand years ago, weavers in southern Egypt were given one of the oddest commissions they must ever have received. Please make a linen shroud for an elephant. Why were they asked to do this, and how long did it take them? This is just one of the themes that we are exploring in this month's episode of Travels with Textiles, which comes from the wonderful Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen.    There are just a handful of textile research centres around the world, and most of them are geared to industry, but CTR in Denmark is one of the very few to focus on historic textiles and textile archaeology. Jo and Bill went to Copenhagen to see their work.   In this episode, we hear stories from the academics and students who come to study at the Centre for Textile Research. Their work casts a new light on the lives of different people who have worked with textiles in the past. As well as what we know about burying an elephant in ancient Egypt, there is research about how Zoroastrian mothers use silk weaving to mourn their children, how Danish society in the 1600s saw women who made their living as weavers, and unexpected details about what the sex workers of ancient Greece did in their spare time.