Articles included in the collections

In 1914, a museum was established as part of the Fredrika Wetterhoff Craft School. Today’s Wetterhoff textiles collections have been created by adding new items and material to the museum’s original collections. The collections include large amounts of materials linked to textiles: textile samples, model drawings, sketches, written materials, tools and instruments and, of course, complete textiles. Today, the Wetterhoff textiles collections are among the largest of their kind comprising material from Finland as a whole. The archives include approximately 150,000 samples illustrating Finnish textiles traditions and the oldest samples date back to the very early days of the Wetterhoff school at the end of the 19th century. The collections have grown over the years as students have collected textile samples from different parts of Finland and as a result of donations from private individuals. The collections also include examples of teaching and working materials used at Wetterhoff, such as hand-woven textiles and model drawings.

Researching textiles

The Wetterhoff collections are available to the arts and crafts community, professionals and laypeople alike. The collections provide plenty of source material for the study of Finnish folk textiles as well as product design based on them. Researchers, students and designers are welcome to explore the materials within the collection at the archive's premises by prior arrangement. Items belonging to the collections are also displayed in changing themed exhibitions. The themes have focused on the use of flax, the colourful 1950's, Fredrika's legacy and weaving traditions in Finland, among others.