The Cloth that Changed the World

Sarah Fee

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, stewards one of the world’s great collections of Indian painted and printed cottons, also known as Indian chintz, with pieces that date from 1250 to 2020. This lecture by Sarah Fee explores how the ROM assembled this remarkable collection from the 1920 to 2020, from early museum directors and curators, to today’s team, preparing for the new ROM exhibition “Cloth that Changed the World: India’s Painted and Printed Cottons”

Dr. Sarah Fee is Senior Curator of Global Fashion & Textiles at the Royal Ontario Museum. She is responsible for the ROM’s renowned collection of ca. 15,000 textiles and fashion that come from greater Asia and Africa, as well as eastern Europe. She served as lead curator for the major exhibition, “Cloth that Changed the World: India’s Painted and Printed Cottons”, that opened at the ROM in September 2020, and is editor of the companion book Cloth that Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz (ROM Publications & Yale University Press).

Sarah Fee’s recent work on carpets includes:

The Cloth that Changed the World —Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Cotton, Colour and Desire:  Indian Chintz,’ in Sarah Fee ed., Cloth That Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian
Chintz, ROM Publications & Yale University Press, 2020

‘The Flowering Family Tree of Indian Chintz, in Sarah Fee ed., Cloth that Changed the World: The Arts, Science and Fashion of
Indian Chintz, ROM Publications & Yale University Press, 2020

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