Palestine Costume Archive

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Our Story

The Palestine Costume Archive was set up in the mid 1980s, in the pre internet era, at a time when many Palestinian cultural collections were being destroyed. We're proud of our record being the first to get Palestinian cultural heritage onto the walls of Australian museums, being the first to tour museum quality exhibitions of pre and post 1948 costume and embroidery worldwide, and of our work with Palestinian diaspora communities. Have a read below and see if we can help you with anything :) WANT TO LEARN ABOUT PALESTINIAN EMBROIDERY, BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER 1948? Due to constant hacking we currently have an old version of our website up, but there's still lots of info and photos about Palestinian costume, most drawn from our exhibition catalogue "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume": http://palestinecostumearchive.com You can also read the Archive's staff blog at: http://palestinecostumearchive.blogspot.com.au/ HAVE A PALESTINIAN DRESS OR PIECE OF EMBROIDERY YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT? Drop us a line here on Facebook. We'll fill in the details for you and are very happy to do so, because we believe every single piece of Palestinian cultural heritage that remains should be treasured and preserved. Letting us know what's treasured by your family allows us to fill in missing gaps, and add to our 30 year research of Palestinian costume in museums and private collections and Palestinian communities worldwide.

If you are a museum or private collector with a Palestinian costume or textile collection and are unsure of dating or identifying items for your catalogue records, please drop us a line here. We volunteer our time and expertise and are absolutely dedicated to helping museums and private collectors become familiar themselves with the differences between pre and post 1948 traditional costumes. We can help you identify every embroidery design on your garment for you, and track back the fabrics in each garment or textile to confirm it’s age. The end result will be museum labels that reflect the true story of each costume or textile and the woman (or generations of women) who created it. We can also advise on how to display your treasured collection. WANT TO SEE WHAT COSTUME LOOKED LIKE IN YOUR FAMILY'S VILLAGE / TOWN PRE1948? Most Palestinians in the 21st century have no idea what true Palestinian costume looked like before 1948, when Palestinian traditional society ceased to exist. It’s well worth seeking out. We can advise which museums near you hold Palestinian collections. These can be hard to find because many are inaccurately catalogued. But we've been documenting museum collections worldwide since the 1980s :) LIVE IN A PALESTINIAN DIASPORA COMMUNITY AND WANT TO CREATE AN EXHIBITION FROM THE CULTURAL HERITAGE IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY? We can help with this, and advise you on how to curate something that will make your community proud. See our blog here: http://palestinecostumearchive.blogspot.com.au/p/exhibiting-palestinian-cultural-heritage.html WANT TO SEE PALESTINIAN COSTUME AT IT'S STUNNING BEST? The Archive tours museum quality exhibitions of Palestinian / Middle Eastern costume worldwide. Drop us a line if you'd like copies of our exhibition catalogues / touring exhibition info on our very popular traveling exhibitions "Portraits without names: Palestinian costume", "Secret Splendours: women's costume in the Arab world" and "Symbolic Defiance: Palestinian Costume and embroidery since 1948". We can also re commend other museums and private collections around the world who have material in their collections. Many museums don’t display their Palestinian costumes for many reasons so you need to know where to look. TEACHING PALESTINIAN EMBROIDERY? RUNNING A PALESTINIAN FILM FESTIVAL? / HOLDING A PALESTINIAN HERITAGE DAY IN YOUR COMMUNITY? Lots of amazing people are creating these type of events all around the world. Please let us know about you so we can share your events / workshops etc.