Audio tour Connecting Threads: Tracing Fashion, Fabric and Everyday Life at Newstead House

Connecting Threads explores the fashion and textile collection at Newstead House, using the materials of the collection to trace connections between the objects and stories of fashion, material and domesticity. With the unique opportunity offered by the Brisbane City Council’s History Grant program it has been possible to unearth these forgotten or overlooked objects that speak of how fabrics of all kinds—from a cloth flour sack to a silk evening gown—represent the interwoven histories of domestic and family life.

The story Connecting Threads will tell is not just one of family life, but also of a tangible connection between people, things and ways of life that recall home. It is a story not just of what was made and worn, of who made it and how it was used, but of how it got to Australia and to its current home at Newstead House.

They are:
• Newstead House Connections
• Craft and Domesticity
• Materials of Childhood
• Pride and Presentation: Victorian and Edwardian Dress
• The Hinckley Collection: Fashion, Alteration and Everyday Life

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue cover five main themes. These themes reflect the highlights of the collection, and link them to relevant ideas for the story of Newstead House.

This exhibition mixes physical and digital displays, so as you go around you will find QR codes which you can scan to connect you to stories and objects from the collection on top what you see before you. If you do not have a smartphone capable of scanning those codes, ask our friendly volunteers for help getting access to the digital part of the exhibition.

Follow the numbers from 1 to 22 to guide you around the exhibition, starting downstairs with number 1. The map opposite shows where the numbers are placed. The displays that are part of this exhibition are indicated by these numbers, but remember to take in the rest of the house which is dressed as it usually is, as a late Victorian family home.