Ulla Cyrus-Zetterström and her work on historical silk weaving.
This exhibition showcases a collection of French silks from the 18th century, collected by Ulla Cyrus-Zetterström (1913-2017). Ulla Cyrus was raised in a family with a strong connection to textile production and craft. Already as a child she became a skilled and keen hand weaver. She studied to become a teacher in hand weaving at Handarbetets Vänner, HV, in Stockholm, eventually joining the faculty as a teacher.
After several years at HV she studied industrial weaving at The Lenning Textile Institute in Norrköping, where she became the faculty’s first woman to graduate as a textile engineer. From the mid-1940s Ulla Cyrus was employed at The Textile Institute in Borås, today the Swedish School of Textiles. Her skills enabled her to teach both in crafts and industrial production.
In 1976, now married and known as Cyrus-Zetterström, she began her second career, focusing on silk and silk weaving. The possibilities to create complex weaves with very thin and strong silk threads fascinated her. By this time, she had been a member of CIETA, an organisation for textile researchers, for twenty years. This placed her in an international context. Over the next 30 years Ulla Cyrus-Zetterström studied European and Chinese silk weaving techniques as well as Mandarin Chinese. She published several books and took assignments to analyse samples from historical silks. Her clients included the Nordic Museum, the Royal Armoury in Stockholm and the Textile Museum of Sweden, in Borås. During her extensive travels she made connections with Chinese silk researchers. This led to her textile terminology in Chinese, published 1995, with terms in French, English and Swedish.
Due to her personal interest, Ulla Cyrus-Zetterström started acquiring silks for a collection of her own. The collection consists of 26 silks in various patterns and techniques such as velvet or brocade on different ground weaves in a rich variety of silk yarn, originating from 18th century France. The majority of the silks have been produced in a draw loom. This is an advanced hand loom with the capability to lift single warp threads or single groups of threads in the same mail. In addition to the weaver a draw boy is needed to pull the strings for the shaft figure harness to be lifted.
In 1990 the K. A. Almgren weaving mill was reestablished by Oscar Almgren, a descendant of the founder. He was a close friend to Ulla Cyrus-Zetterström, and in 2014 she donated her French collection to him with a wish that it should be displayed. Parallel to this exhibition a catalogue of the collection will be published.
The 26 silks in the collection are marked with U. CYRUS-Z. KOLLEKTION followed by a number. They are all photographed and presented together with her full analysis and documentation.
