Textile Museum

The Textile Museum in Saint Gallen documents the industry that made the city prosperous: the production of embroidery, lace, and fine fabrics that reached its peak in the late 19th and early 20th century. Saint Gallen lace and embroidery were luxury goods sold across Europe and exported worldwide; the museum's collection of historic textiles is one of the most comprehensive in the world.

The displays cover the full history from hand-embroidery through to industrial machine production, with samples of extraordinary technical quality. A particular highlight is the collection of Biedermeier needlepoint pictures and the archive of pattern books used by the embroidery industry. The building itself, a 19th-century townhouse on the edge of the old town, is appropriate for the collection.

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A story
Saint Gallen embroidery was one of the luxury goods that defined European fashion from the 18th century through the early 20th. At its peak in the years before the First World War, the Saint Gallen region employed tens of thousands of workers producing machine-made lace and embroidered fabrics that supplied the haute couture houses of Paris and the dressmakers of Vienna and London. The industry collapsed when cotton prices fell after the war and never fully recovered.

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