When we visit a museum's digital collection, how do we conduct our research?
By object name? By country? By culture?
How do we study the meanings of the patterns and motifs on historical objects? Are these meanings even studyable?
What universal designs exist within the patterns? Which specific designs are closely related to a particular culture and its land? How do we conduct comparative studies of these patterns and motifs?
How do we study the changes in designs brought about by early cultural contacts due to colonial history and trade history? How do these changes show clues of religious conversion?
This is a visual and semiotic-oriented textile database project, inviting you to explore an alternative approach to researching historical objects in an online database.
Play with it, and feel it. Is there a difference when you change your research approach to these digitized histories?
Last but not least, how does this approach speak to our current understanding of borderlands?