Event Details
Tuesday 21 April
Tuesday 18 August
Tuesday 13 October
4pm to 5pm
Price: £25 per person
Join our expert Textiles team for an overview of ongoing remedial and preventative conservation of the collection both on route and behind the scenes.
About the sessions
21 April & 18 August: Preventative Conservation & Remedial Care
This tour explores the vital role of the textiles team and the Chatsworth House Trust charity in caring for and protecting the historic textile collections. These objects are an important resource for learning and continue to inspire contemporary designers, craftspeople, and those interested in dress, interiors, and social history. The tour highlights how the team works to balance access with preservation, making often extremely fragile objects safe to display, study and enjoy while ensuring their survival for the future.
Through examples of both remedial and preventative care, visitors will see how conservation decisions are made in practice. The polonaise chintz bed is used to demonstrate conservation versus reproduction of cloth and trimmings, and to explore when and why a soft furnishing might be retired. The tour also examines preventative care through the house’s storage practices, showing how careful packing and protection guard against insect damage and atmospheric risks, supported by examples from the historic clothing collection.
13 October: Commissioning and the Contemporary Textiles Collection
The Devonshire Collection continues to grow, shaped both by the house’s life as a home and by its role as a source of inspiration for contemporary designers. This tour explores commissioning and the contemporary textiles collection, bringing together soft furnishings, carpets, clothing, and accessories that reflect personal taste, creative collaboration and modern interpretations of historic design. Each object reveals something about the person or family member that commissioned or bought them, or the modern designers who are inspired by Chatsworth and its collections.
The tour includes the Scots Bedroom, where contemporary commissioning by the current Duchess is explored through a carpet designed by Hugh Henry, collaborations with Richard Humphries Weaving and Brian Turner trimmings and a Gucci couture dress created to mark the three-year partnership between Gucci and Chatsworth. In the Scots Dressing Room, historic textiles are shown as a continuing source of inspiration, including the Erdem collaboration inspired by Duchess Deborah, garments and furnishings developed from the historic textile collections, and a contemporary Gucci slogan jumper referencing historic examples, all set alongside the Scots bed dressed in historic chintz.
Accessibility and Meeting Point
This event takes place in Chatsworth House. The route in the house includes some stairs but there is a lift available. There will be periods of standing. If you have any questions regarding accessibility, please email [email protected].
Please meet at the house North Entrance gates at 3.50pm. The tour will leave promptly at 4pm.
Please note that house, garden and farmyard entry is not included in this experience. If you would like to visit the house before the tour, you will need to purchase a separate ticket.
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Stay With Us
With miles of walks on the estate and in the national park, as well as centuries of heritage, art and design to explore, Chatsworth and the Peak District are a dream destination for an unforgettable escape. Find a stay with us in a hotel, inn, cottage, or shepherd’s hut here.
