TextileBase

Collecting, connecting, and sharing data on historical and sustainable clothing

Reprex
Last updated on Sep 15, 2025
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Seto garments in the Obinitsa Museum, Setomaa, Estonia

TextileBase is a platform to collect, connect, and share knowledge about historical clothing.
It links artefacts, photographs, secondary sources, and institutional records into a multilingual, interoperable, and searchable knowledge graph.

By bringing together scattered records from museums, archives, researchers, and businesses, TextileBase enables richer stories about how people dressed, lived, and expressed themselves.

Why Textiles?

Unlike stone or metal, textiles are fragile. Few garments survive beyond a century. What we know often comes from dispersed museum pieces, old photographs, or drawings — often in different languages and formats.

TextileBase connects these fragments into one network: a living map of dress history.

Who is TextileBase for?

  • Museums & archives — link dispersed collections into larger platforms such as Europeana and ECCCH.
  • Researchers & cultural heritage projects — manage data to FAIR/8-star standards, publish reusable datasets, data papers, and visualisations.
  • Businesses — from sustainable fashion to cultural tourism, TextileBase supports digital product passports, provenance tracking, and heritage storytelling.
Connect artefacts, images, and texts into one collaborative, AI-supported research space.
Connect artefacts, images, and texts into one collaborative, AI-supported research space.
👉 Build on shared knowledge: Technical details & offering

TextileBase is not only about preserving the past — it’s about making data usable now, for research, heritage, and innovation.

Examples from the Database

Connecting dispersed artefacts: 19th-century Latgalian garments in one linked dataset ([Q142](https://reprexbase.eu/textilebase/Item:Q142), [Q180](https://reprexbase.eu/textilebase/Item:Q180), [Q179](https://reprexbase.eu/textilebase/Item:Q179), [Q181](https://reprexbase.eu/textilebase/Item:Q181)).
Connecting dispersed artefacts: 19th-century Latgalian garments in one linked dataset (Q142, Q180, Q179, Q181).

Connecting Artefacts Across Borders

Understanding Secondary Sources

Enriching records with secondary sources: trousers identified from a 1913 Seto photograph ([Q331](https://reprexbase.eu/textilebase/Item:Q331)).
Enriching records with secondary sources: trousers identified from a 1913 Seto photograph (Q331).

Following Shifting Place Names

Tracing shifting place names: a Livonian skirt recorded under Finnish, German, Livonian, and Latvian toponyms ([Q347](https://reprexbase.eu/textilebase/Item:Q347)).
Tracing shifting place names: a Livonian skirt recorded under Finnish, German, Livonian, and Latvian toponyms (Q347).

Building a Wikimuseum for Dispersed Collections

Inspired by Wikimedia Estonia’s multi-language, open-access model, we propose a virtual museum—a Wikimuseum—that brings together:

  • Artefacts from rural museums (e.g., Mõniste, Saatse, Värska)
  • Items in national museums (Estonia, Finland, Hungary)
  • Private collections that would never be physically exhibited together
Building a Wikimuseum: connecting dispersed collections across languages, borders, and institutions. See early prototype: [Seto Traditional Clothing](https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipeedia:GLAM/Seto_Traditional_Culture_Heritage/1).
Building a Wikimuseum: connecting dispersed collections across languages, borders, and institutions. See early prototype: Seto Traditional Clothing.

👉🏿 Preview Presentation The Concept of a WikiMuseum: WikiMuseum = GLAM Wiki + Wikibase + Data Sharing Space press F for full-screen view (to be presented at WikimediaCEE 2025 in Thessaloniki.)

Next Steps

👉🏻 Visit the TextileBase website

👉🏾 Subscribe (PDF)

👉🏼 Get in touch

knowledge graph Dataspace garments Textiles TextileBase
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Reprex is a Netherlands-based AI company that builds data-sharing spaces and knowledge bases to deliver trustworthy, explainable, and human-controlled AI.