The museum presents a new section of its permanent exhibition on ‘The textile industry in the Canton of Glarus’ (Glarner Textildruck). This section tells the more than 250-year history of this vital industry.
Visitors get to know this cultural heritage and the enormous power of innovation that characterised the Glarus region (and Switzerland) early on, the variety of beautiful, high-quality textile products and the (visionary) improvement of working conditions, with the approval of the Landsgemeinde.
In the late 18th century, the textile industry in several regions characterised the dynamic economic and social history of the Swiss Confederation.
This development reached its peak around 1860. The centre of gravity was in eastern and south-eastern Switzerland, in the triangle of Zurich, Glarus, and St Gallen, with offshoots in the cantons of Aargau and Thurgau and northwestern Switzerland, with Basel as its centre.
Thus, fabric printing in the canton of Glarus, silk ribbon weaving in the canton of Basel and embroidery in the canton of St Gallen were key to the speed of industrialisation in Switzerland in the 19th century.
The rapid rise of the Glarus textile printing industry from the mid-18th century played an important role in this context.