06/10/2026
We are thrilled to welcome Brenda Lin to Textile Hive on June 30 for On Collecting: Observations from a Textile Collector’s Daughter. This will be our first opportunity to host an author in our new space, making the evening especially meaningful.
We first met Brenda and her family in 2019, when we had the opportunity to visit their remarkable collection in Taiwan. Built over decades by her mother, the collection includes an extraordinary range of Chinese baby carriers, children’s clothing, and related material culture. Experiencing the collection firsthand left a lasting impression and sparked many conversations about collecting, stewardship, and the stories objects carry across generations.
Writer Brenda Lin grew up with a grandfather who collected art and a mother who collects children’s textiles. She never fully understood the impulse to amass objects until her mother invited her to translate the books she had written about her collection from Chinese to English. Through the work of translation and later archiving, Lin began to understand the text in textiles, a realization that eventually became a central metaphor in her forthcoming book, Unraveling Threads: Essays on Inheritance.
In this illustrated talk, Lin will share a visual essay that asks: What is the impulse that drives collectors to build their collections? What passions, questions, and tensions shape a collector’s mind? And how might a collection be passed on?
Stories and reflections on collecting, inheritance, and the ways collections connect us across generations.
June 30, 2026
5:00 PM
Textile Hive
Register through the link in our bio 👆