ABSTRACT
Woollen blankets have been numerous things to many people. The mutability of this single object is captured in the ever-shifting symbolic and mnemonic values that emerge in diverse social and cultural contexts of use. Concerns with the ever-shifting values of materials, when coupled with an interest in the materiality of things and their social lives, in particular the sensory effects of materials on each of us, have recently occupied the discourse of anthropology. A woollen blanket is a compelling and complex thing, one whose intangible content and tangible context when brought in to a new form within a work of art rely heavily on understanding the cosmological perspectives of those who transform the woollen blanket, and those who experience it within an art gallery. The consistency of manufacture to produce the basic essential qualities of the woollen blanket is what has enabled it to be legible to numerous audiences.
