Booking Service for Guided Tours

Tue – Fri, 10am – 3pm
Telephone (0821) 81001-50
Guided tours are available in German, English, French, Italian and Spanish.

From Fibre to Fashion – the tour through the tim

How is modern clothing created? The process stretches from the raw material, spinning, weaving or knitting, through to textile refinement and manufacturing. Exciting insights into the fashion of the last 200 years await you. In the exhibition weaving mill, you can watch as tim products are created, for example the Fugger-Fustian. The highlight of the tour is the world famous cloth pattern collection of the Neue Augsburger Kattunfabrik (NAK – New Augsburg Calico Factory), uniquely and interactively presented on three graces over four metres in height.

This tour can also be booked with the following focus points:

• Patterns
• Fashion
• Industrialisation

Up to 25 participants (with 26 or more participants, the group will be split)
Tour fee: 50 Euro + admission
Tour fee for school groups: 45 Euro incl. admission
Duration: approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

Workshops are available on the topics of printing, felting and paper dress

Booking Centre for Guided Tours
Tue – Fri, 10am – 3pm
Telephone (0821) 81001-50
Guided tours are available in German, English, French and Italian.

The tim is a museum in which visitors can experience history.

Man
The spotlight is on people whose lives were radically changed by the industrial age. Visitors can learn about the turbulent history of workers, influential entrepreneurs and bankers.

Machine
The museum factory of the tim is housed in the historic saw-tooth roofed buildings of the AKS. Here, historic weaving looms clatter alongside modern high-tech machines, producing the tim locksmith´s towel and the Fugger-Fustian, for example.

Pattern
The centre of the permanent exhibition is home to a national cultural treasure: the unique collection of pattern books from the Neue Augsburger Kattunfabrik (NAK – New Augsburg Calico Factory). It reflects more than 200 years of design and fashion made in Augsburg. The renowned Studio Brückner has created a presentation of these cloth patterns dating from the 1780s to the 1990s. Graces over four metres in height serve as interactive projection screens for visitors, impressively translating the digitalised cloth patterns into the third dimension. 

Fashion
The tim offers spacious showcases for fashion ranging from Biedermeier to Strenesse clothing. The tim offers an exciting foray into the realm of fashion and costume history stretching back 200 years.

The tim focuses not only on the past, however, but also shows the exciting developments emerging in the textile world of today and tomorrow. The high-tech section revolves around entirely new areas of application. From intelligent clothing, artificial muscle through to carbon products, the tim demonstrates the opportunities of the future of textiles in Bavaria.

The Förder-und Freundeskreis tim e.V.

The wheel was set in motion just in time in 1996 by the members of circle of friends then called the Verein zur Förderung eines Industriemuseums in Augsburg e.V. (Association for the Support of an Industry Museum in Augsburg). It was the period of the wave of closures in the large textile factories, in which just years earlier thousands of workers had earned their living. The association´s intention was to preserve the heritage of the textile industry, which had once been such an important branch of industry for Augsburg, for generations to come.

They began to collect textile machines from the bankruptcy assets of the large factories, thus securing the “initial capital” for the State Textile and Industry Museum Augsburg (tim), the establishment of which they were able to achieve on the political level. The textile machines were transferred to the collection of the tim and were carefully restored through years of work by members of the society.

Thanks to the know-how of the former textile workers, the machines are once again running in the vibrant permanent exhibition of the tim. They not only document the technological history of their branch, but also provide visitors with insight into the daily professional lives of the textile workers. One component of the “initial capital” for the tim is the creative treasury of the former Neue Augsburger Kattunfabrik (NAK – New Augsburg Calico Factory), which was originally intended to be shipped out to the far east.

The treasury consists of more than 550 pattern sample books of the NAK, in which around 1.3 million material patterns of the NAK and its competitors dating from the 1780s to the 1990s were collected. Thanks to the association and the financial support of the the Free State of Bavaria, the City of Augsburg and the Stadtsparkasse Augsburg, the pattern book archive was able to be preserved in its entirety and secured for Augsburg, and is now considered national cultural heritage. But the tim has the members of the society to thank for more than just the preservation of an outstanding collection item: in late 2001, a small museum team began the work which was to lead to the tim. In the years that followed, the challenge was not only to develop a vibrant museum concept, but also to carry out the preliminary political work required. Numerous events in the lead-up to the opening of the museum would have been inconceivable without the members of the society.

With the completion of the development phase and the opening of the State Textile and Industry Museum Augsburg (tim) in 2010, the work of the society took a new direction, hence a new name: the Förderverein became the Förder- und Freundeskreis tim e.V. (Supporters and Friends of the tim). The members now run the museum shop, for example, or help as tour guides for the exhibition, hemming towels and helping wherever they are needed. A great and shining example of volunteer work! The tim says THANK YOU!