The care of church textiles in Sweden has been regulated by church order for almost 500 years and later by Swedish law. There is a common perception of their value as carriers of culture and history. This paper aims to study the textile competence of the people responsible for inventories and textiles in the parishes, what they see as the biggest challenges in caring for the textiles, and how the employees value these textiles as objects of cultural heritage. A questionnaire sent to the people responsible for inventories in four different dioceses shows that many of the people responsible for the textile objects have little or no specific textile competence. Few of the people caring for the textile objects today have practical textile education, while junior employees have to rely on lectures organized by the church or the local museum. These courses have been organized infrequently and there is a pressing need to raise the textile competence of new employees. Many parishes have old textiles such as chasubles and antependiums from the 18th century and even older ones that are used rarely, some once a year at most. Most of these textile objects can be considered museum objects, that the churches merely keep in store. The framework and recommendations issued by the authorities the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) and the county administration (länsstyrelserna) lack practical advice and the surveillance on how these recommendations are followed in the parishes is practically non-existent. The care for these old, fragile objects is challenging as many churches are kept cold due to rising energy prices. The parishes answering the questionnaire are, however, reluctant to leave the textile objects for storage at a local museum, as there is a sense of them belonging to the church. By current Swedish law, the textile objects are also supposed to stay in the church where they historically belong. In a near future, the challenge of cost, space and knowledge will create a pressure to find other solutions for the care of the cultural heritage of the Swedish church textiles.

v anglickém jazyce The book presents an array of woven patterned fabrics from church treasuries in the territory of the Diocese of České Budějovice. The examples provided originate in the period spanning from the 16th to the 18th century, and they represent only a small selection of the surviving collections. The focal point consists of a magnificent collection of textiles from the 18th century, documenting the development of the individual historical spheres of decors overlapping into corresponding variants of design. The variability of patterns pertaining to this century is unusually high, and it combines a large number of sources of inspiration with roots in exotic overseas countries. The catalogue entries are furnished with brief technological analyses that offer an insight into the textile production of the respective periods and, at the same time, they provide researchers with a deeper understanding of the individual fabrics on display. Although the area of the Diocese of České Budějovice to a certain degree exceeds the boundaries of the Region of South Bohemia, the collections examined were, in their majority, imported from western European countries manufacturing weaving products of world renown. The catalogue outlines the historically significant import of luxury goods reflecting a variety...