Ties That Bind: Finding Meaning In The Making Of Sacred Textiles,
2018
www.janetpollock.com
Ties That Bind: Finding Meaning In The Making Of Sacred Textiles, Janet Pollock
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
I was a novice weaver when I began constructing a Rakusua-Buddhist ceremonial garment-as an initiation into a spiritual community in my hometown. Years later, in the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, I was drawn to an early 19th century Tallit Katan, a ritual silk undergarment that had been made for a Jewish poet who later converted to Christianity. I had just inherited my father-in-law’s prized collection of silk neckties. He was a troubled man who had embraced his faith late in life. Those ties became the weft for three works-a handwoven tallit, a woven timeline, and a small keepsake for …
Other People’S Clothes: The Second-Hand Clothes Dealer And The Western Art Collector In Early Twentieth-Century China,
2018
University of Washington
Other People’S Clothes: The Second-Hand Clothes Dealer And The Western Art Collector In Early Twentieth-Century China, Rachel Silberstein
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
In Chinese culture, as in many other cultures, new clothes were a powerful symbol of prosperity and beginnings. Yet, with the development of the Qing economy, the second-hand clothes seller (guyi) thrived alongside the pawnshop business to occupy a vital role in the wider system of clothing provisioning: enabling the poor a means of covering their bodies, the privileged an opportunity to liquidate value in clothing possessions, and pretenders a chance to dress their way into different social roles. At the end of the nineteenth century, this established clothing system encountered seismic change, as Western dress systems were introduced, imperial …
Nd’Awakananawal Babijigwezijik Wd’Elasawawôganôl: “We Wear The Clothing Of Our Ancestors”,
2018
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Nd’Awakananawal Babijigwezijik Wd’Elasawawôganôl: “We Wear The Clothing Of Our Ancestors”, Vera Longtoe Sheehan
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
When thinking of Native American people, a typical image is of tanned people with long dark hair wearing leather and furs in the distant past, but that is not an accurate depiction of the Abenaki people or their textiles. As an Abenaki scholar, artist, and educator, my research into the textile traditions of the Abenaki people includes archaeological evidence, primary resources, and oral history interviews. Abenakis themselves have different ideas of what it traditional because textile and fiber arts evolved over many millennia throughout N’dakinna, the Abenaki homeland which once encompassed Vermont, New Hampshire, northern Massachusetts, and parts of New …
The Global Influence Of China And Europe On Local Japanese Tapestries Mainly From The 19th Through Early 20th Centuries,
2018
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
The Global Influence Of China And Europe On Local Japanese Tapestries Mainly From The 19th Through Early 20th Centuries, Masako Yoshida
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
In general, Japanese culture has developed under the influence of foreign cultures, and textiles are no exception. In this presentation, I will focus on tapestries from the 19th century (the late Edo period) to the early 20th century (the Showa period), and discuss how Japanese tapestries achieved their original expression under the influence of Chinese and European tapestries. The Japanese began to seriously produce tapestry weaving around the end of the Edo period, but in the beginning, they just copied Chinese and European tapestries. Regarding these early productions, little research has been accomplished yet. In this presentation, I …
Mind’S Eye And Embodied Weaving: Simultaneous Contrasts Of Hue In Isluga Textiles, Northern Chile,
2018
University of Aberdeen
Mind’S Eye And Embodied Weaving: Simultaneous Contrasts Of Hue In Isluga Textiles, Northern Chile, Penelope Dransart
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
This article examines the use of hue in textiles woven during the twentieth century in Isluga, a bilingual Aymara/Spanish-speaking community of herders of llamas, alpacas and sheep in the highlands of northern Chile. It pays tribute to the weaving skills of Natividad Castro Challapa and other weavers of her generation, born early in the twentieth century. Aniline dyes were already known to them but, in the course of their lives, they witnessed increasing amounts of industrially manufactured, pre-dyed acrylic yarns arriving in the community. The article explores how weavers incorporated these brightly hued yarns in their textiles to form accents …
Reimagining The Narrative: A Contemporary Creative Collection Of Interracial Perspective,
2018
Rollins College
Reimagining The Narrative: A Contemporary Creative Collection Of Interracial Perspective, Holly Jefferies
Master of Liberal Studies Theses
This essay offers a critical analysis of my creative thesis, Reimagining the Narrative: A Contemporary Creative Collection of Interracial Perspective, which consists of five fabric art scrolls, illustrating contemporary narrative views about interracial relations. I present such information to demonstrate the need to retell history from a visual interracial perspective, so that it might be seen through a new lens. In this critical essay, I argue that while historical context and documentation records history and provides insight into historical narratives, contemporary views within writing and art persist in their capacity to not only offer new points of view, but also …
129 Home Ave.,
2018
Bard College
129 Home Ave., Ella Whittemore Hill
Senior Projects Spring 2018
Walking through my childhood home late at night, half asleep with my eyes barely open, I was always able to navigate myself around every corner, down every hallway, and past every creak in the floor. The muscle memory of this house, which I left behind long ago, continues to live within my body. Memory becomes faint over time; it changes and evolves, but it never disappears. Rather, it matures from the physical specificity of being in a house to being the stories of that house. When my mother moved out a few years ago (a move which I was unable …
She Has Good Jeans: A History Of Denim As Womenswear,
2018
Bard College
She Has Good Jeans: A History Of Denim As Womenswear, Marisa S. Bach
Senior Projects Spring 2018
Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.
Living Tradition: Contemporary Ethiopian Christian Art From The Sobania Collection,
2018
Hope College
Living Tradition: Contemporary Ethiopian Christian Art From The Sobania Collection, Neal Sobania, Charles Mason, Nina Kay, Andie Near, Raymond Silverman, Tom Wagner
Kruizenga Art Museum Exhibition Catalogs
Produced by Storming the Castle Pictures for the Kruizenga Art Museum as a catalog for the exhibition “Living Tradition: Contemporary Ethiopian Contemporary Art from the Sobania Collection,” September 21 – December 15, 2018. Photography by the Kruizenga Art Museum, Neal Sobania, Raymond Silverman and Tom Wagner. Design by Tom Wagner.
Italian Bedfellows: Tristan, Solomon & “Bestes”,
2018
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Italian Bedfellows: Tristan, Solomon & “Bestes”, Kathryn Berenson
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
Two surviving late fourteenth-century quilted furnishings, the Coperta Guicciardini in the Museo Nazinale del Bargello, Florence, and the Tristan Quilt in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, depict scenes from the legend of Tristan, one of King Arthur’s knights. Both museums attribute the furnishings to a southern Italian atelier. Research to-date essentially treats these works as if, like Athena from the head of Zeus, they burst complete. Yet by the twelfth century Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Norman occupation and active trade with the Levant, all had contributed to the culture of southern Italy. Prime evidence is the mosaic floor, dated …
Schoolgirl Embroideries: Integrating Indigenous Motifs, Materials, And Text,
2018
University of Delaware
Schoolgirl Embroideries: Integrating Indigenous Motifs, Materials, And Text, Lynne Anderson
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
Hand embroidery was an integral part of female education in Europe, America, and their colonized territories until the late 19th century. All girls embroidered at least one sampler and many stitched more than one. Because needlework was part of the school’s curriculum; a sampler’s composition, technique, and text communicate a great deal about the teacher’s goals, as well as community and family expectations, including those of indigenous students. This presentation explores ways in which indigenous motifs, materials, and text were integrated into schoolgirl samplers and other girlhood embroideries, leaving visible evidence of cross-cultural accommodations. Motifs are recurring patterns or …
Eliza Calvert Hall, A Book Of Hand-Woven Coverlets, And Collecting Coverlet Patterns In Early Twentieth Century Appalachia,
2018
philis@philisalvic.info
Eliza Calvert Hall, A Book Of Hand-Woven Coverlets, And Collecting Coverlet Patterns In Early Twentieth Century Appalachia, Philis Alvic
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
In her 1912 book, Eliza Calvert Hall describes looking out of her window and seeing coverlets thrown over tobacco wagons on way to market. She would run out and try to bargain with the owner for the coverlet. She collected coverlets, their design names, and their patterns. Since Hall supported herself with her writing, she counted on her coverlet book appealing to the wide audience of people interested in the Colonial Revival in home decoration. Although hall published the book, she was just the more visible of those interested in coverlets during the early twentieth century. Throughout Appalachia, there were …
Fish In The Desert – North Africa’S Textile Tradition Between Indigenous Identity And Exogenous Shifts In Meaning,
2018
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Fish In The Desert – North Africa’S Textile Tradition Between Indigenous Identity And Exogenous Shifts In Meaning, Silvia Dolz
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
Among the oldest handcraft products of North Africa are woven, knotted, and embroidered textiles (flat woven fabrics, knotted carpets, clothing) primarily made of wool and hair from sheep, goats, or camels. Those products have great importance, beyond their practical purpose, as a communicative and artistic medium. Changes and re-evaluations of the textile from a utilitarian object with potent pre-Islamic and Islamic symbolism towards a modern abstract art object reveal centuries of cultural transfer between the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe on the one hand, and between North and West Africa on the other. At the same time, this has …
The Tent-Dweller: Visual Markers Of Migration In Art,
2018
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
The Tent-Dweller: Visual Markers Of Migration In Art, Sara Clugage
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
The current migrant crisis has brought new complexity to an object that enables transition: the tent. Tents are structures most often meant to be temporary-they both practically enable journeys and visually signify the temporary. A language of migration, territory, and dislocation is mapped onto canvas, ropes, and poles. Migration depends on concepts of land rights, movement, and the finite duration of a journey. As Deleuze and Guattari set for in “A Thousand Plateaus,” migrants move from one place to another but are defined as belonging to those spaces. Nomads, on the one hand, do not have land distributed to them-they …
Reawakening Chahta Nan Tvnna (Choctaw Textiles),
2018
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Reawakening Chahta Nan Tvnna (Choctaw Textiles), Jennifer Byram
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
Choctaw people have crafted textiles from the land for thousands of years. Native to Mississippi and Alabama, U.S.A., the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma resides today in the Southeastern part of the state and numbers over 200,000 citizens. This paper comes out of the tribe’s Historic Preservation department’s work in conjunction with community efforts to reawaken Chahta nan tvnna, Choctaw textiles. By piecing together disparate parts of the Choctaw textile narrative, the Choctaw community is creating new textile work that recalls the ancestors and brings the identity of Chahta nan tvnna to new generations of Choctaw artisans.
Milingimbi Artists Partnerships,
2018
Australian National University in Canberra
Milingimbi Artists Partnerships, Louise Hamby
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
Aboriginal women artists who live on the island of Milingimbi in eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia have had a long engagement with people outside of the community. This began with the arrival of Macassan traders over 400 years ago who came primarily in search of trepang. They brought new things and ideas with them; some became absorbed into the lifestyle of the local people. One item in particular is most relevant to the Deep Local and those operating outside of it. The praus that brought the Macassans to Arnhem Land were powered by sails. The Arnhem …
A Local Motif; Use Of Kōwhaiwhai Patterns In Printed Textiles,
2018
Auckland War Memorial Museum
A Local Motif; Use Of Kōwhaiwhai Patterns In Printed Textiles, Jane Groufsky
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
This paper considers the role of patterns derived from kowhaiwhai in printed textiles, and how these have been used to project a national identity. Kowhaiwhai refers to the design traditionally used my Maori (the Indigenous people of New Zealand) on parts of meetings houses, canoe paddles, and other painted objects. Although kowhaiwhai art has developed to include figural representation, it is the curvilinear decoration based on the natural forms of koru (fern shoots), kape (crescent), and rauru (spiral) which has become a distinctly recognizable “New Zealand” pattern. Situated in the meeting house, kowhaiwhai designs have a style and meaning which …
The Techniques Of Samitum. Based On A Reconstruction Of A Silk From The Oseberg Burial,
2018
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
The Techniques Of Samitum. Based On A Reconstruction Of A Silk From The Oseberg Burial, Åse Eriksen
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
A collection of samitum was found in the Norwegian Viking burial Osebert (834 CE) in 2014. I got the opportunity to study some of the fragments and could reconstruct a nearly full pattern unit from six narrow bands, once cut from the same fabric. I wove a small piece of this fabric in my ordinary flatloom, using both modern dyestuff and fabric spun silk material. Fragments found in Egypt from 400 AD show that both tapestry and taquete were woven in the same fabric. When searching for the loom used for the original samitum fabric, I made a vertical warp …
Indian Basketry In Yosemite Valley, 19th-20th Century:
Gertrude “Cosie” Hutchings Mills, Tourists And The National Park Service,
2018
Boxborough, MA
Indian Basketry In Yosemite Valley, 19th-20th Century: Gertrude “Cosie” Hutchings Mills, Tourists And The National Park Service, Catherine K. Hunter
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
Basketry is the highest art form of Native Americans in California. I will focus on Yosemite Valley starting in the 1850s when Native Americans adapted progressively to contact with miners, settlers, and tourists. As a Research Associate at the Peabody Museum, Andover, Massachusetts, I inventoried the Native American Basket Collection. The unpublished Hutchings Mills Collection, acquired by Gertrude ‘Cosie’ Hutchings in Yosemite prior to 1900, caught my attention. In 1986, the Department of the Interior requested the collection be loaned, exchanged, or purchased as “the single most important assemblage from that period.” The collection did not leave Andover; however, one …
Tinctorial Cartographies: Plant, Dye & Place,
2018
www.annaheywood-jones.com
Tinctorial Cartographies: Plant, Dye & Place, Anna Heywood-Jones
Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings
We live in a plant-dominated biosphere, and yet the relevance and meaning of vegetal life, beyond its contribution to human existence, is rarely considered. This way of thinking has led us to see nature as external to ourselves, as “other,” as that mysterious realm beyond the human sphere of being. As in visual culture, plant life possesses signifiers and coded meanings in its contextual configurations. Botanical literacy offers insight into environmental, sociocultural, and historical narratives of place, as the forests and herbaceous margins of our communities speak of complex past, a parallel history of survival and adaptation. Plants and textiles, …
