Digital Commons Network^™

Shifting Sands: Costume In Rajasthan, Vandana Bhandari

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Rajasthan in Western India has a history of turbulent political conditions. This is an outcome of Rajasthan being a frontier region of India’s borders. Therefore, its people have had a continued interaction with outsiders entering India in successive waves of migration (from the time of Aryans – 1000 BC). Costume of the region is an assimilation of many historical and foreign influences and has evolved to present a unique tradition.

This paper aims to study dress in this region by taking examples of different ethnic groups like Marwaris, Rabari and Rajputs and examine influences that have led to change. The …

Indonesian Fashion Designers-----Transformation From Traditional Textiles, Yuka Matsumoto

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Indonesian fashion designers who emerged in the 1970s have been creating various designs through uniting traditional and Western designs in accordance with the cultural policy of the country. Designs uniting traditional culture with Western culture symbolize Indonesia’s hybrid cultural background which consists of various ethnic cultures. In the 1980s, with the development of the economy, Indonesian fashion design was presented globally. But since 1997, because of the Asian economic crisis and the collapse of Soeharto’s administration, Indonesian designers have begun to present their designs to domestic consumers who have become aware and appreciative of the rich creative potential of this …

Calico Trade Shirts On The Journey Of Discovery With Lewis And Clark, Margo Krager

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In the spring of 1803, Meriwether Lewis traveled to Philadelphia to prepare for his journey west. During a busy month there, he gathered thirty-five hundred pounds of supplies. His shopping list included “Indian Presents”: beads, tomahawks, fishing hooks, combs, and “30 calico shirts.”

Israel Whelan, Purveyor of Public Supplies, purchased from twenty-eight Philadelphia merchants many of the needed items, including the calico shirts. Where did he get them, were they ready-made and what did they look like?

The North American marketplace of 1803 offered a wide variety of fabrics. Canoe manifests from the customs house at Michilimackinac in 1802 listed …

Something Borrowed, Something Red –Textiles In Colonial And Soviet Central Asia, Kate Fitz- Gibbon

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Turkoman and other tribal groups in Central Asia have used specific textile patterns from carpet weaving and embroidery as identity markers for centuries. Under late 19th century Russian rule, these designs were used as decorative elements on publications to represent an exotic, foreign, central Asian identity. In the Soviet period tribal patterns were utilized as formal symbols of Central Asian provincial sub-identities within the Soviet Union. They were incorporated into in architecture, used in theater set design, in painting, as a sort of tribalidentity- prop in every form of visual artistic expression. Similarly, a standardized “national costume” only superficially related …

Protest To Persuasion: Chinese Textiles As Political Tools In The 19th And 20th Centuries, Diana Collins

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Throughout history textiles have been used to demonstrate dissent towards political regimes and so it was in late 19th century China, when some civil officers expressed their frustration with decay and corruption during the decline of dynastic rule. Defiant modifications reflecting disrespect for the emperor were incorporated into embroidered badges of rank required by strict dress regulations to be worn conspicuously at the front and back of officials’ surcoats. When any insubordination could attract the penalty of death, wearing such rebellious statements against the Son of Heaven was undeniably bold.

With the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911, centuries …

A Berkeley Home For Textile Art And Scholarship, 1912–79, Ira Jacknis

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The work of Ed Rossbach, his colleagues, and students at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1960s and 1970s was critical in forming the modern movement of American fiber art. What may not be as well known is the continuity of this work with a tradition of textile art and study at UC Berkeley going back to 1912.

Founded as a department of Household Art as part of the home economics movement, it became a department of Decorative Art in 1939, under the leadership of Berkeley anthropologist and textile scholar Lila M. O’Neale (1886–1948). A cultural approach to the …

Lillian Elliott, Pat Hickman

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Whenever she taught, Lillian Elliott (1930-1994) arrived for class carrying bags bulging with historic world textiles–to illustrate a technique, a crazy, unexpected juxtaposition of color, a thread gone wild–all to suggest new possibilities. Abundance and generosity dominated; they fed her visual ideas and those of her students. Elliott valued most her teaching in the Department of Design at UC Berkeley, as a colleague of Ed Rossbach’s. Her curious mind led her in multiple directions simultaneously, as did his. Those of us lucky enough to study with both of them, entered the field as artists and teachers, changed. Their influence spread …

Picturing The Transformation Of A Nation’S Textile Traditions: Meiji Era Woodblock Prints, Donna F. Lavallee

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Woodblock prints, photographs and contemporary sketches will be used to illustrate the rapid change to Western dress in Japan and its impact on the importation and imitation of Western textiles. Between 1853 and 1868, American Commodore Perry forced the opening of Japan to foreign trade. The old fashioned Shogun was overthrown, and young, forward thinking Emperor Meiji took the throne. Under Emperor Meiji, the Japanese government introduced the wearing of Western style clothing for all public occasions, both social and official. These events brought Western textiles to Japanese dress: military uniforms were the first to use both woolen cloth and …

Boro No Bi : Beauty In Humility—Repaired Cotton Rags Of Old Japan, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Using examples from the Nukata Collection of Japanese “boro,” or rags, this paper assesses how such extensively repaired, patched, and pieced utilitarian textiles reflect Japan’s social stratification, agriculture, economy, and trade. These humble cloths, tangible remnants of stories lived by the common people – farmers, fishermen, and lumberjacks – who lived in rural areas along the Sea of Japan and northeastern Honshu Island until several decades ago, point to a material’s aesthetic and functional transformation.

A majority of pieces in the collection are futon, bedding which are made of or patched with various shades of blue fabric …

The Transformation Of Tusser Silk, Brenda M. King

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

India and England enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship through the silk trade during the British Empire. Thomas Wardle transformed aspects of India’s wild silk production, increasing demand for India’s yarn and providing employment for many thousands; this work should be better known.

Wardle was the first to print and dye Indian tusser almost any shade. At the Paris Exposition, 1878 he revealed tussser’s improved potential, gaining great publicity and a gold medal for India’s yarn. Thereafter, India increased exports of tusser yarn and cloth to Europe where it was demanded for furnishing, fashion and embroidery reads.

The Impact Of Synthetic Dyes On The Luxury Textiles Of Meiji Japan, Pamela A. Parmal

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Almost as soon as they were invented in 1858, chemical dyes were introduced to Japanese artists and craftsmen. Chemically dyed red, purple, orange and blue silk yarns were woven into elaborate textiles used to furnish the Meiji palaces, costume Noh actors, and wrap Buddhist priests, while dyers adapted resist techniques such as yuzen and stencil resist. Japanese wood-block print artists also responded to the new colors and incorporated them into their work creating vibrant scenes of life during the Meiji period. The bright, bold colors produced with the early synthetic dyes became emblematic of the technological advances of the Meiji …

Interpreting Social Change And Changing Production Through Examinations Of Textiles Of Xam Nuea And Surin, Charles Carroll

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper explores the transformation of the Lao Xam Nuea style sin muk through two different approaches to the examination of change in practice. In the process, the paper reveals ways in which changing handloom production in Southeast Asia are inextricably embedded within broader changing social practices. The first part of this paper presents an historical and structural analysis of revolutionary migration and technological transformation of the Lao Xam Nuea style sin muk. The analysis examines the adaptation of techniques in the adoption of the Xam Nuea style through the comparison of Vientiane and Xam Nuea sin muk. …

Tradition And Transformation In Chicahuaxtla Trique Textiles, Cecilia Gunzburger

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

San Andres Chicahuaxtla is a Trique-speaking village in the mountains of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. This paper explores changes in Chicahuaxtla Trique textiles and costume over the previous half century as women incorporated newly available commercial products into their indigenous weaving tradition.

Contact with the outside world and access to manufactured goods gradually accelerated, yet hand-woven clothing remains a strong component of women’s cultural identity. Although trade in textiles between Mesoamerican villages is certainly nothing new, the 20^th century brought new materials like factory-spun and – dyed cotton and acrylic yarn in a wide range of colors, …

Sa’Dan Toraja Supplementary Weft Weaving An Ethnographic Interpretation Of Acculturation And Assimilation Of Loom Technology And Weaving Techniques, Maria Christou

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Sa'dan Toraja loom is a variant of the body-tension loom with a continuous warp. A comparison is made between the Sa'dan loom to other looms found on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted there from June 1993 to June 1994. This research is done in order to situate the Sa'dan loom in a historical time frame. I suggest that loom type correlates with the materials and decorative techniques, and to a certain, but lesser, extent with design. This assemblage of material data offers insight into the cultural history of South Sulawesi.

My fieldwork supports …

Abstracts Of Papers

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

We Pieced Together Cloth, We Pieced Together Culture: Reflections on Tongan Women’s Textile-making in Oakland

Symbolic Defiance: Questions of Nationalism and Tradition in Middle Eastern Textiles

Churchill Weavers: 80 Years of American Handweaving

West Anatolian Carpet Designs: The Effect of Carpet Trade Between Ottoman Empire and Great Britain

California and the Fiber Art Revolution

Shifting Sands—Costume in Rajasthan

Pattern Power: Textiles and the Transmission of Knowledge

The Ubiquitous T-Shirt and Fashionable “Islamic Dress”: Cultural Authentication in Turkey

Patterns In Time And Space: Technologies Of Transfer And The Cultural Transmission Of Mathematical Knowledge Across The Indian Ocean, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

This article explores the potential role of textiles in the transfer of mathematical knowledge from the Indian subcontinent to the central Islamic lands and west- ward to an emerging modern Europe through an inquiry into prospective tech- nologies of textile manufacture and pattern-making. Ikat textiles of the ninth and tenth centuries, found in Egypt but presumed to be from Yemen, serve as a means to explore possibilities of numeration and treatment of the spatial dimension. An initial attempt is made to separate patterning from the technology of textile pro- duction in an effort to treat the mathematical possibilities that patterning …

Mathematical Aspects Of Oriental Carpets, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

When one looks at an Oriental carpet in the context of Western art, one usually perceives a richness of colors and patterns, and perhaps the contrast between central field and surrounding borders. A careful observer might notice the appearance of superimposed plane patterns in the central field and multiple linear patterns in the surrounding borders. Each of patterns, whether in the field or the borders, is composed of various design elements, which in combination are repeated according to the principles of symmetry, often with the addition of symmetry-breaking (Bier 1992, 1997, 1998, 2000a). The mathematical principles of pattern making according …

Islamic Art At Doris Duke's Shangri La: Playing With Form And Pattern, Carol Bier, David K. Masunaga

Textile Research Works

Shangri La is the historic home of Doris Duke in Honolulu. It is filled with installations of Islamic tilework and other arts. Open to the public in late 2002, by reservation for tours arranged through the Honolulu Academy of Arts, today this home serves as a museum in which a walking tour can provide extraordinary visual opportunities for the study of geometry and pattern both in the arts that are installed and exhibited, and in the surrounding plantings and landscape. The house offers a plethora of educational opportunities, for which its full potential has not yet been tapped. A new …

Spanish And Mamluk Carpets: Comparisons Of Decoration And Structure, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Two recent exhibitions, Carpets of Andalusia and Mamluk Rugs from Egypt, at The Textile Museum afforded a rare opportunity to compare two radically different rug-weaving traditions from the perspectives of design and weave structure. While not often evident to the casual viewer, there is a significant relationship between design, pattern, and weave structure in all Oriental carpets. The opportunity to explore such differences warrants careful examination and critical viewing.

The Mamluk rugs all probably date from the last quarter of the 15th century. They comprise a cohesive group defined by color, a geometric style, and similarity of weave characteristics. The …

"Indigo" From Encyclopædia Iranica, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

INDIGO (Pers. nil), the common name of a broad genus, Indigofera, with numerous species, widely distributed throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A member of the leguminous pea family, indigo is variously classified as an herb or small shrub; its stalks are long, bearing raceme flowers. It is usually perennial, but in some areas annual. Native species are known from Arabia, including the Yemen, and around the Indian Ocean. In some sources Persia is not listed among those regions in which indigo occurs in a natural form (e.g., the website mentioned below). Hans Wulff (p. 192) mentions two local species …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 25 (2004), Kathlyn Sullivan, Barbara Brackman, Lucinda Reddington Cawley, Virginia Eisemon, Laurel Horton, Kaaren Beaver-Buffington, Loretta B. Chase, Pamela Weeks Worthen, Mary E. Gale, Margaret T. Ordoñez

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Kathlyn Sullivan

Rocky Road to Analysis: Interpreting Quilt Patterns by Barbara Brackman

In Teppich: Quilts and Fraktur by Lucinda R. Cawley

Sunday School Scholars Quilt: Civil War Textile Document by Virginia Eisemon

Mary Black's Family Quilts: Changing Styles, Status and Fabric Availability by Laurel Horton

A Quilt For General Grant by Kaaren Beaver-Buffington

A Blue Hills Quilt: To Miss Charlotte Hawkins by Loretta B. Chase and Pamela Weeks Worthen

Eighteenth-Century Indigo-Resist Fabrics: Their Use in Quilts and Bed Hangings by Mary E. Gale and Margaret T. Ordoñez

Authors and Editor

Index