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Textile Society Of America Newsletter 14:3 – Fall 2002

Textile Society of America Newsletters

TSA Study Tours
TSA Board, TSA News
TSA Member News, Directory Supplement
Textile Programs at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Collections, Publications News
Conference Reviews
Exhibit Reviews
Calendar – Conferences, Symposia
Calendar - Exhibitions
Calendar – Lectures, Workshops, Tours, Opportunities
Calls for Papers, Fellowships

Care Of Quilts-Storage And Display , Shirley Niemeyer, Patricia Cox Crews

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Faculty Publications

Antique textiles, including quilts, are very fragile. Excessive handling and washing can hasten deterioration. Light quickly fades colors and weakens natural fibers. Careful control of handling, storage, and display conditions can prolong the life of quilts.

Care Of Quilts-Cleaning , Shirley Niemeyer, Patricia Cox Crews

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Faculty Publications

Quilts need special care in cleaning, but even professionals don't always agree on the best methods for cleaning quilts or even whether it should be done. No two quilts are alike. Methods suited for cleaning one quilt may not be best for another. The fiber content, dyes, and construction make each one unique. Sometimes it may be advisable to clean a quilt. Usually it is best to leave it as is.

Deciding whether to clean a quilt involves careful thought. What is the fiber content? How is the quilt constructed? Can it withstand movement or agitation? Will the colors bleed …

Discovering Memory And Meaning In Quilts, Carolyn K. Ducey, Patricia Cox Crews

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Faculty Publications

After an extensive search Ardis and Robert James, quilt collectors from Chappaqua, New York, chose the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) as the home for their collection of almost a thousand quilts. They also supported the formation of the International Quilt Study Center (IQSC) in 1997 for the interdisciplinary study of quiltmaking traditions through the collection, conservation and exhibition of quilts and related materials. Carolyn Ducey and Patricia Crews, the Center’s curator and director, respectively, write about some of the work they do.

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 14:2 – Spring 2002

Textile Society of America Newsletters

TSA Symposium
Letter from the President
TSA News, From the Listserve
TSA Member News
Collections News
TSA News, Book Reviews
Exhibit Reviews
European Textile Network
Conferences & Symposia
Exhibitions Calendar
Lectures/Workshops
Tours/Courses
Calls for Papers

From Benaras To Leh - The Trade And Use Of Silk-Brocade, Monisha Ahmed

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A weaver in Benaras sits at his pit loom meticulously creating a textile piece of Mahakala, the god of protection for Buddhists.

A lama at the festival (’cham) at Hemis monastery performs the religious dance, the Mahakala image on his apron (pang-kheb) gazing out at the devotees as he pirouettes around the courtyard.

The two descriptions given above demonstrate the beginning and end of the journey of silkbrocades from Benaras to Leh. This paper looks at the historical context of the trade in silkbrocades from Benaras to Leh, and discusses how this trade first started. It …

Peacock Alley: Highway 41 And The Growth Of The Chenille Bedspread Industry, Ashley Callahan

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In the fall of 1935, a newspaper editor traveled from Oklahoma City to Atlanta to attend a baseball game, and along the way encountered a stretch of road near Dalton, Georgia known as Bedspread Boulevard. He recorded his experiences in his daily column: “Twisting through northern Georgia late Saturday afternoon, dodging cotton wagons and trying to get an eyeful of the gorgeous tints that glorified the turning trees in the mountains, I thought I saw a washing strung on a line by the roadside. Soon another flashed past. Then they followed in regular succession. . . . Is it possible …

A Study Of Fashionable Silk Veiling, Maline, And Tulle From 1904, Joanne Dolan

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A group of silk net, veiling, tulle, and maline, all sheer draping fabrics produced in unique patterns and colors is the subject of this paper. They form part of a larger collection of materials in a variety of fabrications consisting of raffia, feathers, paper, horsehair, sequins, and chenille. The amassed group is contained in a sample book dated Printemps 1904, and suggests that it may have served as a millinery swatch service book. I intend to focus only on the silk draping materials and examine their fabrication, design, and use in millinery during the first decade of the twentieth …

Contemporary Embroideries Of Rabaris Of Kutch: Economic And Cultural Viability, Judy Frater

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Monghiben Rabari is attending an exhibition and sale in Mumbai. Her traditional embroidery has taken her from Vandh, her village of mud huts and camels on the seacoast of Kutch to India’s most cosmopolitan urban metropolis. She is thrilled by the glittering bustle, and by the customers’ enthusiastic response. She deals directly with them, as a professional artisan. And not only do the customers buy; one woman is so impressed that she wants to learn embroidery. She engages Monghi as a teacher during the afternoon lulls of the exhibition.

Surely, we have succeeded in the transition from tradition to profession. …

Siguas 1: A Newly Identified Early Horizon Culture, Department Of Arequipa, Peru, Joerg Haeberli

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

My interest in the valleys of Arequipa began in 1994. A curious set of textiles labeled Nasca1 was attributed to the “Sihuas2 Valley, Nazca region, Peru, south coast.” The iconography of these textiles was not Nasca but belonged to unidentified traditions. They most likely came from the Sihuas Valley in the department of Arequipa. In 1997 and 2000 I went to Arequipa to establish if their provenance indeed was the Sihuas Valley and other valleys in the department of Arequipa. This was confirmed in the field for the valleys of Sihuas and Vitor at four heavily looted cemeteries. In addition, …

Clothing Styles From A Provincial Inca Outpost, Grace Katterman

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

My recent study of Inca Period clothing has involved textile collections from three south coastal areas of Peru (Figure 1): Pachacamac, a large Inca center and temple complex just south of Lima (Uhle 1903/1991: Ch XXI:89-96); Rodadero, a storage facility overlooking the Inca center of Tambo Viejo in the Acari Valley (Katterman and Riddell (1992:141-167); and Burial House #2, the western hillside cemetery affiliated with the Inca outpost of Quebrada de La Vaca in the Chala Drainage (Katterman 2003b). From the burial house (Figure 6), Dorothy Menzel and Francis Riddell collected and documented 120 burials plus an additional 140 items …

Marketplace Handwork Of India: Impacts On Artisan Capabilities, Mary A. Littrell, Marsha A. Dickson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

At the 1998 TSA Symposium in New York City, we presented a paper that documented the work of three textile artisan enterprises. All embraced a fair trade approach to their work. Known as Alternative Trade Organizations (ATOs), these enterprises are deeply committed to a mission of sustainable, people-centered development (Littrell and Dickson 1997). More specifically, this fair trade partnership between textile artisans and retailers involves joint commitment to:

• paying fair wages within a local context,

• providing healthy and safe working conditions,

• sustaining the environment,

• promoting capacity building through business and technical training, and

• honoring cultural …

Traces Of War: The Revival Of Silk Weaving In Cambodia, Morimoto Kikuo

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This report is the outcome of the research commissioned by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In this research, I visited more than 36 villages in 8 provinces between January and March 1995. Because of the civil war disturbance beginning in 1970, few information relevant to textiles remained in Cambodia. Even maps, which are indispensable for a field survey, were not available at first. My research, therefore, began with asking shopkeepers at the markets in Phnom Penh, "Where did this fabric comes from?" Then, I arrived at remote villages, where I heard weaving activities still continues. When I …

Why Embroidery? An Answer From The Ancient Andes, Anne Paul

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In her meticulous classification of fabric structures, Irene Emery wrote that needlework "is basically one of the simplest crafts, a homely activity that can be practiced by almost anyone on almost any material. But, with fine and carefully chosen materials plus a high degree of skill and imagination in handling them, needlework can be raised almost to the rank of a fine art" (1966:246). I suspect that Emery would not object to my deletion of the word "almost" when discussing the examples of fine art embroidered by certain pre-Conquest Andeans.

Within the ancient Andean world, needlework is not exclusively identified …

Hand Spinning And Cotton In The Aztec Empire, As Revealed By The Codex Mendoza, Susan M. Strawn

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

At a lecture titled “Growing Up Aztec,” art historian Jill Furst illustrated Aztec childhood with images from the Codex Mendoza, an extraordinary, post- Hispanic pictorial manuscript from central Mexico. The Mendoza specified the lessons, punishments, and even the number of tortillas appropriate for boys and girls during each year of childhood. Interestingly, the Codex Mendoza showed spinning as the only instruction given to Aztec girls between the ages of four and thirteen years. In 1992, the University of California Press published a full color facsimile of the Codex Mendoza with a translation into English and with extensive interpretation in …

From Benaras To Leh - The Trade And Use Of Silk-Brocade, Monisha Ahmed

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A weaver in Benaras sits at his pit loom meticulously creating a textile piece of Mahakala. the god of protection for Buddhists.

A lama at the festival ('cham) at Hemis monastery performs the religious dance, the Mahakala image on his apron (pang-kheb) gazing out at the devotees as he pirouettes around the courtyard.

The two descriptions given above demonstrate the beginning and end of the journey of silkbrocades from Benaras to Leh. This paper looks at the historical context of the trade in silk-brocades from Benaras to Leh, and discusses how this trade first started. It …

Re-Inventing Cultural Heritage: Palestinian Traditional Costume And Embroidery Since 1948, Jeni Allenby

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Prior to 1948, when the State of Israel was declared, Arab society in Palestine consisted of three main groups - the townspeople, a small percentage of nomadic or semi-nomadic bedouin tribes, and the villagers or "people of the land" who made up three quarters of the population. Over eight hundred villages were scattered from the coastal plains to the Jordan River. While costume in the urban regions historically reflected the current occupiers of the country (for example, Turkish styles during the Ottoman period, and European fashions under the British Mandate) Palestine's many villages were economically and socially independent, and difficulties …

Textiles As Image, Virginia Davis

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

I am an artist who has a strong interest in color theory and theories of perception and I have the power to weave my own canvas. I want to emphasize the importance for me of the study of textile history, and the privilege of viewing museum collections. Although I began weaving with silk, now 1 literally weave painter's linen canvas similar to the sort that can be purchased from artists' materials suppliers. Formally, the work explores optical aspects of vision and nuances of value contrast. Ikat and weave structure give special effects. Ikat technique, dyeing and painting the yarn before …

Japanese Kosode Fragments Of The Edo Period (1615-1868): A Recent Acquisition By The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York, Joyce Denney

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, recently acquired a remarkable group of over thirty-five Japanese textiles, the majority of which are probably pieces from kosode robes of the Edo period (1615-1868). This paper will serve as a brief introduction to the collection, which will be on view next summer in the Museum's Japanese galleries.

This introduction to the recent acquisition consists of three parts. The first part discusses a few of the pieces from the recently acquired group that have companions in the Nomura collection of the National Museum of Japanese History (Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan) in Sakura, Chiba, …

Competing Images: Silk And Rayon In Popular U.S. Publications Of The Nineteen Thirties, Jocelyn Gottschalk

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In 1934, Mr. Paolino Gerli, President of the newly formed International Silk Guild, concluded his address at the Twenty-third Annual Convention of the National Retail Dry Goods Association as follows: "A new deal, a new era. . . Out of a glamorous past, not a Cinderella with a time limit beauty is beckoning to you, but a beautiful Princess, awakened by Prince Charming into a new consciousness of its eternal right to be the Queen of Fabrics." These lofty words, delivered before an audience of American manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers, were a call to arms for the beleaguered American silk …

The Evolution And Changes Of Moche Textile Style: What Does Style Tell Us About Northern Textile Production?, Maria Jesus Jimenez Diaz

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Although Moche textiles form part of the legacy of one of the best known cultures of pre-Hispanic Peru, today they remain relatively unknown. Moche culture evolved in the northern valleys of the Peruvian coast (Fig. 1) during the first 800 years after Christ (Fig. 2). They were contemporary with other cultures such us Nazca or Lima and their textiles exhibited special features that are reflected in their textile production. Previous studies of Moche textiles have been carried out by authors such as Lila O'Neale (1946, 1947), O'Neale y Kroeber (1930), William Conklin (1978) or Heiko Pruemers (1995). However, in spite …

Silk Underwear For Ny Swells In The Age Of Victoria, Diane Maglio

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This appears to be an age of silk. The correspondent of a country paper, writing from New York, says that men are becoming very luxurious, and their... wardrobes and repositories for personal belongings display tastes more costly than those of women.... [as they put on] underwear of the softest, richest knitted silk.

During the last quarter of the 19th century affluent men of leisure and fashion had many hours every day to "loiter at the various clubs and discuss matters of taste." Those who displayed an exceptional interest in fashion were labeled "swells." This research was inspired by a fictional …

"Dichotomies In Silk: Sheer And Opaque", Yuh Okano

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Since my days as a student of design, I was interested in fiber as a means to express myself creatively, influenced largely by Junichi Arai's innovative works in the 1980s. As an artist, I emphasize the material itself and how it takes on shape in the same manner as that of a sculptor. It is in my character as an artist and designer to play with diverse materials and experiment with an array of techniques that can be applied to them. Illustrated by slides, I would like to share my creative exploration using silk fabric and recent technical improvements in …

Hand Spinning And Cotton In The Aztec Empire, As Revealed By The Codex Mendoza, Susan M. Strawn

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

At a lecture titled "Growing Up Aztec," art historian Jill Furst illustrated Aztec childhood with images from the Codex Mendoza, an extraordinary, post- Hispanic pictorial manuscript from central Mexico. The Mendoza specified the lessons, punishments, and even the number of tortillas appropriate for boys and girls during each year of childhood. Interestingly, the Codex Mendoza showed spinning as the only instruction given to Aztec girls between the ages of four and thirteen years. In 1992, the University of California Press published a full color facsimile of the Codex Mendoza with a translation into English and with extensive interpretation in …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 14:1 – Winter 2002

Textile Society of America Newsletters

TSA Symposium
Collections News
From the Listserve
Letter from the President
Textile Art and Design at Southern Illinois University
New Education Programs
Member News, Letter from the President
TSA News: Shep Award Winner
Calls for Papers, Conferences & Symposia
Conference Reviews, Exhibit Reviews
Exhibitions Calendar
Lectures/Workshops
Tours/Courses, Publications
Shep Award Call for Nominations

Torn Notebook: The Creative Process, Daniel Siedell

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Torn Notebook: The Creative Process features twenty artworks related to Torn Notebook, a large-scale public sculpture made by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje can Bruggen in 1996 and installed in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. This exhibition focuses on one of their more recent public sculptures and celebrates the creative process that characterizes all serious artistic endeavors.

Torn Notebook: The Creative Process, Daniel A. Siedell

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Torn Notebook: The Creative Process features twenty artworks related to Torn Notebook, a large-scale public sculpture made by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in 1996 and installed in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. This exhibition focuses on one of their more recent public sculptures and celebrates the creative process that characterizes all serious artistic endeavors.

The unique artistic collaboration between Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, which began in 1976 with the installation of Trowel, a colossal hand tool installed permanently on the grounds of the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands, has resulted in more than twenty-eight large-scale public …

Re-Inventing Cultural Heritage: Palestinian Traditional Costume And Embroidery Since 1948, Jeni Allenby

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Prior to 1948, when the State of Israel was declared, Arab society in Palestine consisted of three main groups - the townspeople, a small percentage of nomadic or semi-nomadic bedouin tribes, and the villagers or "people of the land" who made up three quarters of the population. Over eight hundred villages were scattered from the coastal plains to the Jordan River. While costume in the urban regions historically reflected the current occupiers of the country (for example, Turkish styles during the Ottoman period, and European fashions under the British Mandate) Palestine's many villages were economically and socially independent, and difficulties …

Woven Bands, Medicines And Recipes: Cod. Pal. Germ. 551. The Adventures, Provenance And Contents Of A 15th Century Manuscript Held At The Library Of Heidelberg University In Germany., Ute Bargmann

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Today, we are going to visit Heidelberg, the city where the earliest German University was founded in 1386. On account of its romantic setting, it became one of the internationally popular institutions in the 19th century. Here, we will visit the University Library, where the manuscript we are to discuss today is housed. It is on the shelf in the Department of Manuscripts, bound in a modest working cover of the 19th century.

History

We shall embark on a journey of more than 500 years into the past and through some very trying times that helped shape present-day Central Europe. …

Introduction To Chachapoyas Textile Catalogue, Lena Bjerregaard

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This work contains the thorough analysis of forty-one of the best-preserved textiles from the mummy find at Laguna de los Condores (1997). The textiles are now all in the Leymebamba Museum, either in storage or on exhibition. The textiles were partly found loose in the chullpas, partly as part of a mummy - either as inner or outer wrapping or for instance tucked under the chin of the deceased to keep the head in place.

Conditions:

All the textiles analyzed were in surprisingly good condition - after about 500 years in the rainforest all "normal" organic material would have …