Art and Design Commons^™

Navajo (Diné) Weavers And Globalization: Critiquing The Silences, Kathy A. M'Closkey

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Native Americans, along with the scenery, are primary attractions in New Mexico and Arizona, and tourism brings billions into the region annually. Since the Indian arts and crafts ‘boom’ in the 1970s, unemployment has increased dramatically on reservations where artisanal production provides essential income. Isleta carver Andy Abeita acknowledges that the world renowned recognition of southwest arts and crafts does not reflect what goes on within impoverished makers’ homes. Currently 80% of the 1.5 billion dollar sales annually of “Indian” products is fabricated and imported into the US. ‘Knock-offs’ flood the shelves of hundreds of retailers, ‘trading posts,’ casino gift …

Interior Textiles And The Concept Of Atmospheres – A Case Study On The Architectural Potential Of Textiles In Danish Hospitals Interiors, Jeppe Emil Mogensen, Anna Marie Fisker, Søren Bolvig Poulsen

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The architecture of modern hospitals in the western world are often criticised of being too clinical and institutional, causing patient stress and general longer hospitalisation. However, in regards to the international focus on constructing new hospitals, new ideas are introduced and focus has shifted towards the design concept healing architecture, visioning an improved healing process supported by stimulating design and architecture.

In this paper we will relate to this future, and by examining the design history of textiles, we discuss how the use of textiles in hospital design can contribute to this vision of healing architecture.

Textiles in architecture has …

Who Were Joanne Segal Brandford And Lillian Elliott? The Brandford/Elliott Award, Catherine K. Hunter

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Joanne Segal Brandford and Lillian Elliott were key innovators in fiber art and basketry for 30 years. They were colleagues along with Ed Rossbach in the Design Department of the University of California, Berkeley, in the late ‘60s, when the contemporary basket movement began. Brandford’s foundation was in textile history and Elliott had a broad background in art. Drawing on different backgrounds and philosophies, they represented and encouraged creativity and experimentation in fiber art. Subsequently, Brandford and Elliott influenced several generations of students, curators, collectors and artists. Following their deaths in 1994, the Brandford/ Elliott Award for Excellence in Fiber …

Traditional Textile Design For Social Innovation Toward Sustainability In Japan, Yuko Fukatsu

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Japanese local textiles are too traditional to fit in our time, however they are all earth-friendly materials those of which are significant for the sustainable society in our future. In this paper, possibilities of re-designing traditional textiles made of natural fiber are explored with local weavers at Okinawa and Nagano in Japan. Talking with craftsmen from local communities I realized that not only current issues of textile techniques and products but also those of local communities and environment should be discussed and solved at the same time.

Also, I realized that activities and creativities of young generations are necessary to …

Polychrome Nets Italian Lace From The Collection Of The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Chiara Romano

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

If you think that white is the only color for lace...think again! My research focuses on a group of polychrome Italian laces dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The category I have identified in the MMA lace collection is known as “embroidered laces” and includes the techniques of Filet and Buratto. These early lacemaking techniques are often characterized by the use of different materials for the foundation and for the embroidery (textile and metallic threads). Despite the visual variety represented by these Italian laces, they all share the same basic structure of a net foundation, making them a particularly …

Wikispaces: Technology, Textiles, And Public Engagement, Blaire O. Gagnon

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In a world where technology is constantly changing and cultural institutions such as universities and museums are being asked to do more with less, the question becomes how to improve efficiencies but also expand access. University based museums and collections, have, perhaps, an even greater challenge because their faculty and staff may focus on teaching, service, and publication in ways that do not directly support or integrate their collections or their collection/object related projects are turned primarily inward, through such projects as student papers. On the other hand, they have the opportunity to engage students in object-based research that can …

Conversations Between A Foreign Designer And Traditional Textile Artisans In India: Design Collaborations From The Artisan’S Perspective, Deborah Emmett

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Contemporary textile designers are part of a cultural shift that has brought into the mainstream a sense of ecological and social responsibility. Some are challenging the way the textile industry is conducted, questioning the existing business models. International media coverage has exposed the poor and unsafe working conditions of many of the people employed in this industry, cruelly demonstrated by the collapse in April 2013 of Rana Plaza, a garment manufacturing complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where 1127 workers died. This awareness has developed a social consciousness in many design communities, and as a result the development of ethical design practices. …

Communicating Textiles Within And Beyond Museum Walls: New Directions, Dinah Eastop

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Innovation in the past, present and future will be considered by reference to an extraordinary but little known collection: the textiles and dress preserved in the Board of Trade Representations and Registers of Designs, 1839-1991. This set of records is held at The National Archives [of the UK government] and contains records of nearly 3 million designs, registered by proprietors worldwide (but mostly UK and mainland Europe). Innovation in the past will demonstrated by this registration scheme which encouraged investment in design by enabling copyright control over both ornamental and useful designs, for many materials and products. Recognising design as …

Adinkra And Kente Cloth In History, Law, And Life, Boatema Boateng

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Adinkra and kente cloth have changed significantly in the course of their history first as markers of Asante royal power and then of Ghanaian cultural distinction. Once handmade and reserved for the exclusive use of the Asante ruler, cheap mass-produced reproductions now proliferate in Ghanaian markets. In attempting to use intellectual property law to regulate their appropriation, the Ghanaian state has set the conditions for further changes in these fabrics, their designs, and their sources of authority. This paper examines the implications of changing political and regulatory contexts for the past present and future meanings of adinkra and kente cloth …

Rethinking The Tiwanaku Phenomenon In San Pedro De Atacama Through The Study Of Textiles Of Solcor 3 And Their Associated Contexts (400-1000 Ad), Carolina Aguero, Mauricio Uribe

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

From San Pedro de Atacama, Chile we examine the alleged relationship with Tiwanaku. Our investigation focuses on elaborate and plain textiles with associated ceramics and recent bio-archaeological data that allow us to question this relationship. We see a heterogeneous and unequal society in San Pedro rather than one that responds to a superior political entity and a culture born from a strong tension between dominant and subordinate groups. Discussing the funeral bundles discovered in Solcor-3 we characterize individuals who wear Tiwanaku textiles with their contextual associations and compare them to others who do not wear such textiles. Solcor-3 presents contexts …

The Refining Of A Domestic Art: Surayia Rahman, Niaz Zaman, Cathy Stevulak

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Kantha or, as it is increasingly referred to now, nakshi kantha, is an important women’s domestic art of Bengal. Layers of old garments such as saris, lungis and dhotis are stitched into objects of functional, ritual, or ceremonial use. In Bangladesh, kantha was revived as a commercial activity to provide work for women left destitute after the 1971 war. In the mid-1980’s, it was further developed as a public art. One of the key players in this revival was Surayia Rahman, who refined a domestic art, for private use, into fine art, for public display. Initially an artist who painted …

Chitenje: The Production And Use Of Printed Cotton Cloth In Malawi, Sarah Worden

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A number of recent exhibitions and publications have discussed the pan-African production and use of factory print cotton cloth, for example, ‘Social Fabric. African Textiles Today’ at the British Museum (14 February -21 April 2013). However, there has been no substantive published research on the subject of the production and use of this cloth in Malawi. Historically cotton has been an important crop in Malawi, whilst imported cotton cloth a hugely significant trade commodity. The paper will contextualise the current trend in factory made cloth (chitenje pl. zitenje) within the longer run history of cotton in the country and will …

Textiles And The Virtual World Broadening Audience Engagement At The Textile Museum Of Canada, Roxane Shaughnessy

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Museums with textile collections face challenges in providing meaningful public access to these cultural objects. Textiles can only be displayed for limited periods to minimize damage from light and exposure, and the fragility of most textiles requires careful handling to prevent deterioration. Textile exhibitions and special visits to storage areas provide opportunities for public engagement with textiles. However until recently, the close study of materials and techniques required direct access to the object.

In recent years, the advent of the World Wide Web, digitization, and other technologies have afforded global access to museum textile collections, and enabled those interested to …

Embroidery As Inscription In The Life Of A Calabrian Immigrant Woman, Joan L. Saverino

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper explores the intersection of needlework, personal narrative, gender and artistic creativity in one immigrant woman’s extraordinary life in two out of the way places (Calabria and Appalachia) over the course of nearly a century. Anna Guarascio Peluso excelled in embroidered whitewear, the mark of a cultured woman in nineteenth century Calabria. As an immigrant to West Virginia, the art in its traditional form was incompatible with the new culture and life Anna entered. At the end of Anna’s life, narrative and needlework merged to produce one last project. A revival of the embroidery served as a vehicle for …

More Than A Footnote Or Bibliographic Entry: Mary Lois Kissell As An Innovator Of Textile Study, Ira Jacknis, Erin L. Hasinoff

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Mary Lois Kissell was a pioneer in the comparative cultural study of textiles and basketry, an art educator, a museum anthropologist, and an intrepid fieldworker. When she died in 1944, no obituary was written about her, and no single study has focused on her contributions to textile scholarship. We have not come to know her through a single collection of personal papers; for as far as we can tell, nothing of the kind was ever deposited in a repository. The scattered correspondence that we have amassed by and about Kissell comes from various museum, library, historic society, and university archives …

Textile Art: Connecting The Virtual And Material In My Work, Janice Lessman-Moss

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

As a textile artist in the 21st century, I continue to aspire to make art objects that are unique and timely, characteristic of my individual sensibility and experience. Using the latest digital tools - including the TC1(2) Single Thread Control loom - I strive to animate my woven forms through material interaction and a distinctive touch built on a foundation of research and practice - based in digital and hand craft.

In my weavings I explore relationships of abstract systems created with traditional and innovative textile coloring techniques, material contrasts, and the generative processing of the computer and digital loom. …

Challenging Tradition In Religious Textiles: The Mata Ni Pachedi Of India, Donald Clay Johnson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A community of block printers and dyers in the Indian state of Gujarat has concentrated upon producing religious textiles for nomadic groups. These unique textiles, known as Mata Ni Pachedi, fulfill the need for a religious representation/environment for groups who have no permanent settlement and thus need to construct temporary shrines for their religious ceremonies. The brilliant red, white, and black cloths portray events from the Mother Goddess tradition. Her depiction as the central and by far the largest representation, as well as the Hindu God Ganesh, distinctively identifies these religious cloths. Since the cloths need to be dried in …

Integrating The Evidence: Historic Silk Production In Context, Julia Galliker

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper presents the results of my PhD research which applies computer-based imaging technologies to examine historic silk production evidence more intensively than was formerly possible. My program combines high-resolution images with a computer vision software application to measure identifiable quality and workshop characteristics for weft-faced compound weave figured silks attributed to Mediterranean workshops between ca. AD 600-1200. For a variety of reasons, research progress for this category of textiles has slowed in recent years. While essential to protect fragile textiles from damage, the consequence of conservation standards has been reduced collections access. Resource constraints and changes in museum practices …

Pulling Strings: Textiles, Community And Diy In Post-Industrial Hamilton, Jen Anisef, Thea Haines, Tara Bursey

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In the city formerly known as Canada’s Steeltown, the economic recession of the 1990s, suburban sprawl, and the collapse of Hamilton’s steel industry had a devastating impact on the city’s vitality. An exodus of commercial retail and corporate tenancy from the core of the city left many buildings vacant. In the last decade, Hamilton’s creative community has emerged as a major force in downtown renewal, neighbourhood building, and civic engagement and pride. How do histories of manufacturing and processes of deindustrialization permeate local maker culture? How does a city’s history of industrial production intertwine with contemporary local craft and textile-based …

Writing Textile, Making Text: Cloth And Stitch As Agency For Disorderly Text, Catherine Dormor

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper focuses upon means and ways in which knowledge gained through textile practice can be expressed using language and imagery drawn from within that practice itself. In this it draws upon Žcriture feminine to develop a matrix of knowledge upon and within which text and textile intertwine. Here cloth and stitch are considered as co-agents for a disorderly text that dissolves boundaries between theoretical and practice-based concerns through a process that Bracha Ettinger refers to as ‘borderswerving’ (Ettinger 2006). In this paper such disorderly text or working in and through body, cloth and stitch, will be addressed through three …

Interwoven Connections: Examining The History Of Scottish Carpet Design To Inform Future Learning, Teaching And Research, Helena Britt

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

As with much of the textile industry in the United Kingdom, carpet manufacturing in the West of Scotland was once thriving. Powder was ground, paint mixed, design papers painted, yarn dyed, spools set and carpets woven. The history of the carpet manufacturing innovators, Stoddard Templeton, dates back to 1845 when James Templeton, a Scot and then Alfred Francis Stoddard, an American, began to produce carpets from disused Paisley shawl mills. The story is one of growth, expansion, worldwide prominence and unfortunately eventual decline. Stoddard Templeton produced carpets for a highly prestigious array of events and interiors including royal coronations and …

Biennial Symposium Program: New Directions: Examining The Past, Creating The Future, Los Angeles, California, September 10–14, 2014

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Schedule with speaker and program information. 14 pages.

2014 Biennial Symposium: New Directions: Examining The Past, Creating The Future (Website Home-Page)

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Brief statement, Organizers, Officers, Chairs, Hosts, & editors.
With links.

Threads Of Feeling: Embroidering Craftivism To Protest The Disappearances And Deaths In The “War On Drugs” In Mexico, Maureen Daly Goggin

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Since 2006, at least 130,000 men, women, and children have been killed and another 27,000 have disappeared in the “War on Drugs” in Mexico. This violence affects all “socio-economic levels [who are being] plagued by kidnapping, extortion and murder.” Many connected to those who have gone missing or died have been demanding that authorities locate their loved ones. Frustrated with the lack of action, a Mexican activist group of artists called Fuentes Rojas Red Fountains came together in January 2011 to “raise the visibility for the victims of the US-Mexico Drug War” by, among other things, dying fountains red. Later …

An American Textile Company To The Trade: The Corporate History And Textile Collection Highlights Of Kravet Inc., Deborah E. Kraak

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Historic textiles “live” in museums and private collections, carefully stored for research and exhibition. Those in the archives of furnishing fabric companies live in a different way: reinterpreted for the consumer, either in exact reproductions or more loosely in fabrics that adapt historic motifs or are inspired by them.1 One of the largest and most important collections of historic American and European printed fabrics belongs to Kravet Inc., an American textile company to the trade based in Bethpage, New York. More than 52,000 historic textile documents belong to Kravet through its own holdings and the archives of the textile firms …

Coast Salish Spinning: Looking For Twist, Finding Change, Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Coast Salish textiles from the Pacific Northwest (northwest Washington state and southwest British Columbia) are relatively rare and unknown yet are masterpieces of sophisticated weaving and spinning techniques. Coast Salish blankets and robes, and the tools used to make them, have been the subjects of a few seminal works (Gustafson 1980; Loughran-Delahunt 1996; Marr 1979; Vanderburg 1953), but other than the occasional recording of the direction of twist, the spinning characteristics of the yarn itself have not been the focus of research. This gap is curious, given the uniqueness of Coast Salish spinning tools, the corresponding techniques, and the fibres …

Maguey Hammock: A Weaving Of Resistance And Persistence In Puerto Rico, Soraya Serra Collazo

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Textiles are primary technology to almost all societies. Puerto Rico and the Caribbean are no exceptions. There is an object that has been weaved in the region since pre-Columbian times and it is still passing through the fingers of local artisans. Hamaca, an invention of the American inhabitants,² is an indigenous voice incorporated into many languages. It was in the Caribbean, where Europeans saw its utility, and it was quickly incorporated as the best way of sleeping in their transatlantic voyages. Its production has spread throughout the world and today it is made in many countries. In Puerto Rico …

Dressing The Leader, Dressing The Ancestor: The Longue Durée In The South Central Andes, Ann H. Peters

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The preservation and adornment of the dead in the South Central Andes can be traced over some twelve thousand years. The potential for preservation of human bodies and fine textiles in desert sands and high altitude caves contributed to a continuing social and political role of the dead in the lives of the living. Colonial period documents describe well-dressed mortuary bundles that participated in public ritual and could be cited as proof of heritage and validation of social leadership. However, the nature of social and political ancestry and its relationship to power change over time with the development of large-scale …

Abstracts And Presenter Biographies From 14th Biennial

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Conversation And Encounter, Belinda Von Mengrsen

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Textile artists often use items of traditional textile material culture as sites for primary research or encounter within their conceptual and physical practice. This research practice is, however, far more than aesthetic or visual analysis: rather, it allows for the observation of that border territory in which a new work of art begins and ends - the very place from which the ideas come - and also of how influences are layered, and evolve within our psyche. Ruth Hadlow, has described the use of traditional West-Timorese woven textiles as “a ‘tool’ with which to think?” (Hadlow, 2013). Through such tools, …