Art and Design Commons^™

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 28:2 — Fall 2016, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America Newsletters

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the President

Letter from the Outgoing Executive Director

Volunteer Opportunities

Welcome New TSA Board Members

R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award

Joanne Arnett Honored with Brandford Elliott Award

Opinion Page – After Savannah: Some Questions

Letter from the TSA Executive Board

TSA's 15th Biennial Symposium: Reports & Reviews

Letter from the Symposium Planning Chairs

Reports from Student & New Professional Awardees
TSA: Trading in the Unexpected

Trade in Cotton & Manufactured Cloth from Europe, to Africa, to North America: SNPA Symposium Session Review

SNPA Report: Analyzing Objects, Building History

Jean L. Kares Honored …

Symposium Program Outline For Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port. Textile Society Of America’S 15th Biennial Symposium. Savannah, Ga, October 19-23, 2016.

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Conference program: times, locations, speakers, events.

Wednesday, October 19th 2016, through Sunday, October 23rd 2016.

10 pages

The Intercontinental Reflections Of An Eighteenth-Century Mexican Rebozo, Eleanor A. Laughlin

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The eighteenth-century Mexican rebozo (scarf) is an excellent example of a garment type that crossed not only ocean currents, but also boundaries of race and class. Initially, the rebozo was associated with indigenous culture in Mexico. Evidence suggests that the rebozo existed during the pre-Columbian period,1 but it has been most commonly remembered as an article of clothing used by the Spaniards to cover the exposed bodies of indigenous women in the church setting. Aspects of the scarf’s decorative elements, such as fringe and dying methods, are thought to have been inspired by Asian styles that arrived in Mexico via …

[Tsa Web Pages For] Symposium 2016 -- Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port Textile Society Of America’S 15th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The web pages for the 2016 Savannah Symposium (archived in pdf).

The 2016 Textile Society of America Symposium will take place in Savannah, Georgia on the campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. To maximize scholarly interchange, the Symposium will consist of multiple, concurrent sessions, plenary and keynote speakers, a poster session and curated exhibitions that will intersect with the scholarly program. In addition to the symposium sessions and exhibitions, there will be a series of dynamic pre- and post-conference workshops and study tours to local and regional art institutions and …

The Role Of Design Thinking In Scientific Research & Communication, Colleen Syron

SciComm 2016 - Lincoln, Nebraska, September 23-24, 2016

Design thnking: Research: • Interviews with designers • Observations and case studies • Experimental studies • Simulation • Reflection and theorizing

Designing is not a search for the optimum solution to the given problem, but that it is an exploratory process. The creative designer interprets the design brief not as a specification for a solution, but as a starting point for a journey of exploration,…

“Deduction proves that something must be; Induction shows that something actually is operative; Abduction suggests that something may be.” Charles Pierce

The main point of difference is that of timing. Both artists and scientists operate …

When The Wind Stops, Qwist Joseph

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The sculpture I make exemplifies my interest in objects, their creation and our tendency to covet them. Humans have developed elaborate and diverse systems to categorize and dictate the value of things. As a culture we elevate and protect Art and its display is a platform in which this object obsession is exaggerated. Through the podium of art exhibition, I explore the idea of object-ness. I question the parameters around what defines something as an object, and more specifically what’s necessary to transform that thing into Art. Further, I wonder where the line is drawn between Art and the ordinary; …

Victorian Counter-Worlds And The Uncanny: The Fantasy Illustrations Of Walter Crane And Arthur Rackham, Amzie A. Dunekacke

UCARE Research Products

I will prepare an in-depth examination of the different, often opposing ways illustrators Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham portray elements of fantasy in their fairy tale illustrations. Fantasy in fairy tales became very popular during the “Golden Age of Illustration” in Britain, which lasted from the mid nineteenth century until the First World War. Fantasy served as a form of escapism from the rigidity of Victorian society and the increasingly industrialized culture. In my examination, I will focus on how Crane and Rackham’s separate styles use or abandon elements of fantasy such as the horrific and grotesque, anthropomorphism of animals …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 28:1 — Spring 2016, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America Newsletters

Letter from the Editor

Volunteer Opportunity: TSA Is Looking for a New Proceedings Editor

Letter from the President

Textiles Close Up Report: Art of the Zo: Textiles from Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh, Chin Weaving at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

R. L. Shep Ethnic Textile Book Award 2015 Nominees

Ossabaw Island, Indigo, and Sea Island Cotton: Two Ways to See a Georgia Barrier Island

Peer-Review Process Yields Range of Exciting Exhibitions for Biennial Symposium

Book Reviews:
Symbols of Power: Luxury Items from Islamic Lands, 7th–21st Century
Textiles of the Banjara: Cloth and Culture of a Wandering Tribe
The Handbook …

Tangled Knot Tied, Shalya Marsh

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I make formal studies in layering that use abstraction and visual symbols as a metaphor for the complex relationship we as individuals have with language, interpretation, and human interaction. My current work explores ideas of connection through representations of knots and tangles. While knots can signify protection and strength, tangles allude to anxiety.

I rely heavily on format and structure as a means of conveying content. Repetition, contrast, and layering of elements suggest the complexity of relationships. The work is composed of a series of tied knots or tangles, single knot forms in multiple variations, or a combination of multiple …

Maybe The Gate Could Be A Fan, Erin L. Schoenbeck

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I notice with quiet thrill an individual object or shape such as a railing, an odd pattern in the cement, a handle that does not match the rest, or a surprisingly decorative form intended only for a useful purpose. Choosing a form for its potential function, strange shape or particular color, I filter it through my aesthetic. My mental repetition of the day’s stresses is changed into lighthearted wondering. Maybe that gate I passed could become a beautiful fanned shape, its silhouette in gold and pale green. It could be so tiny its functional life outdoors is transformed into delicate …

Zero Street, Keith Graham

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

“It becomes oppressive when important events, important changes, can’t break through to the surface of life and are continually unable to fulfill themselves. The still invisible and uncrystallized fact that is to be realized in the future is already growing, swelling, beginning to push through into a preexisting reality, which, however, doesn’t want to yield. It gets tighter and tighter, and therefore more and more suffocating. The lack of air increases our feeling of helplessness. We watch the gathering of the clouds and wait for a voice to speak from them, reading us the inexorable verdict of fate.” -Ryszard Kapúscínski …

Sacred Currency: The Value Of Textile In Colonial Andean Painting, Gaby Greenlee

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In this 18th century colonial Andean image painted in the former Inka capital of Cuzco, Peru, a wreath of flowers encircles a small female figure sitting upon a richly textured seat (Figure 1). She wears clothing that connotes distinction; her features and gestures are as delicate as her garments yet her eyes are fixed and discerning. Our eyes are drawn to her eyes. What does she see? What is her role? We also turn these questions on ourselves: what do we know about this figure that gives the painting meaning? We tend to interpret the work through her identity.

However, …

Aesthetics, Economics And The Enchantment Of Cloth, Janis Jefferies, Barbara Layne

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In a changing world everyone crafts, designs and engages in making: each individual person and each collective subject, from communities to cities and regions, can define and enhance a life project. We are witnessing an unprecedented wave of social innovations, sometimes using technology and sometimes not. As these changes unfold, an expansive open set of process and practices in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Most revolutions are about energetic movement and upheavals; even if ideas take a while to become ideologies, we don’t think of them as slow events. But the phrase also makes us …

The Legacy Of Yarn Dyed Cotton Lungis Of Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu: A Case Study, Vasantha M. Dr.

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Woven cotton textiles of India are ancient, diverse, and steeped in tradition, an amalgam of different ethnic influences, much like reflection of the country itself. Having had the advantage of possessing a unique raw material for more than 5000 years of recorded history, she has been a benefactress of her rich cotton textile heritage to the entire world. In a world where the trends are dictated by the mass producers and the consumers no longer make out the difference between the hand crafted and the machine made, it is a miracle that these textile traditions have been persistently passed on …

From Function To Fashion To A Contemporary Art Process, Journey’S Within A Fisherman’S Rib Jumper, Christine Wiltshier

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper investigates a number of journeys discovered within a fisherman’s rib jumper. The thread of each journey was unravelled whilst considering the notion, Could a process of unmaking become a form of making. This question framed a process lead studio research that centred on haptic experimentation. The vehicle chosen to investigate this question was that of the unravelling of a knitted garment. Along side a studio investigation, a number of threads were followed that connect a 1980’s fashion garment with historic coastal fishing economies in the United Kingdom. Connections were also unravelled between the machine construction of the garment …

Sumptuary Synergy: British Imperialism Through The Tartan And Slave Trades, David Loranger, Eulanda A. Sanders

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Sumptuary laws have been a useful tool for various national powers in regulating subjects and to promote class differentiation and business interests. The genesis of this study was one such law, entitled the South Carolina Negro Act of 1735, stipulating that slave garments could only be made of low-quality textiles. These fabrics were reflective of slaves living in chattel environments, thus also representing a slave’s status in society. This law forbade slaves from wearing “any sort of garment or apparel whatsoever, finer, other or of greater value than Negro cloth, duffels, coarse kerseys, osnabrigs, blue linen, check linen, or coarse …

Veiled In Ignorance And Clothed In Reason: Jimmie Durham’S 2014 Exhibition Traces And Shiny Evidence, Andrea Feeser

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In the 2014 London exhibition “Traces and Shiny Evidence,” Jimmie Durham showed on one floor brightly colored oil barrels, car parts, pcv pipes, and reproduction animal skeletons covered with or leaking ooze that shimmered with rainbow hues. On a floor one level up, Durham exhibited wall size drawing-prints he made by throwing stuffed animals coated with charcoal at very large pieces of paper. In the video that recorded Durham making the drawing-prints, the artist wears a workman’s vest labeled “Steiner. Maison de la Paix.” A video that is featured in the exhibition itself shows Durham in a business suit seated …

Fireworks For The Emperor. A New Hand-Colored Impression Of Sebald Beham’S “Military Display In Honor Of The Visit Of Emperor Charles V To Munich”, Alison Stewart, Nicole Roberts

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

A little studied Einblattdruck, or single-sheet woodcut, from the sixteenth century shows early incendiary devices used to honor the entry of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1530. The large woodcut displays the military honors given to the emperor: cannons firing on a castle constructed for the occasion and fireworks. Harnessing the potential of powders for both pyrotechnics and color added by hand to prints was among the many cultural developments of the sixteenth century. This article makes known a recently rediscovered impression of the print, unique with hand coloring, which serves as the focus of discussion for several aspects …

"My Paintings Would Be No Different Than A Picture In A Biology Textbook", Andi Kur

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

I find that there are innate balances in life, universal dichotomies that permeate our understanding of the world. My paintings are about a duality such as this that exists between art and science. We are told from youth that these subjects are poles in constant strain, as miscible as oil in water. I spent thirteen years in school believing that I must choose between the two, that it is unnecessary to carry both with me. Drawn between a distinct love of each, I realized how vehemently I disagreed. Everything: every rock to every tree to every person is suspended between …

Tmfd 146: Visualization Studio—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio—Student Perceptions Of Learning To Draw The Human Form, Michael Burton

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This course portfolio examines student experiences while taking Visualization Studio and illustrates the various drawing and design projects they complete. While this document illustrates the overall course experience it focuses on student perceptions of learning to draw the human form by two students. Student A, Alesha, demonstrates a high pass example and student B, Mallory, demonstrates a mid pass example.

I feel it is obvious to compare high and low pass samples but the difference between high and mid is much harder to differentiate. Key elements are highlighted to identify the differences between them. Although final course grades were close …

Author Guidelines: Biennial Symposium 2016 Proceedings

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Instructions for submission to the biennial symposium proceedings

The Fashion Diplomacy And Trade Of Kashmir Shawls: Conversations With Shawl Artisans, Designers And Collectors., Deborah Emmett

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

We travelled to the semi rural outskirts of Srinagar in Kashmir to the home of Muneer, a kani shawl weaver. In a small room on the third floor of his house Muneer sat side by side with his friend Hamid at their loom. Each weaver worked pulling small sticks wound in pashmina threads through the weft while carefully referring to a paper tucked under the warp threads on the loom. The woven design on kani shawls is formed by the manipulation of small wooden sticks called tojis that interlock different coloured threads to complete each weft of the shawl. The …

Applications Of Cross Dyeing With Natural Dyes, Catharine Ellis

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

I am a weaver and a dyer with a passion for continued investigation of these disciplines. My work integrates the two processes of weaving on the loom and dyeing the cloth after it is removed from the loom. I have spent over 25 years developing and refining a technique that I have named woven shibori. Supplemental threads are woven into the cloth while it is on the loom. Once the weaving is complete, the supplemental threads are used to gather the cloth, creating a resist for dyeing or shaping.

Both weaving and dying are essential to the final textile. I …

Lasting Impressions: Indian Block-Prints And Global Trade, Eiluned Edwards

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

"Above the proficiency in making cotton textiles, India’s crowning textile accomplishment was the patterning of this cloth with brilliant fast dyes."

Textiles are among India’s most successful exports and the enduring popularity of block printed cloth has sustained a centuries-old craft that survives and even thrives in the digital age. Block prints have been integral to the dress codes of the subcontinent as well as serving domestic and ritual functions. (figs. 1-2) They were also embedded in the material culture of diverse nations through centuries of international trade. So what has enabled their longevity and global reach? This paper explores …

Exploring Color Interactions Illuminated In Goldwork Embroidery, Katherine Diuguid

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Unexpected things happen when you mix colored threads with metal threads in embroidery--the metals cast their reflections onto the threads, changing the perception of the colors to the viewer. The expectation is for the metal to reflect the light. The excitement lies in the unpredictable nature of how the reflections affect the perception of the surrounding colors and how these perceived colors change as the metals age. Color theory principles are seen in their extremes when mixed with the metal threads. The natural reaction when approaching gold is to assume it is a yellow, making purple its complement according to …

Dyeing With Morinda Citrifolia: In Pursuit Of Sustainable Future, Sudha Dhingra

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Green and sustainable practices are the future of fashion. It aims to nurture the environment through effective use of resources in order to minimize the cruel impact for both producer and customer. It employs techniques of environmental friendly ways of growing, extracting, producing and processing fabrics. Fashion industry as such involves highly unsustainable practices as there is always an urgent need to get faster and uniform results. It has a high carbon footprint as each stage of clothing lifecycle generates environmental and occupational hazards. Socially committed fashion takes into account the place of production, producers well-being and conditions under which …

On Textile Fragments Found At Karadong, A 3rd To Early 4th Century Oasis In The Taklamakan Desert (Xinjiang, China), Sophie Desrosiers, Corinne Debaine-Francfort

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In 1993 and 1994, the Sino-French archeological mission in Xinjiang led by Abdurassul Idriss and Corinne Debaine-Francfort,1 excavated the site at Karadong in the heart of the Takalamakan desert, on a former delta of the Keriya River, whose headwaters are in the Kunlun Mountains at the Tibetan border, and which vanishes in the desert sands. At one time, it continued north all the way to the Tarim River, thus forming a communication link with the Kucha region. Older deltas visible on satellite images have been explored and two related archeological sites have been consecutively excavated to the northwest of Karadong: …

Mexican Ikat And Transatlantic Trade, Alejandro B. De Avila

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The earliest text known so far in the Americas was engraved on a potsherd found in Chiapa de Corzo in southern Mexico that has been dated to around 300 years before our era. The script appears to represent a language in the Mixe-Zoquean family (which developed historically along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec), and it has been proposed that the inscription on the clay reads as follows: “The pleated cloth got dyed. The thing that is made of pleated cloth has been cut.”1 If this interpretation holds true, the text must refer to a textile that was patterned by means of …

New Tools In The Box: Traditional Methods, Contemporary Materials And New Techniques On The Atlantic Coast A Round Table Discussion, Memory Holloway, Laurie Carlson Steger

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on the new interest in fiber arts, with the claim that this interest has seen a revival in the hands of contemporary artists exploring bold new forms. “The emergence of fiber art,” states Glenn Adamson, director of New York’s Museum of Art and Design, “is not just the reappraisal of an historic textile movement, rather a much more broad-based interest.”1 The fiber artists on this roundtable addressed two topics related to this broad-based interest, one on formal experimentation, the other on their geographic placement as artists on the Atlantic coast, particularly in and around …

Field To Bag, Bag To Field: Feedbag Production And Distribution In Rural America, Heather R. Buechler

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

sack- noun a large bag made of a strong material such as burlap, thick paper, or plastic, used for storing and carrying goods.[English Oxford Living Dictionaries.com,]

A popular object among collectors of agricultural ephemera, the printed agricultural sack—both textile and paper—used for the distribution of agricultural goods, is an object with a rich history. Previous research published on these ephemeral objects has typically examined their use and reuse in American households as clothing, quilts, and other domestic goods, or their significance in the World War I Belgian War Relief under the Herbert Hoover administration. This paper poses approaches to the …