Art and Design Commons^™

Cartography, Cloth And The Embroidered Tale, Bettina Matzkuhn

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

I have recently been researching maps and their connections to textile. Looking back on my own body of work, I realize that maps have frequently provided a sense of geography and metaphor as I continue to seek ways to tell stories that are important to me. Dennis Wood describes mapmaking as “a transformative process.” I would argue that working with cloth is also transformative -for both the cloth and the maker.

Looking at maps has expanded my ideas of narrative. I like Margaret Atwood’s definition of narrative. She says it’s “one damn thing after another” with the operative word being …

When This You See Remember Me: Sampler Making As A Material Practice Of Identity And Selfhood, Mary Lou Trinkwon

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

I would like to acknowledge the extensive research done by Textile historians, curators and collectors. I owe a huge debt to their research and all the documentation that is available. It is my hope that I can build on this strong body of knowledge and offer some new thoughts to this historic, vibrant and diverse practice.

I want to share with you a short survey of the terrain I have been cultivating on the topic of needlework and sampler making. I want to talk about how I use samplers as a pedagogical tool and as an assigned project in my …

Weaving Independence From A Distant Cottage Industry, Fenella G. France

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

The fabric of flags is inextricably woven into our cultural heritage. Throughout civilization flags have heralded national identity in war and peace, as symbols of both victor and defender. Research into the origins of early 1800 flag fabrics wove a fascinating tie to England, where the wool fabric was made, and why it survived while the weaving industry was mechanized during the industrial revolution. Bunting fabric provided the canvas for the flag as a symbol of a nation and its people. This makes the history of bunting and its struggle for survival into the nineteenth century, an integral facet …

La Mode À L’Écossaise: Textile Of Diplomacy, Seta K. Wehbé

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The fashion style called La Mode à l’Écossaise flourished during the early years of the French Second Empire (1852-1870). There is no equivalent English term for it except maybe “tartanmania.” In the early 1850s Queen Victoria’s fondness for wool tartans had already popularized this textile as clothing for women and children in England. Tartans came to France as a full-fledged fashion style after Empress Eugénie wore a tartan gown for the trip to England. The six-day State Visit of the French Imperial couple started on April 16th, 1855, a very foggy Sunday, when Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie set sail …

Preserving Provenance: Collaborative Conversation With A Textile Collector, Susan M. Strawn, Mary A. Littrell, Linda Carlson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Donations of textile collections are essential for universities and museums that rely on historical and ethnographic textiles for research, teaching, and exhibitions. In turn, collectors who have amassed substantial numbers of textiles seek appropriate donation venues. Provenance related to collecting individual textiles may be lost, however, before a donor selects an institution, or before the donation has been accessioned into a university or museum collection. A donation received after the demise of a donor who did not document individual pieces limits the provenance—the history of the source and ownership—of individual textiles. Without provenance, it is tempting to see even …

The Never-Ending Possibility Of Textile Art Education, Jan-Ru Wan

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Textiles have an intimate relationship in everyone’s life - whether one is aware of it or not. Textiles reveal so many stories and memories from every culture and society. My mother was an educator in a home economic school and I was trained by her hands; I was constantly busy helping her with quilting, embroidering, stitching, and making clothing. I grew up appreciating the dedication and skill in textile works. But it is the passion for story telling and the conceptual part of textile more than the desire to creating beautiful textile alone drove me toward the path of textile …

Historical Memory And Empathy In Studio Art Classroom, Karen Hampton

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

During the fall of 2002, I was a guest instructor at California College of Art and Craft in Oakland, California, and was asked to create a course inspired by my artwork and research. The course I created was titled, “Slavery, Internment and Transcendence,” subtitled "Artists of Color Who Use Historical Memory." The course involved the study of contemporary artists, their artwork and the historical context in which the artwork was inspired and fashioned

Students were taken inside the artist's world, learning to analyze artwork from the perspective of historical memory. By using "sense of place" curriculum, which included an understanding …

“Tie It On Tight, Girls!” Speaking And Acting Through Cloth In Southern Madagascar, Sarah Fee

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

It was another scorching day at the height of the dry season. Masy had come to visit me, bringing her basket of cotton to work. A Tandroy woman’s hands should never be idle. She began pinching out cotton seeds and the gathered girls and I picked up handfuls to join her. At one point, when conversation lagged, Masy held up a piece of cotton fluff and spontaneously began to tell a tale.

Long ago, we did not know woven cloth, but dressed in cotton fluff. Once there was an unhappy senior wife. She was unhappy because her husband loved his …

Delineating Women’S Historical Lives Through Textiles: A Latvian Knitter’S Narrative Of Memory, Eileen Wheeler

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In presenting and analyzing the narrative of a woman who knitted for survival, I engage two continuing marginalizations in mainstream history; that the lives of ‘everyday’ women are poorly delineated and that the realm of textiles is undervalued as a source of knowledge.

Outside the visual art domain the status and potential of textile study, with its associations of domesticity and craft, is little valued. Yet textiles have a history of being associated with many other aspects of women’s lives, a relationship that is slowly being probed for the knowledge it may hold (Parker, 1984; Tickner, 1988; Ulrich, 2001). Through …

Textiles From The Canadian Front, J. Penney Burton

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The craft of storytelling has all but disappeared from the Western cultural context, and there remain few peoples for whom oral traditions are still a prominent part of their everyday lives. Fiber artists and their work are frequently discussed by craft historians, critics, curators and connoisseurs, but aside from infrequent interviews in monographs and craft journals, their own voices are rarely heard. This is being somewhat addressed with the practice of conducting oral history interviews with leaders in the craft and textile field in the US, through the Smithsonian Institute, with the Nanette L. Laitman Project for Craft and the …

The Swedish Presence In 20th-Century American Weaving, Marion T. Marzolf

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Swedish weavers who arrived in the United States in the early 20th century before World War I found hand weaving a dying art in the United States, but their own skills were valued. American textile mills produced inexpensive and vast quantities of fabrics, but there was also growing interest in reviving the lost arts and crafts of the Colonial and pioneer eras. Influence from the European Arts and Crafts movement and the Bauhaus design philosophy was growing in modern America. These factors created new opportunities for a revival of hand weaving.

Sweden, by contrast, had retained its strong craft tradition …

The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: Modern Art And The Kimono, Valerie Foley

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In 2003 I enrolled in a master’s degree program in arts administration. In addition to such classes as exhibition planning, appraisals, and computer applications, we had two sweeping modern art surveys, which took us from the birth of impressionism in the 1860s to emerging artists of the 21st century.

For one end term project, we each had to design a complete hypothetical exhibition, from mission statement to budget to invitation card to gallery space. The only restriction was that we had to demonstrate on paper that we could actually pull it off.

At that time, I had recently seen a …

The History And The Present Of A Traditional Textile Of Okinawa, Japan A Narrative Of The People In Miyako Island And Miyako-Jofu Textile, Yuka Matsumoto

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Preface

Miyako Island, located in the Sakishima Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, is known for the production of the Miyako-jofu textile. Miyako-jofu is a hand-woven ikat textile, which is dyed with indigo and woven with dye-resistant yarns of hand-spun ramie. (fig.1) “Jofu” means a ramie textile. In this paper, the dye-resistant process in which designs are reserved in warp or weft yarns by tying off small bundles is called “ikat.”

This study examines what the meaning and the role Miyako-jofu have for the people in Miyako Island and examines the relations between the people and the textile. …

Confessions Of A Red Thread Bandit Queen: Ten Years Of Fieldwork With Narrative Embroidery, Skye Morrison

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

I confess to living a life full of unexpected experiences trying to remove the bark from the tree of commercialism and finding the ever-fruitful world of contemporary textiles made by traditional artisans. This presentation is a series of confessions brought to light through fieldwork, teaching and working in India and Canada / there and here / two worlds made into one. We begin with the six images connected to confessions or thoughts to live by:

Always dream that something is possible. I confess that I can be very stubborn when it comes to realizing these dreams. When I first …

Sashiko Workshop: Experiential Geometry, Lucy Arai

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The objective for this workshop is to experientially understand the connection between textile and math by drafting and stitching simple underlying grids from which all sashiko patterns are derived. This demonstrates the intrinsic connection between textiles and math.

This hands-on presentation taught the essentials of sashiko pattern drafting and stitching to facilitate an experiential understanding of geometry and subdivision of the stitched plane. Each participant received a threaded needle and a fabric square prepared with a grid, the underlying structure for all traditional sashiko patterns. I guided the participants through the process of sewing and drawing stitches through the grid …

Design Sources: The Edges Of Fiber Geometry, Barbara Setsu Pickett

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

My investigation began with the analysis of the stitched geometrical patterns used in the Japanese textile tradition called sashiko. This technique requires only needle, thread and countless hours of patient stitching. I became intrigued with the hemp leaf pattern called asa-noha. The crossing white stitches on a field of deep indigo blue, conjured up memories of starry constellations and the pinpoint, accurate mapping of laser surgery. When I look from one star to another, the stars seem to twinkle. I believe this illusion happens because the stars share rays. Looking at one star’s center invariably decomposes its neighbors.

Upon …

Textiles And The Body: The Geometry Of Clothing, Madelyn Shaw

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Physics and mathematics are not usually perceived as being closely connected with textile and clothing design or construction, either by scientists or by artists. Those who make clothing from cloth, however, must always take into account two geometries: the plane geometry of the cloth and the solid geometry of the body. In order to clothe the body we begin with cloth. Woven, knitted, knotted, or otherwise constructed, the inherent structure of cloth reflects mathematical principles. Interlaced threads create square or triangular grids, techniques such as knitting or crocheting can make grids of any shape, from triangular to polyhedral.

Those who …

Mathematical Approaches In Quilt Design, Gerda De Vries

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Mathematics often is thought of as the study of numbers and geometry. But mathematics is so much more. It also includes the study of patterns, enumeration, classification, problem solving, and logical reasoning. More loosely, mathematics is not just a collection of facts, but also an action: a way of doing, or a systematic way of thinking.

In this paper, quilt making will be discussed in the context of the latter view of mathematics. In particular, three quilts made with a structured approach to design will be discussed: Bubb’Illusion II, Wild Flowers, and Cyclic Permutations. Bubb’Illusion II represents early work of …

Constructing Garments, Constructing Identities: Home Sewers And Homemade Clothing In 1950s/60s Alberta, Marcia Mclean

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Home sewing is the most feminine of all the arts and crafts. It is an easy as well as a basic way for a woman to add to her femininity, whether she sews for herself, her children or her home. The woman who sews can be creative, make herself and members of her family attractive, and also stretch the family clothing budget.

The above paragraph is from a home economics thesis written in 1959. It neatly sums up the decade’s attitudes towards femininity and home sewing. In the years following the Second World War, the notions of public, active femininity …

Tracing The Temporary Thread: Decorative And Functional Devoré Textiles Of The Early Twentieth Century, Andie Robertson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The temporary or supplementary thread has been employed as a supportive structure in the manufacture of utilitarian and decorative woven textiles for over a hundred years. First developed by wool cleaners and finishers during the mid 19th century, the technique has been repeatedly employed to aid innovative yarn and fabric development by some of the textile industry’s leading engineers. The devoré technique, also known as burn out, developed from this temporary thread process during the late 1880s. The popularity of devoré with textiles engineers reached its peak in the 1920s when a period of high decoration coincided with innovation in …

Cotton To Cloth: An Indian Epic, Uzramma

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The cotton handloom industry of India is one of the great manufacturing institutions of the world: its looms have run continuously for five thousand years. Remnants of cotton thread have been found in the ruins of the Harappan civilization [5000-3500 BC], and the weavers of India have supplied the markets of the world with cotton cloth since at least the first century of the Christian era. The golden age of Indian cotton in recorded history stretches from that time until the beginning of the nineteenth century and there are testaments to the quantity, quality and variety of Indian cotton fabrics …

High Style And Cleanliness: Oriental Rugs In Toronto Homes 1880 - 1940, Neil Brochu

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Academic scholarship pertaining to Oriental rugs, which began at the end of the nineteenthcentury, has concentrated mainly on connoisseurship and the study of the cultures of origin and the peoples that have produced these items with a particular bias for items produced without the taint of Western influence. Little attention has been paid to the actual consumption of Oriental rugs in the West and the general influence of this trade on the evolution of decorative taste or how they may reflect changes in cultural and social attitudes. Oriental rugs within the Canada have received even less attention leading to assumptions …

Text & Textiles: New Writings From Spam Tales, Janis Jefferies

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Collaborations

In many essays and texts on the subject of art and science, the questions of collaboration and the points of discontinuity in disciplinary practice habitually surface. For example, C.P. Snow’s commentary on the ‘two cultures’ (as popularized in the Rede lectures in Cambridge in 1959) is frequently cited as a challenge to establishing a meeting place for artists and scientists where stereotypical expectations might be broken down. More weight, however, can be credited to Einstein’s acts of expansive thought, and the potential of what is yet to may come into existence through the open-ended processes of investigation, experimentation, and …

Sustainability Of Handwoven Carpets In Turkey: The Importance Of Technical Distinctions Between Regional Carpet Styles, Feryal Söylemezoğlu, Sema Taği

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

In Turkey, hand-made carpet-weaving is a widespread handicraft which many people are effectively busy with. It is also an important area in which unemployed labour can be put to use.

Carpet-making is a traditional craft that has been practised in Turkey since ancient times, and is still found in almost all regions today. Actually, in rural areas, many families still derive significant income from carpet-making.

The reasons why hand-woven carpet-making is crucial for Turkey can be listed as follows:

• Because of the socio economic conditions that currently exist in Turkey the rate of unemployment needs to be reduced, particularly …

Sustainability Of Handwoven Carpets In Turkey: Problems And Solution Proposals In Relation To Standards And Market Issues, Zeynep Erdoğan, Özlen Özgen

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to analyse sustainability of hand-woven carpets in Turkey connection with problems and solution proposals in relation to standards and market issues.

The interaction between changing social conditions and technological improvements, due to the arrival of the industrial revolution in Turkey, has influenced the production of hand-woven carpets. The option of purchasing machine-woven carpets in the domestic market has recently increased makedly. These carpets have various colours and designs, and they are cheap. Still, the interest of consumers in hand-woven carpets does continue to some extent. Collectors and investors also have a sustained interest …

Unraveling The Story: Art Holmes’ War Correspondent Uniform, Courtney Stewart

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

War correspondents have, and continue to risk their own personal safety in order to capture a story and communicate news. The first war correspondents from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Art Holmes and Robert Bowman, shipped out from Halifax in late 1939, and for the duration of the war vested themselves in standard military attire. Identical to that of the soldiers on the front whose stories they was capturing, Holmes and Bowman were given military uniforms. Although correspondents were neither soldiers nor members of the armed forces, they were given military priority and respect by association of what this uniform signified. …

Peacocks In The Sands Of Palm Beach: The Vogue Of Men’S Beach Robes, Diane Maglio

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Personally, if two years ago anyone had told me that regular two-fisted he-men would loll around on the beach in one of those “Charvet” linen robes with big wall-paper like figures two feet in diameter adorning them I would have said, ‘Crazy.’ But they are doing it [in Palm Beach]”

By 1920, the east coast of Florida was becoming an American Riviera. Journalists followed the habits and styles of socialites, celebrities, and millionaires in this “jewel of all resorts.” Palm Beach in winter was not only ideal for luxury pastimes of international society but equally important, an opportunity for men …

Weaving Messages Today: Three Decades Of Belts In Taquile Island, Peru (1976-2006), Elayne Zorn

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In studying the past, archaeologists examine change and continuity over time, but physical processes that affect the preservation of material remains make fine sequencing, at the level of decades, difficult or impossible. Cultural anthropologists and others who study present-day material culture frequently conduct short-term fieldwork, which makes it difficult or impossible to reliably study transformations over time. One solution to this problem is long-term ethnographic fieldwork, combining synchronic and diachronic data collection, to study processes of change and continuity in the production of individual weavers and extended families over generations, in communities and regions.

This paper is a preliminary analysis …

Elemental Pathways In Fiber Structures: Approaching Andean Symmetry Patterns Through An Ancient Technology, Mary Frame

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Repetitive pattern is laden with meaning in many cultures. In Andean cultures, where no alphabetic writing system was developed during prehispanic times, patterns and graphic codes carried a large cultural load. It is crucial to have appropriate tools to investigate the integrated properties (symmetry, color, number, direction, etc.) in the graphic codes of the ancient Andes. In this paper, I will propose some modifications to the prevailing approach to symmetry classification that better fits the patterns in Andean textiles.

Approaches to Symmetry Patterns, Modern and Ancient

An approach to classifying symmetry patterns that is called “plane pattern analysis” has been …

Brides And Grooms: Embroidery Of The Epirus Region, Sumru Belger Krody

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Traditional marriage ceremonies in the Epirus (Ípeiros) region of northwestern Greece were some of the most extravagant wedding celebrations among the Greeks on the mainland and islands. The textiles produced for the young bride’s trousseau were as elaborate as the celebrations. They included garments for her and her husband and textiles for their home. These textiles tell us many things about the region’s political, economic and artistic history. Ottoman Empire held the Greek mainland and islands in their control for centuries leaving their mark in many aspects of daily life and the arts and as an extension of arts in …