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Norwegian Natural Dyeing: Art, Craft, Gender And Innovation - Natural Dyes As A Tradition In Norway, Mette Biering

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper describes how the knowledge about natural dyes survived the introduction of aniline dyes to Norway in the last quarter of the nineteenth-century. How this happened involved women, for there was a great campaign to keep the traditional colors alive for the continued use in woven cloth, coverlets, tapestries and folk costumes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century great efforts were made by women to restore and re-design traditional folk costumes; they were therefore in a position to keep the dye knowledge in the face of industrial competition. There was a country-wide search to gather dye recipes from …

Claudy Jongstra: Transmitting Craft Heritage Through Contemporary Architecture, Susan Brown

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

“.. textiles, so often no more than an afterthought in planning, might take a place again as a contributing thought.”

When Anni Albers wrote “The Pliable Plane” in 1957, she expressed a vision for an integrated, rather than decorative, role for textiles in architecture. Dutch felt artist Claudy Jongstra has realized that goal. In the past five years, Jongstra has created works for some of Holland’s most important public buildings: The Hague, the Amsterdam Public Library, the Rotterdam Kunsthal, The Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Center, and the Nijverdal City Hall and Cultural Center all prominently feature her felts, not as …

A Poem Is A Robe And A Castle: Inscribing Verses On Textiles And Architecture In The Alhambra, Olga Bush

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper studies the interrelationship between textiles, architecture and poetry in the Alhambra, the palatial complex of the Nasrids, the last Muslim dynasty in the Iberian Peninsula. Poetic figures likening architecture to textiles in parietal inscriptions, which I will call “textile metaphors,” are the crux of this interrelationship. I limit discussion to a single example from the epigraphy of the Alhambra: a poem inscribed in the interior of the Qalahurra al-jadıda, a tower-palace in the palatial complex. The focal point is the term muwashsha, common to the vocabulary of textile design and literary form, which is further employed here to …

“Revisiting The Ocucaje Opened Tunic From The Textile Museum; Washington, D.C.: Textile Models And The Process Of Imitation”, Sophie Desrosiers

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Features of the Ocucaje textile (accession number 1959.11.1) belonging to the Textile Museum Washington, D.C. have previously been analyzed by Mary Frame as representing designs derived from thread and sprang imagery. A new look at the textile reveals a textile model. The origin of this model will be traced as well as the innovation of new procedures used in the process of imitation.

The Conservation Of Three Hawaiian Feather Cloaks, Elizabeth Nunan, Aimée Ducey

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Feather capes and cloaks of the ali`i communicate the history of the Hawaiian people through their presence in museum collections around the world. The collection of thirteen of these textile garments at the Bishop Museum attests to the legacy of the museum’s founders: the desire of the descendants of the ali`i to preserve their heritage so that future generations may continue to learn about Native Hawaiian culture, its history and values. As such, the ahu`ula are central to the narratives describing that history and serve as signifiers of its values. From the life of the original owner, to later use …

Industrial Production And The Hand Process: Making A Bridge, Catharine Ellis

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The power loom has long been a time and labor saving device resulting in a separation of the weaver/designer from the process of making cloth. This is evident in the Taiten shibori fabrics of the early 20th century, the only form of Japanese loom woven shibori. Taiten fabric was woven of plain weave with heavier threads placed at intervals in the warp. When the cloth is removed from the loom the heavy threads are pulled to form a resist for dyeing. While developing my own process of woven shibori I was not able to understand why the Japanese never developed …

Silent Needles, Speaking Flowers: The Language Of Flowers As A Tool For Communication In Women’S Embroidery In Victorian Britain, Christen Elaine Ericsson, Mary Brooks

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Language of Flowers, a dictionary of symbolic meanings assigned to individual flowers, was established in Europe during the early 19th century as a result of the leisure classes’ interests in botany and a social preoccupation with romance and chivalry.

Victorian upper class women, isolated within their assigned domestic sphere had a limited number of acceptable activities available for them. With restrictions place upon them by society regarding appropriate behavior, the possibility that some women sought methods of covert communication and expression exists.

Embroidery, so inextricably linked to the Victorians’ definition of femininity, could have been an ideal form through …

Dress Of The Lolo, Pathen, Hmong And Yao Of Northern Vietnam In 2005-2006: Reflections Of Cultural Continuity And Change, Serena Lee Harrigan

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Many of the approximately 30 ethnic minority groups living in northern Vietnam continue to wear daily a traditional dress that communicates their cultural identity and links them to generations of history. Based on field studies conducted in villages in 1999, 2005, and 2006, this paper discusses the dress of the Lolo, Pathen, Hmong, and Yao who live in the northernmost areas of Vietnam where travel remains restricted. Connecting textiles with ancient beliefs and practices, these studies document the continued use of: a memorial display of clothing along with ancestral drums during Black Lolo funeral rites; the celestial crown of the …

Culture Brokers: Weavers, Photographers, Scientists, And Textile Experts, Kimberly Hart

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

DOBAG, a carpet weaving cooperative in western Turkey, founded in the 1980’s, is famous for revitalizing natural dyes in new-production textiles of “indigenous” design for export. It is also known for its work in sustaining women’s artistic production and helping villagers remain in rural regions, rather than migrate to urban centers. This paper considers the complex network of individuals who came together in the history of the founding of the cooperative. In 2003, the director, Ahmet Çinar, and in 2007, one of the founders, Josephine Powell, died. As a result, I have been rethinking the collaborative efforts of expatriate and …

Hand-Spinning For Traditional Garments In Ladakh, Tracy P. Hudson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This presentation examines the living tradition of hand-spinning wool for garment cloth in Ladakh, North India. In the villages of Ladakh, the technology of spinning has not significantly changed for centuries. Villagers typically spin and weave wool from the bounty of their flocks to produce items for daily use: clothing, bags, rope, and rugs. This research focuses on the villages of Skurbuchan and Bodh Kharbu in Western Ladakh, where wool is hand-spun, woven and dyed in a manner representative of the region. Women in these villages grow up learning the art of hand-spinning during the coldest months, when the household …

Rediscovering Camlet: Traditional Mohair Cloth Weaving In Southeastern Turkey, Charlotte Jirousek

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

When European commerce expanded during the era of the Crusades, one of the commodities that was avidly sought by merchants reaching the Levant was a textile they called camlet, then known in Turkish as sof.. Camlet in the 15th century was made entirely of mohair, although later forms of European camlet were adulterated with other fibers. The mohair goat was unique to the region once known as Asia Minor (now Turkey), and attempts to raise these goats outside of Turkey never succeeded until the 20th century. By the 16th century Western merchants mainly sought yarn and fiber to supply their …

Perfumed Textiles, Katia Johansen

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

As a museum professional, I work with memories. And nothing is more evocative than scent, which is both fragile and powerful. Perfumed textiles and costume are a standard part of every culture, yet few have been identified, and virtually none have been preserved. Perfuming was traditionally used to mask malodors from use or from production processes like tanning and dyeing, for ceremonial reasons, or simply to create a favorable impression of the wearer. Perfuming methods included using incense, laundry aids, sweet bags and fuming pans. Unintentional perfuming also occurred, of which we sometimes get a whiff in our museum collections. …

Iowa Or Dye! Natural Dyes As American Craft And Horticulture, Sara J. Kadolph

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Cultural expression reflects the multi-dimensional environment in which an individual lives and works. Art and craft function as technologies within that environment. The materials used say who we are, and how we think and feel. The use of natural dyes expresses philosophy and intent. In my case, renewable resources (natural dyes) used in my art work connect me to horticulture. I grow many of the natural dyes I use and sell both dye seeds and goods dyed with Iowa-grown and exotic natural dyes. Using natural dyes also connects a dyer to the past and future. The historical connection occurs as …

Translation Of Medium: Kesi Meets Painting, Jean Kares

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Pictorial silk tapestry, or kesi, was produced in China beginning in the tenth century as a method of weaving that allowed for designs that were independent of loom controlled patterning. When Chinese weavers adopted the technique, they expanded its design repertoire from overall patterning to a means of creating pictures, and typically chose similar subjects to those of court paintings, sometimes copying directly from them. In kesi, the conventions of depiction in painting and tapestry met, and the process of translation from one to the other gave rise to a new mode of expression. Tapestry method represents a serious challenge …

Crochet Lace As Expression Of Digital Culture, Gail Kenning

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Human designed, physical textile patterns such as lace are familiar in our everyday lives and the historical, geographic and cultural significance of these patterns, and their aesthetic and/or mathematical characteristics, have been extensively investigated and documented. However, their evolutionary potential remains under-theorized. While the digital environment is increasingly used as a design aid in the production of textiles, its potential for exploring the evolutionary possibilities for lace has not been fully investigated. This paper discusses an experimental research art project that explored the evolutionary potential for lace patterns within the digital environment.

Human designed, hand-made domestically produced physical textile patterns …

The Usage And Symbolic Meaning Of A Length Of White Cotton Cloth Used In Shamanist Rituals For The Dead In Korea, Jeeun Kim

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

As a practicing artist who is using fiber as a medium, I have been interested in the function and symbolism of fiber in traditional custom and culture as well as in traditional craft. In this paper, I focus on the symbolic role of the length of white cloth used in the ritual for the dead called “Kut” in Korea. Kut are not simply symbolic expressions of the belief system but are a deep source of cultural expression as well. In fact, Kut have been primary inspirations for the work of many artists, including my own work. I will introduce three …

The Quilt Index: Communicating Stories In The Stitches, Mary Worrall, Marsha Macdowell, Justine Richardson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Investigations into the historical, cultural and sociological roles of quilts have become a focus for scholars across a range of disciplines. Scores of grassroots state and regional quilt documentation projects have focused on documenting quilts’ personal and community contexts, as well as capturing the history of their production, ownership, use, and describing their physical appearance. Enabling both scholars and a broad general audience to access this information is central to furthering the role that these ubiquitous textiles can play in such scholarship. The Quilt Index (www.quiltindex.org) is a comprehensive, digital library that provides access to extensive documentation on quilts and …

Expressions Of Power – Luxury Textiles From Early Medieval Northern Europe, Sonja Marzinzik

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper focuses on luxury textiles from archaeological and non-archaeological contexts in northern Europe from approximately the 5th to 11th centuries A.D. Due to the preservation bias against organics in the archaeological record, today we only catch glimpses of the crucial role that textiles played in the Germanic world. Careful analysis of often minute remains of textiles, supplemented by examination of historical sources underlines their importance. Hence, textiles are not only a source of knowledge for early medieval social and economic relations but they are also markers of long-distance exchange between the North and the Mediterranean and beyond.

Select examples …

Mud And Dirt: Australian Soil As Self-Expression, Di Mcpherson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

I was born in Tasmania, Australia’s island state, and that geographical reality is the primary feature of my art work and my dyeing. Although I have also lived and worked in Britain, and in Africa, the natural world around me has colored my aesthetic sense. Dye research and conference participation, and dye workshops I have taught and attended in Canada, the USA, Japan, India, and elsewhere, have helped me integrate my artistic ideas with the ecology of the natural environment which sustains the organisms I use for dyeing. That environment also sustains and supports me, as a fiber artist, physically, …

A Marketplace In Miniature: Norwich Pattern Books As Cultural Agency, Victoria Mitchell

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The paper analyses 18th-century pattern books from the city of Norwich (UK) as examples of cultural mediation. The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai notes that from a ‘methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context’. The books are always on the move, portable, negotiated afresh with each encounter; they are a marketplace in miniature, carrying patterns, fabrics and names across geographical and cultural borders, snippets of detail in sample form linking back to the special relationship between the master weaver and merchant for which Norwich was famous. The word ‘detail’ (Fr. détailler) is used here …

Prosperity, Longevity, And “Happily Ever-After”: Symbolism And The Sophistication Of Implication In Japanese E-Gasuri (Picture Ikat) Textiles, Ann Marie Moeller

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Ancient luxury fabrics, preserved from as early as the seventh century, testify to the long history of Japanese fascination with symbolic images on cloth. By the nineteenth century Japanese society had developed a complex vocabulary of symbols that was easily identified by both commoners and elites. This paper will explore sophisticated, implied messages expressed in this symbolic language in e-gasuri, a textile technique that came to full flower during the same century. E-gasuri is the Japanese term for the process of resist dying thread (ikat) which skilled artisans used to create pictures – sometimes simple, sometimes intricate-in fabric. Since the …

The String Or Grass Skirt; An Ancient Garment In The Southern Andes, Amy Oakland

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The string or grass skirt appears among the earliest known garments in the Southern Andes. Archaeologists discovered the skirts wrapped around Chinchorro ancestor figures in burials near the Pacific coast of North Chile dating to 8000 B.C. The Chinchorro people’s mummified ancestors included specific gender traits so it is clear that they wanted to identify the skirts as a female garment. Chinchorro men were equipped with leather loincloths and both apparently used twinned grass mantles, blankets, or mats.

Through time, these coastal Andeans developed an elaborate dress with enormous string turbans and pelican-skin capes, however the string skirt remained the …

“I’Ve Got A Feeling We’Re Not In Kansas, Anymore:” Cross-Cultural Design In Peruvian Connection’S Textiles, Margarete Ordon

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Peruvian Connection, a high-end clothing company, has built its reputation on selling clothes made from finely crafted textiles using luxury fibers. Self-consciously marketing itself as a celebration of cross-cultural exchange, the company appropriates designs from Andean textiles and fuses them with elements from Western fashion and other global textile practices. Through transnational and transcultural design, production, and distribution, the company simultaneously stresses distance and connection, difference and sameness, in a constant tug of war over the designs, skills, labor, materials, and products. In exploring Peruvian Connection’s cultivation of its cross-cultural textiles, I analyze how the company promotes the design, production, …

Eats, Shoots, And Weaves, Lisa Lee Peterson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

“I assume you’re Buddhist?” My face twisted in bewilderment. I didn’t immediately know how to answer this question.

It was Good Friday 1982, the day I first met my in-laws-to-be. My future brother-in-law and his wife had driven to the family farm in northern Indiana, ostensibly to observe the spring ritual with family, but really to observe me. My soon-to-be father-in-law raised his wine glass in a toast “to all of us who celebrate this Easter season.” He then turned to me and dropped his bombshell, “I assume you’re Buddhist?”

Embellishments Of The Alaska Native Gut Parka, Fran Reed

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Dealing with various weather conditions is a serious matter in Alaska. Coastal Native Alaskans have been surviving in severe environments for millennia. Between the heat of the summer and the freezing cold of the winter is that transitional season when it rains. Raincoats were fashioned out of bird skins and fish skins but it is the gut skin parka that became the universally adopted garment along the coast of Alaska. Differing preparation, stitching and styling methods distinguish the many coastal villages and are expressed in embellishments and details that define the region, the culture and the function of these beautiful …

People, Place, Spirit, Denise Ava Robinson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

People, Land, Spirit is about the deep engagement I have for my homeland, Tasmania. It is about the relationship between people, place and spirit.

Indigenous people live in harmony with the land – their very existence in accordance with rhythms of nature. Many cultures have over time been tattered, scattered or shattered through colonisation, the Tasmanian aboriginal culture being one of them.

Tattered cultures arouse the desire for the retracing of histories, cultural practices and traditions, many of which form the basis of contemporary practices today. These processes bring deeper understanding and awareness: new cultural practices emerge, and the cycles …

Identification Of Red Dyes In Textiles From The Andean Region, Ana Roquero

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Identification of dyes and pigments is presently very precise by means of different systems of chromatographic analysis. Nevertheless, as the same dye components can be found in different plants and animals, it is important when studying dyes in textiles to consider the geographical and cultural context of both the textile and the possible dyestuffs used historically in the area. The presentation shall focus on a single colour: red. Various shades of red are profusely used in textiles from South America. Many of these are obtained mainly from cochineal. However, when analysing the colouring substances of an Andean textile, it is …

Spinning Pattern, Ann Pollard Rowe

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Textile Museum was recently given a Salasaca woman’s reobozo, collected in 1966, with an unusual design effect created during the spinning of the weft yarn. In normal Salasaca women’s wraps, the fabric is dyed wool with a few white cotton stripes along the sides and ends and across the center. Generally the cloth is woven in an undyed state, and then dyed. The wool yarns take the dye and the cotton yarns do not, and remain white. This shawl has these typical white cotton stripes but also an area near one end where the white is not continuous across …

Donning The Cloak: Safavid Figural Silks And The Display Of Identity, Nazanin Hedayat Shenasa, Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This study examines the function of figural silk textiles from Safavid Iran (1501-1722) as visual transmitters of identity. Textile historians and connoisseurs have admired figural silks for the technically advanced weave structures, delicate textures and brilliant colors, but the narrative motifs featured in a sub-genre of these compositions set them apart from other luxury textiles. The emphasis of this study will be on scenes depicting events and characters from Iranian poet Nizami’s twelfth century epic poem, Layla and Majnun.

The appeal of narrative textiles among the Safavid elite will be analyzed in relation to political and religious conditions that propagated …

Textiles Recorded: Fashion Reconstructed Through Aztec Codices, Jennifer E. Siegler

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Textiles from central Mexico at the time of the Aztec empire are generally ascribed great significance due to the historical documentation of textile tribute offerings and sumptuary laws in which textiles identified social status; however, further research is warranted on the artistry of these textiles. While the climate of central Mexico is not conducive to preserving fiber materials, the rich manuscripts of this region preserve many images of textiles created during the Aztec empire. Early colonial manuscripts, many of which are copies of pre-conquest manuscripts no longer extant, preserve images of textiles from the pre-conquest period. These manuscripts provide invaluable …