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Textile Society Of America Newsletter 10:3 – Fall 1998

Textile Society of America Newsletters

Beverly Gordon to Lead TSA into a New Millennium by Suzanne Baizermann
Letter from the President
Bibliography 1998
Museums Appoint, Promote Textiles Curators
Reviews
Announcements
Symposia/Seminars/Workshops
Exhibitions
Board of Directors
Report on Computer Use Questionnaire by Ann Liivandi
Hearst Museum Acquires Southeast Asian Textiles
Textile Museum Symposium Explores Avant Garde Roots
The Fifth Biennial (1996) Symposium in Retrospect by Rita J. Adrosko
Announcements
Exhibitions
Board of Directors

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 10:2 – Summer 1998

Textile Society of America Newsletters

The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology
Letter from the President
Letter from the Membership Secretary
Letter from the Editor
Calendar of TSA Events
Announcements
TSA ’98: On Your Own in New York City
Symposia/Seminars/Workshops
Exhibitions

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 10:1 – Spring 1998

Textile Society of America Newsletters

The Program by Madelyn Shaw
The Site by Desiree Koslin
Letter from the President
TSA Sponsors Workshop
Calendar of TSA Events
Textile Collections in the Newark Museum by Ulysses Grant Dietz
Reviews
Announcements
Gloria F. Ross Tapestry Center Established
Symposia/Seminars/Workshops
Exhibitions

Exceptional Textiles For Today's Interiors Weaving Our Way Through The Design Community's Exclusive Showrooms, Mia Backman

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This site seminar will begin with an introduction to the role of designer showrooms and their significance to the interior design community. Following this brief introduction, we will visit two textile showrooms: Donghia and Old World Weavers. These innovative showrooms were chosen for their diversity, leadership, and distinctive market positions. Donghia is known internationally for their creative weave structures that interpret classic forms into fresh modern designs. These light catching textiles are truly the antiques of the future. Old World Weavers industry expertise in the area of recreating historic textile documents has opened the doors to such restoration projects as …

The Mystery Of The Eisenhower Toile, Cindy Cook

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Eisenhower toile is a twentieth-century textile with a story to tell-through its motifs and its creators. The motifs in this toile represent the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower's life. The creation of the Eisenhower toile is a story of mystery and intrigue involving a famous American couple, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower; a prominent interior designer, Elisabeth Draper; a prestigious textile company, F. Schumacher & Co.; and a mystery designer.

The Eisenhower toile is a printed cotton produced by F. Schumacher & Co. of New York from 1956 to 1960. Schumacher produced the 36" wide fabric with a 36" repeat …

Unit Turning Blocks For Designing Tablet Weavings, Bonita R. Datta

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper describes a design process for tablet weaving with four-holed tablets. It addresses the following techniques: twining; Egyptian diagonals~ four-colour diagonals; 3/1 twill; and, 2/1 twill.

DEFINITIONS

Threading direction is the way in which the yarns pass through the holes in the tablets. These diagrams show the two possible threading directions. The fell line of the fabric is above, the unwoven warp is below, and the front surface of the textile faces the viewer.

This paper assumes all tablets are Z-threaded. The impact of alternating or symmetrical threading arrangements, and the operation of flipping tablets to reverse the threading, …

The Calligrammatic Pattern: An Aspect Of Modernism In French Textile Design, Lourdes M. Font

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper is less concerned with Twentieth Century French textiles as such than with what may have inspired their designers, with the possibilities suggested to textile artists in places where art, literature and design meet. To an artist with an appetite for the new, few places offered more possibilities than Paris in the decades before and after World War I. Between 1910 and 1940, textile designers working in Paris were part of a dose-knit community of the avant-garde that included writers, musicians, architects, painters, illustrators, interior and theatrical set designers, costumers and couturiers -- who not only mingled and took …

Photographic Evidence For 19th Century Central Asian (Kat Production, Kate Fitz Gibbon

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Rare. early photographs can provide both factual information about the various technical processes used to produce Central Asian ikat fabrics and an evocative vision of the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara in the 19th century. These photographs demonstrate the physical structure and equipment of the various craft workshops necessary for ikat production, the preparation of the ikat warp. the application of the pattern, the dye process, and the weaving and finishing of the cloth. Other photographs show the production of the most common 19th century lining materials, and the marketing of ikat in the bazaars.

Ikat fabric received wide distribution …

Recreating A Warp-Faced Compound Weave With The Jacquard Mechanism -Considering Heizo Tatsumura-, Keiko Kobayashi

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Recreating of Ancient Fabrics

The technique of how the Warp-faced compound weave was once woven has been the focus of study for many specialists in Japan. It was around 1921 that Heizo Tatsumura began to recreate ancient textiles from the 7th and 8th centuries, found in the Shosoin Repository and the Horyuji Temple. He used the new Jacquard mechanism, which had been imported from France in 1873 with great dexterity. With this mechanism, along with his gifted creativity and inventiveness Tatsumura produced new techniques for the purpose of recreation. The very modem Tatsumura chose the Jacquard mechanism as his tool …

Cheney Brothers, The New York Connection, Carol Dean Krute

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Cheney Brothers turned a failed venture in seri-culture into a multi-million dollar silk empire only to see it and the American textile industry decline into near oblivion one hundred years later. Because of time and space limitations this paper is limited to Cheney Brothers' activities in New York City which are, but a fraction, of a much larger story.

Brothers and beginnings

Like many other enterprising Americans in the 1830s, brothers Charles (1803-1874), Ward (1813-1876), Rush (1815-1882), and Frank (1817-1904), Cheney became engaged in the time consuming, difficul t business of raising silk worms until they discovered that speculation …

Spanier Arbeit A Tarot (Collars For A Prayer Shawl), Bonni-Dara Michaels

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Spanier Arbeit

A tallit is a rectangular piece of fabric with fringes (tzizit) at the four corners. Until fairly recently, it was worn as a prayer shawl exclusively by observant Jewish males over the age of thirteen. In Ashkenazic lands, primarily Germany and Poland, a limited range of materials was used to make a tallit. It was made of wool or silk, and was white or off-white with a black stripe. The center of one long side of the tallit was often distinguished by some form of decoration. This decorated area would be worn at the neck, functioning …

Kynoch Tartan: A Cultural Analysis Of Small Mill Production Based On Technological, Market And Social Frameworks, Ann Mclennan

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

"The picture of the industrial worker is not the portrait of the whole manthis can be painted, if at all, only after tracing his other social involvements and incorporating them."

A cultural analysis of any large entity such as a Mill is a difficult procedure.The focus of the following research is the development of a proto-industrial woollen Mill in rural Northern Scotland from the mid 18th century to the latter 20th century. It is sometimes difficult to separate linen,jute and woollen textile experiences as workers share so much in skill and social circumstance. Indeed, part of the curiosity of the …

Hogushi And Heiyo: Methods Of Creating Painterly Images In Woven Textiles, Kazuo Mutoh

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Proto-Meisen

The term meisen generally refers to plain-weave silk cloth patterned with woven (not printed) stripes or kasuri and made into kimono, haori, and nen'neko (literally 'jacket sleeper, " a padded coat worn during the autumn and winter months for carrying babies on the back). In the first half ofthe twentieth century, almost all Japanese women were familiar with meisen- as ordinary, everyday wear for the upper and middle classes and as dress-up kimono for working- class and country women. In the twenty four years between 1913 and 1937, according to the census, 200 million bolts …

Faith. Hope, And Charity: Making Madras, C. 1880-1930

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Weft·figured Scotch leno gauze, known as madras, was made in Darvel and other Ayrshire townships that had by 1800 become highly specialized in the production of fine, patterned cotton fabrics. This paper shows how pride in madras-weaving skills and a desire to maintain them not only perpetuated the design and manufacture of these cloths, but also inspired the development of new cloth types. It demonstrates the significance of a passing reference in Three Generations in a Family Textile Firm (Jocelyn Morton 1971, p.49) to the response by Alexander Morton - a Darvel madras weaver turned merchant/manufacturer by 1870 - …

Damask Linen Manufacture And Marketing At The Turn-Of-The-Century: Interpreting The Biltmore House Collection, Kate Rehkopf

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Damask linen manufacture has a long and varied history. Appearing in Europe around the fifth century, damask linens quickly became desired by those possessing great wealth. Figured damask linen was especially prized and was often the only type of table cover to be used by royalty. Heraldic crests, hunting scenes, historical events, and other symbols or occasions of cultural importance were memorialized in figured damask linen. By the end of the nineteenth century, the use of figured damask linens was a symbol of royalty, luxury, and beauty.

These attributes figured prominently in the appointment of George Washington Vanderbilt's home, Biltmore, …

Interlacing Histories Loom Technologies And Pictorial Weaving In Late-Nineteenth Century Japan And France, Leila Wice

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Starting in 1872, Japanese artisans travelled from Kyoto to Lyon, to study in the town's famed silk-weaving studios. The Jacquard mechanism which they helped to introduce to Japan the following year made the sorabiki-bata draw-loom obsolete within decades. Even in its. most basic application as an addition to hand-loom weaving, this new technology fundamentally transformed the geography and the economy of manufacturing processes by the turn of the century, but these new methods' impact on the actual fabrics which they were used to produce has yet to be fully explored.

In both countries at this time, woven pictures were one …

The Art Of Abstraction, Daniel A. Siedell

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden is pleased to present The Art of Abstraction. the eleventh annual Sheldon Statewide exhibition. Sheldon Statewide is a unique collaboration between the Sheldon Gallery. the Nebraska Art Association-a nonprofit volunteer membership organization dedicated to the advancement of the visual arts in Nebraska--and the efforts and cooperation of the many Nebraska communities that serve as exhibition venues. After a decade of activity. in which it has participated in the outreach mission of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. this highly successful touring program has collaborated with the Nebraska Department of Education and the Getty …

From Kitsch To Art Moderne: Popular Textiles For Women In The First Half Of Twentieth-Century Japan, Masanao Arai

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

When we think of the Meiji period(I868-1912) and the definition of women student's roles in Japanese society, we envision young women with long black hair worn in the style similar to the "Gibson Girl" of the American Victorian period, but with a wide ribbon tied in a big bow, wearing arrow-feather-pattern ikat (yagasuri) kimono with maroon (ebicha) pleated long culotte- like skirt, called hakama, and lace-up boots. The fashion mode of Jagakusei (women students) played an improtant role in the production of meisen textiles.

They're often depicted riding on a bicycle, which was a novel attraction …

Bibliography For: Reality And Vitual Reality: Extending The Tradition Of Compound Woven Structures

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Benjamin, Walter

Emery, Irene

Fannin, Allen A

Grosicki, Z.1.

McCullough, Malcolm.

Newport, Mark.

Nia, Xia.

Oelsner, G. H.

Plant, Sadie.

Analyzing Patterns In Oriental Carpets: Through Symmetry To The Mind Of The Maker, Carol Bier

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Typically in Oriental carpets, many patterns combine to make the whole. Within an oblong field there is often an overall repeat pattern arbitrarily cut off by borders. Field patterns cover the plane, while border patterns are linear. Patterning -- and color -- in Oriental carpets is carried by the pile (supplementary weft-wrapping) that projects from the surface of a plain weave foundation.

If we take as our definition of pattern the systematic repetition of a unit, distinctions become clear between designs and patterns. While the possibilities for designs are limitless (within the constraints of a medium), the possibilities for repeating …

Investigating The Origins Of The Raphael Tapestries At The Cathedral Of St. John The Divine, Camille Myers Breeze

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This Site Seminar will focus on research into the location and date of manufacturing of a suite of eight English tapestries depicting "The Acts of the Apostles". The tapestries were donated to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1954 by Louise Brugieres of Newport, RI and New York, NY and have hung in the bays of the nave since that time. Based on cartoons designed by Raphael for Pope Leo X in 1516, they are among fifty-five full or partial copies known of the original tapestries woven for the lower walls of the Sistine Chapel. Seven of the …

Brokers Of Textile Traditions: The Case Of The Shopkeepers In Turkey, Marlene Breu, Ronald Marchese

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Over the course of the past twenty-five years a cultural transformation has taken place in the Turkish Republic. Overshadowed in more recent years by the political confrontations between secularists and Islamists, an unchecked inflationary spiral that has devalued the national currency, and the social upheavals associated with economic disparity, this cultural transformation has garnished little attention from the more traditionally defined scholarship on the modern Middle East. Revolutionary in nature, it is the result of several factors, among them socio-economic changes brought about by a shift in world markets and the liberalization of the Turkish economy. It is responsible for …

The American Coach Lace Industry, Nancy Britton

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Coach lace is a trim used almost exclusively in the upholstery of carriages and coaches. The names "coach lace" or "livery lace" were used consistently throughout its manufacture. The robust looped wool pile created by a supplementary warp, was a variation of velvet similar to Brussels carpeting and makes this trim easily identifiable.

This paper examines the manufacturing of American coach lace from the mid- 18th century until its demise in the 1930's. Coach lace is a textile little recognized today. The prevalence and context within which it existed and how coach lace adapted to new forms of transportation, …

A Look Inside And Behind Central Asian Ikats, Annie Carlano

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The recent publications and exhibitions about Central Asian ikats have been highJy acclaimed projects in both their scholarly and their interpretive excellence. Extensive information about the ikats is now available. But while much of the history of these silk luxury items is known, much less has been written about the "flip side" of the story, the original or indigenous linings of the robes and backings of the wall hangings. There are two types of such textiles. The earliest extant fabrics are the woodblock printed chit type which have been well researched. This presentation will focus on the other, more esoteric, …

Re-Defining Tradition: Handweavers To The World, Seema Chandna

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

It is my ongoing attraction for, and love of, Indian textiles that brought me back to my country of birth after spending several years, studying and working, in New York. This paper deals with my research, experience and observations, over the last year, working closely with the hand-weaving industry in India.

At my design studio, in Bangalore, I have a multi-treadle handloom and have employed a local hand-weaver. We create the designs and make sample swatches at the studio. For production of yardage, based on our swatches, we work with various weaving centers, located in different Southern Indian villages. Depending …

Exploring Patttern In "Kashmir" And "Paisley" Shawls, Arlene C. Cooper

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Using six extraordinary shawls from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this presentation will explore the relationship bwtween how a shawl is made and the symmetry system used in its patterning, and briefly consider the terminology which might best express these relationships. Certain symmetry systems and styles of shawl patterning may evolve from the capabilities of particular looms. For instance, weaving on a basic Indian hand loom with the characteristic Indian shawl weave, 2/2 double-interlocked twill, is a very slow process, which encourages simple symmetry: a motif repeating exactly across the width of a textile, or straight repeat. …

Contents And Introduction

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

CREATING TEXTILES: Makers, Methods and Markets

Proceedings of the

Sixth Biennial Symposium

of the Textile Society of America, Inc.

New York, New York

1998

The papers are unedited and reproduced as submitted. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. Students and researchers wishing to cite specific authors are encouraged to contact those individuals, as many of these papers represent work in progress, or work which has been committed for publication elsewhere.

The Textile Society of America, Inc. provides a forum for the exchange and dissemination of …

An Early Seventeenth-Century Japanese Textile In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Joyce Denney

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

As a site seminar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a rare early seventeenth-century Japanese robe (kosode) in the Museum's collection (see ill.) was examined in depth. The sumptuous complexity of the textile from which the robe was made was analyzed, with emphasis on the textile's makers and their methods as well as the markets of the period.

The ground fabric, a white float-patterned plain-weave silk, was probably produced in China. During this period Chinese silk was highly prized in Japan; nevertheless, this imported cloth was then highly embellished. The textile was resist-dyed in irregularly bordered bands that …

Making The Bed: Printed Sheets For Children Since 1960, Sarah Hayne Fitzsimmons

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Before the 1960s, bed sheets were usually white. Any decoration, whether applied by hand through applique, embroidery or crochet, or machine-printed, maintained the monochrome. As screen printing technology and more color-fast dyes were developed, multicolored printed bed sheets began to enter the American market. In 1960, two of the sheet patterns available in the Sears, Roebuck catalog; "Cowboys" and "Kittens," were intended specifically for children. Over the next thirty years, printed sheets for children became an increasingly booming American industry. This paper traces the evolution of these "kid sheets" from a social history point of view; focusing on the developing …

Textiles - An Art Form For The 90'S: Advancing Fiber With New Concepts & Marketing Strategies, Elizabeth Gaston, Laura Hill

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This panel discussion provided a forum for an exploration of the place and meaning of contemporary textile art. It was one of several concurrent panels held on the final afternoon of the Sixth Biennial Textile Society of America Symposium. Textiles An Art Form For the 90's brought together artists and enthusiasts from many backgrounds and with different perspectives. Four participants presented formal papers accompanied by slides. This was followed by a panel discussion.

The chairperson was Patricia Malarcher, editor of Surface Design Journal. She shared the viewpoint of the media. Malarcher also presented Susan Lordi Marker's paper. Marker …