Art and Design Commons^™

The Lévite Dress: Untangling The Cultural Influences Of Eighteenth-Century French Fashion, Kendra Van Cleave

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

During the final decades of the eighteenth century, France saw a massive vogue for women’s clothing styles that, while adhering to the fundamental norms of French dress, were directly influenced by Ottoman clothing. One of the most popular of these was the levite, a dress that was introduced in the late 1770s and continued in popularity through the late 1780s. Inspired by costumes worn in a staging of Racine’s play “Athalie,” which is set in the ancient Biblical era, the levite initially mimicked the lines of Middle Eastern caftans. Over time, the style developed into at least three different variations, …

Mashru Redux: From The Calico Museum In Ahmedabad To A Loom In The Great Plains, Wendy R. Weiss

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A zigzag line of resist dye characterizes a fabric called Mashru. It was produced in several different geographic locations; however, this paper discusses examples from India and my efforts to reconstruct patterns that have not been actively produced in this century. The Calico Museum in Ahmedabad is the first place I saw this style of warp resist fabric. The literature says that it was produced for Muslim clients who were not allowed to wear silk next to their skin. The word “Mashru” means “permitted” in Arabic and its Sanskrit variation “Misru” means “mixed.” A mashru fabric historically has a silk …

Cottage Industry As Social Practice: Sustainability Of Handweaving In The Post-Industrialist Era, Maggie Leininger

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

India to Appalachia: How Cottage Industries Preserve Textile Heritage examines the role of the hand weaver and the cottage industry from India to the American Craft Revival in promoting cultural identity through textiles. The migratory nature of textile production both in the pre-and post-industrial practices has long challenged the notion of a pure textile heritage for any culture. However, with the almost simultaneous appearance of Khadi production in India and the American Craft Revival of Appalachia, the allure of the homespun as a cultural asset became a mechanism to offset the impact of textile industrialization. As urban centers increased in …

The Deep Origins Of Kashmir Shawls, Their Broad Dissemination And Changing Meaning. Or Unraveling The Origins And History Of A Unique Cashmere Shawl, Joan Hart

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Emulation is constant in all forms of art. Debates have arisen regarding the nature of this imitation by Europeans of indigenous Kashmir shawls. The intrinsic Kashmiri aspect was the weave itself: nowhere else was a double interlock tapestry twill technique used. The unique fabric originated in Tibet: pashmina from the underbelly of the mountain goat. The shawl was strong, lightweight, and warm. The earliest Kashmir shawls were simple in design: the double long shawls and moon shawls. The earliest shawls had simple motifs, single floral blooms. By the end of the eighteenth century, this motif was compounded to many blooms …

Common Sense & Pin Money: The Material Culture And Legacy Of Lula Annie Butler 1909-2009, Robin Michel Caudell

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

“Common Sense and Pin Money: The Material Culture and Legacy of Lula Annie Butler 1909-2009” examines local/global contexts of the late Mrs. Butler’s found quilts, her “make do” ethos, which made a way out of no way decades before recycle, re-purpose and green were hash tags. A lifelong Preston, Maryland resident and domestic worker, Mrs. Butler’s household was outfitted with quilts, tablecloths, aprons, pillows, and shopping bags she created from fabric-sample books and fabric remnants obtained from the late Mrs. Sarah Covey, her longest employer, who operated a drapery and upholstery business in Federalsburg, Maryland. Mrs. Butler’s artistic impulse-vibrant, improvisational, …

Abstracts Of Papers: Textile Society Of America 16th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Abstracts of 175 papers:

Monisha Ahmed — The Kashmir / Cashmere Shawl – Tradition and Transformation

Philis Alvic — Eliza Calvert Hall, The Handwoven Coverlet Book, and Collecting Coverlet Patterns in Early Twentieth Century Appalachia

Sarah Amarica — Global Threads: Histories of Labour and Cloth in Ann Hamilton and Ibrahim Mahama’s Installation Art

Lynne Anderson — Schoolgirl Embroideries: Integrating Indigenous Motifs, Materials, and Text

Jennifer Angus — Education through Co-Design

Margaret Olugbemisola Areo and Adebowale Biodun Areo — Egungun: Concept, Content and the Dynamic Contextual Manifestations of Yoruba Ancestors Masquerade

Alison Ariss — Wrapped in Wool: Coast Salish wool weaving, …

Radical Access: Textiles And Museums, Michele Hardy, Joanne Schmidt

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This presentation discusses recent initiatives at Glenbow and Nickle Galleries that endeavor to provide new, radical levels of access to textile collections as a means to build community and affect creativity. While locking textiles away in environmentally controlled rooms and minimizing handling are useful methods for preservation, they are less effective in building vibrant communities or creating future relevance form museum collections. This paper, building on Hemming’s post-colonial textile theory, as well as Onciul’s theories on decolonizing engagement, challenge the apparent dichotomy between access and preservation. It argues that preservation without radical access, without shared community meaning making, without respecting …

Weaving Authenticity: Artesanías Or The Art Of The Textile In Chiapas, Mexico [Poster], Addison Nace

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In Chiapas, Mexico textiles live in different institutions from the market to the museum. In these spaces tourists, art professionals, and weavers manifest their varying perspectives of the authenticity of textiles. I examine the construction of authenticity through these spaces. In the museum, textiles become authentic because they represent a vision of an idyllic past. The authenticity created by the market is entangled in the acts of production by weaving cooperatives and consumption by tourists. Weavers see their work in intertwined thread with identity, culture, art, and economic necessity. Tourists often fetishize the handmade and cultural ties of the objects, …

Refashioning Newport: Reuse Of Textiles During The Gilded Age, Anna Rose Keefe

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

During the late-nineteenth century, descriptions of the fashions worn by the summer residents of Newport, RI appeared in magazines and newspapers all around the world. Though contemporary interpretation romanticizes the idea that Newport’s style leaders wore their ensembles once before discarding them, letters and diaries from the Newport Historical Society and the Preservation Society of Newport County detail how clothing was reused and remade across all levels of society during the American Gilded Age. While Newport’s belles sold and traded gowns with friends, remodeled afternoon ensembles into evening gowns, and re-cut and re-dyed their clothing to fit the latest styles, …

Sprang Bonnets From Late Antique Egypt: Producer Knowledge And Exchange Through Experimental Reconstruction, Carol James

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Head coverings are a global phenomenon, worn by people everywhere with various roles and meanings within their respective societies. The sprang technique has been part of the hat-making tradition in various times and places, from Bronze Age bonnets in Scandinavia to hair nets found in modern Eastern Europe. Arid conditions in the Nile Valley communities of Egypt preserved hundreds of sprang bonnets dating to the Late Antique period (c. 3^rd to 7^th centuries) which are now held in many European and North American museums. Among these, the Deutsches Textilmuseum in Krefeld, Germany holds one of the largest collections …

The Modern Development Of Kyoto Textiles For The Kimono, Keiko Okamoto

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Hand painted yūzen dyeing and other types of yūzen dyeing are considered the main dyeing methods among Kyoto textiles. They were developed between the mid-17^th century and early 20^th century and are still used for the kimono. The kimono and its textiles were spotlighted in Western countries when Japan opened the country to the West in the late 19^th century and had been popular into the early 20^th century. Westerns collected them, wore them, or used them as motifs of their art works. Japanese also took Western motifs in the kimono textile designs, which in turn …

Rahul Jain’S Reimagined Velvet Drawloom, Barbara Setsu Pickett

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Indian textile traditions are exemplars of Deep Local, firmly rooted in geography and culture. Even family names denote specific occupations; Ansari are weavers; Chippa, block-print dyers; Khatri, bandhani dyers. In the 1980s, two exhibitions introduced me to Indian textiles. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s show, “India Festival of Science included artisans demonstrating their specialties. Ansar Ahmed Ansari, a Varanasi silk brocade weaver, wove sari fabric on a Jacquard loom. After shadowing him for several days, he offered his business card and invited me to visit. In New York at the Met, the India Art and Culture exhibition had …

Along A Continuum: Spirally-Woven Beadwork Of The Tlingit, Wasco, And Pit River Peoples, Alice Scherer

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This presentation explores the impact of introducing glass beads on the weaving practices of three Pacific Northwest Indigenous groups. Although Native Americans made and used beads of bone, shell, seed, and stone prior to contact with Western European culture, the 18^th-century introduction of glass beads brought new elements of sparkle, regularity, and color to native art and inspired creative expressions. Faced with the challenge of integrating these new materials, women turned to familiar basketry techniques for ideas, adapting traditional basket-making methods to weave beads and native-made fibers into bags, caps, straps, and hair ornaments. Visual evidence for this …

Tapestry Crochet In The Americas, Europe, Africa, And The Middle East: Tradition And Innovation, Carol Ventura

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Tapestry crochet was historically done in just a few countries, but globalization and the internet have spread this versatile art form around the world. Publications and online groups have helped keep this tradition alive and have inspired many innovative uses-from designer accessories to contemporary museum installations. Tapestry crocheted fabric is solid and smooth with motifs and imagery, much like tapestry woven cloth. Because of the similar look and feel, most people cannot tell the difference between the two. Techniques vary from place to place, perhaps because they developed from different types of looped bags, gloves, and bags. For instance, in …

Symposium 2018 -- Program & Information: The Social Fabric: Deep Local To Pan Global Textile Society Of America’S 16th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The theme of TSA’s 16th Biennial Symposium is The Social Fabric: Deep Local to Pan Global. Located on the Pacific Rim, Vancouver offers a pertinent setting to probe the impact and influence of settlers and immigration on an already long-inhabited land, and how textile traditions have been influenced, changed, and/or adapted through and by cultural contact. In 2014 Vancouver city council unanimously voted to acknowledge that the city is on un-ceded Aboriginal territory, creating fertile ground for this conversation. We invite participants to examine textiles within the context of the “Deep Local,” defined as knowledge, beliefs, resources, and practices that …

Looking At The Past And Current Status Of Kenya’S Clothing And Textiles, Mercy V.W. Wanduara

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper analyzes and documents traditional textiles and clothing of the Kenyan people before and after independence in 1963. The paper is based on desk top research and face to face interviews from senior Kenyan citizens who are familiar with Kenyan traditions. An analysis of some of the available Kenya’s indigenous textile fiber plants is made and from which a textile craft basket is made. Kenya’s textile and clothing industry has undergone tremendous changes from pre-colonial era (before 1963) to date. Traditionally Kenyans donned clothing made out locally available materials; namely plants and animal skin. Color for these materials was …

Manipulating The Threads Of Culture: Contemporary Shibori Artist Yvonne Wakabayashi, Eileen Wheeler

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Deeply anchored in her practice of shaping and manipulating fibre are both the aesthetic integral to Yvonne Wakabayashi’s Japanese heritage and the inspiration of the natural environment she finds along the shores of her own birth place, Canada’s west coast. Wakabayashi’s journey to find her authentic voice in her varied textile works, engaged both historical craft practices of Japan and printmaking processes of the West. Most importantly, it led to the discovery of shibori with its ancestral links and innovative contemporary possibilities. This paper explores how an individual artist embraces her artistic cultural identity that also negotiates the upheaval wrought …

Getting Located: Queer Semiotics In Dress, C. Zimmerman

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

From the effeminate Macarconis of the 18^th century to the “future is female” shirts of 2017, the fashioned body has conveyed desire, signaled safety, and helped build affinity for queer people. This project will take the shape of a deep excavation and careful consideration of the historical precedence of queers encoding the nuances of dress with a multitude of identity affirming and identity challenging practices. Predominant research on unearthing how queer culture was (and is) expressed through dress had focused on the discernible gestures of normative gay male bodies; from ‘flagging’ (i.e. adorning the body with objects such as …

Yours, Mine & Ours: Beyond Appropriation, Suzi Ballenger, Charlotte Hamlin

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

As textile makers and researchers, we value the indigenous cultural wealth represented in the extraordinary array of textiles available to us through current worldwide channels. For millennia, textiles have been an effective vehicle for cultural intersection and exchange; traditions, materials, motifs, techniques, words, and beliefs are adopted, extended, and enriched by the meeting of peoples. Increasingly-and particularly with the advent of “fast fashion”-textile styles and motifs are being widely appreciated, and subsequently appropriated, without acknowledgement or compensation to the culture from which they derived. Is it possible to create productive collaboration across cultures without exhausting or dispossessing the custodians of …

The Fabric Of War: Wool And Local Land Wars In A Global Context, Madelyn Shaw, Trish Fitzsimons

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

During the nineteenth century, exponential growth in sheep pastoralism in Australia and New Zealand, and in less predictable locales such as the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Rapanui (Easter Island), fueled the alienation of Indigenous peoples from their lands. The sheep and their wool, at the heart of these ‘grass wars,’ fed a global industry that supported another kind of war – the mass, cold climate warfare characterizing the century between the Crimean and Korean wars. Not until the second quarter of the nineteenth century did mechanization and factory organization affect wool production, as assiduous Australasian sheep husbandry bred wool staples …

Timberline Textiles: Creating A Sense Of Place, Annin Barrett

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Timberline Village holds an iconic place in popular culture, serving as a symbol of Western U.S. mountain tradition. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was filmed there, dozens of ski-wear advertisements feature it as background, and it has even been used for an immersive horror game setting. During the early 20^th century, other great mountain lodges were built in the West, but what makes Timberline unique is its textiles. It receives almost two million visitors a year who come from around the world to admire this handcrafted building perched at 6000 fee elevation on Mt. Hood in Oregon. The Lodge was …

Wrapped In Wool: Coast Salish Wool Weaving, Vancouver’S Public Art, And Unceded Territory, Alison Ariss

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Coast Salish blankets, lovingly woven with hand dyed, home spun, and commercially produced yarns, adorn the walls of an international airport, museum, universities, and national broadcasting studio, and a mixed-use development project in Vancouver. All of these publicly accessible sites are located in unceded Coast Salish territory, upon which this city exists. These weavings present a conundrum. Simultaneously viewed as public art and symbols of cultural revitalization, their recognition as fine art has been limited, as most discourse about Coast Salish blankets has occurred outside of the discipline of art history. How then, have these weavings found their way into …

The Embroidery Artisans Of The Kashmir Valley: Cultural Imports And Exports From Historical And Contemporary Perspectives., Deborah Emmett

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

On a visit to the Kashmir Valley in northern India during the winter months I was given a pheran to wear. This long woolen garment is the customary apparel worn by Kashmiri men and women in cold weather. While the men’s are plain, the women’s pherans are embroidered on the front and sleeves. The skills of those Kashmiri artisans who hand embroider clothing such as the pherans, shawls, and other textiles including rugs, curtains, and cushions are well recognized in India and beyond. Considering the Kashmir Valley’s geographic position surrounded by the Himalayan Mountains, I presumed that their embroidery crafts …

Co-Creating Craft; Australian Designers Meet Artisans In India, Katherine Bissett-Johnson, David Moorhead

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

There is no word for design in India, creativity and making are intertwined. Craft and culture are inseparable, yet craft practice has become both a cultural and increasingly financial activity. The income from crafts in India is estimated to be only second to agriculture, yet many artisans still live in poverty. Precedents for designers working with artisans in India to develop products for both local and global markets have proven successful. Different types of co-creation (sometimes called co-design) activities have been documented between both local designers and local artisans, and, between foreign designers and local artisans. Although the outcomes of …

Balancing Local Tradition And Global Influences: Design And Business Education For Traditional Artisans In Kachchh, India, Ruth Clifford

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In the craft-rich region of Kutch, western India, and the historical sari weaving town of Maheshwar, central India, two institutes are providing design and business education to traditional artisans. These are Somaiya Kala Vidya (SKV) and The Handloom School (THS); they form case studies for my PhD research. SKV encourages students to focus on their traditional designs believing them to be their unique selling point, but to innovate upon these traditions making them relevant to contemporary markets. Graduates face challenges of balancing the maintenance of the traditional aspects of their craft, their identity and integrity, with urban and global market …

Batik Of Java: Global Inspiration, Maria Wronska-Friend

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Batik, the technique of patterning cloth through the application of wax, reached the highest level of complexity on the island of Java. While deeply embedded in local traditions and associated with the social order of Java, outside Indonesia batik became a powerful cultural intermediary connecting countries as diverse as Netherlands, Japan, Ghana, India, and Australia. In the early stages, this process was an outcome of the Dutch colonial agency. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries the Dutch East India Company sold Indian textiles destined for Indonesian markets as well as small quantities of Javanese batiks to the Japanese. …

Closing The Power Gap Through Internet Technology: The Artisan View, Judy Frater

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In India today, artisans are considered skilled workers who can realize the concepts of designers. But traditionally, craft was designed, produced, and marketed by artisans. As traditional artisans aimed for new markets, designers took on the role of “interventionists” to bridge the gap in familiarity with new consumers and bring craft into contemporary markets. While this works, unfortunately demoting artisans to worker status results in minimum value for their work, little to no opportunity for creativity or recognition, and waning interest in traditions. Co-design has potential to restructure the relationship between urban designer and artisan. However, often what is called …

Dresden Embroidery In Early Kentucky Counterpanes, Laurel Horton

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper examines four white embroidered bedcovers which include elements done in Dresden work, a distinctive technique combining pulled-thread embroidery with surface stitchery. The distinctive lace-like stitches of Dresden embroidery typically appear in delicate, small-scale applications, such as cuffs, collars, and handkerchiefs. These four counterpanes, made in Kentucky in the early nineteenth century, are among a small number of embroidered white bedcovers that include Dresden embroidery. In contrast with the ancient roots of other stitchery styles, Dresden embroidery emerged in Europe in the 1720s as an inexpensive alternative to delicate Flemish bobbin laces. The technique spread among cottage needleworkers in …