Museum Studies Commons^™

Persian Velvets Of The 17th Century: Symmetry, Craft, And Technology, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Symmetry is the organizing principle that underlies patternmaking in compound woven textiles of 17th century Iran. Persian velvets are particularly noteworthy for their complicated weave structure. What defines compound weaves is the interlacing of more than one set of warps (longitudinal elements held under tension at the loom) with wefts (transverse elements). Velvets introduce an additional set of supplementary warps held under differential tension. The weaving of a compound textile requires both a pattern harness and a structure harness for the interaction of warps and wefts. A weaver on the bench manipulates the structure harness for each passage of the …

Mathematics And The Divine In Islamic Art: Study Guide, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Key Concepts and Terminology

Key Philosophers/Theologians

Key Monuments

Suggested Readings

Marāgha; From Encyclopaedia Of Islam Three, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Hülegü Khān (r. 654–63/1256–65) established Marāgha as capital of the Īlkhānate (654–754/1256–1353) in 657/ 1259, a year after his siege and largescale destruction of Baghdad. Located 130 kilometres south of Tabriz, Iran, it became the site of an astronomical observatory directed by Nasīr al-Dīn Tusī (d. 672/1273–4), a Persian astronomer and mathematician who assembled a team of the best minds in what are today Spain, Morocco, Egypt, and Iran. The mathematical work on planetary orbits carried out there helped shape the subsequent development of sciences in Europe. Stone remains of the observatory and its equipment were identified in …

Ciencia De Las Mujeres: Experiencias En La Cadena Textil Desde Los Ayllus De Challapata, Denise Y. Arnold, Elvira Espejo

Textile Research Works

En el contexto de la crisis económica que atravesó Bolivia en los años ochenta, una comunidad de puna de pastores andinos, Livichuco, que forma parte integral del ayllu mayor de Qaqachaka, emprendió por iniciativa propia un proceso de mejoramiento de su producción textil, con un programa de rescate de los tintes naturales de la región. Con recursos mínimos, los comunarios compraron ollas y bateas metálicas, y comenzaron a preguntar a las personas mayores sobre sus conocimientos prácticos tradicionales en el ámbito de la tinción de textiles. Durante un período de diez años, y en coordinación con varias instituciones —incluida la …

Contemporary Muslim Fashions: De Young Museum, San Francisco, Ca, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Calico, chintz, damask, muslin, cashmere, seersucker, taffeta, shawl, caftan, and cummerbund-all English terms derived from Islamic textiles and dress-are the products of textile technologies that resulted from colonization and trade. Their cultural origins are long forgotten, shrouded in the fast-moving commercialized fashion industry and haute couture ofthe West that developed during the 20th century. The exhibition, Contemporary Muslim Fashions, is a game-changer.

The exhibition organizers, Jill D'Alessandro and laura Camerlengo, curators of costumes and textiles at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, worked with Reina Lewis in London as a curatorial consultant. Together, they drew upon the local advice …

Sufism, Beauty, Love: Ecstasy And Rapture Of Islam In Asia. Study Guide, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Key Vocabulary: Concepts, Practices, Buildings, Masters/Leaders/Disciples

Major Sufi Figures

Suggested Readings

Ciencia De Tejer En Los Andes: Estructuras Y Técnicas De Faz De Urdimbre, Denise Y. Arnold, Elvira Espejo

Textile Research Works

Las estructuras y técnicas de los textiles andinos, en las piezas arqueológicas y en las piezas tanto históricas como contemporáneas, se cuentan entre las más complejas del mundo. Si bien el tapiz o faz de trama quizá sea el más conocido de todos los tipos de tela de la región, es sin duda en las telas de faz de urdimbre donde estas estructuras y técnicas han alcanzado su máximo desarrollo, sobre todo en nuestros tiempos. Varios estudios anteriores han intentado describir las estructuras y técnicas de faz de urdimbre, fundamentalmente los libros clásicos Textiles of Anciente Peru and their Techniques, …

The Aleppo Minbar: Symmetry And Islamic Aesthetics, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The Aleppo minbar (pulpit for Friday sermons) is a monumental architectural sculpture commissioned in the middle of the 12th century in Aleppo, Syria, by Nur al-Din al-Zangi, who was ruling from Damascus. Envisioning the end of the Crusades, Nur al-Din sought to place the minbar in the Aqsa Mosque after Muslims reclaimed Jerusalem, where it was installed in 1187 by the Ayyubid ruler, Saladin. Richly ornamented with many geometric forms and designs, the wooden minbar expresses an algorithmic Islamic aesthetic based on symmetry, with patterns that imply an infinite expanse contained within borders. Manifesting an aesthetic that persisted for …

Los Productos Textiles De Los Andes Sur-Centrales: Guía Ontológica Centrada En La Región Aymara-Hablante, Denise Y. Arnold

Textile Research Works

El presente libro ofrece una organización ontológica de los productos textiles andinos. A nivel mundial, los museólogos están dando cuenta de la utilidad de este recurso para estructurar sus colecciones de objetos y para vincularlas con datos de respaldo (registros, catálogos, dibujos, fotos, etc.). Una ontología es una especificación explícita de una conceptualización, que proporciona una estructura y los contenidos que codifican las reglas implícitas de una parte de la realidad, en este caso del dominio textil. Aquí presentamos una representación del conocimiento del dominio textil centrada en las ‘formas’ textiles, por decir los tipos de prendas (ahuayo, acso, unco, …

Review Of Martens, Sacred Scraps: Quilt And Patchwork Traditions Of Central Asia, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Sacred Scraps: Quilt and Patchwork Traditions of Central Asia

Author: Christine Martens

Published by: International Quilt Study Center & Museum, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2017.

Drawing upon years of extensive travel, field research, and personal interviews with craftsmen and scholars in Central Asia, Chris Martens has produced a magnificent book to accompany the 2017 exhibition at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, for which she served as guest curator. This book, and the exhibition, documents the prolific quilt and patchwork traditions of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Funds for travel, research, and systematic collecting came from …

Review Of The Cultural Legacy Of Uzbekistan In World Collections Conference, Michele Hardy, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

In May 2017, over 370 scholars convened in Tashkent and Samarkand, Uzbekistan, to share their research and mark the publication of an important new series of handsomely produced volumes. Among the participants were former TSA President, Carol Bier, and past TSA Board Member, Michele Hardy. The Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in World Collections is a ten-volume series that documents the richness and diversity of Uzbek tangible and intangible heritage, particularly in the collections of international museums. The volumes-each lavishly illustrated, trilingual (Uzbek, Russian, and English), and beautifully bound-examine some of the richest collections of Uzbek art and culture: the Tretyakov …

Reframing Islamic Art For The 21st Century, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The celebrated Islamic galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York reopened in 2011 as “Galleries for the Art of Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia.” Other major collections of Islamic art have been reorganized and reinstalled in Berlin, Cairo, Cleveland, Copenhagen, Detroit, Kuwait, London, Los Angeles, Paris, and Singapore, and new museums of Islamic art have been established in Doha, Qatar; Honolulu, Hawaii; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Sharjah, U.A.E. In addition, the first museum in North America dedicated to Islamic art recently opened in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This article explores this global phenomenon, …

Alloys And Architecture: Periodic And Quasiperiodic Patterns In Sinan's Selimiye In Edirne, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The marble minbar of the Selimiye mosque in Edirne that was designed by the Ottoman architect, Sinan, and completed in 1575, bears a circular medallion of carved and pierced openwork in each of its triangular framing walls. The carved circular patterns are unusual in having radial symmetry with local five-fold and ten-fold rotations, but no periodic repeat. This contribution explores the relationship of this late 16th-century design to a similar array generated by X-ray diffraction of aluminum alloys, identified as a quasiperiodic pattern, which garnered the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The 16th-century appearance of this pattern in an architectural …

Algorithmic Aesthetics: Redefining Traditional Islamic Art, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The recent exhibition, “Reverberating Echoes: Contemporary Art Inspired by Traditional Islamic Art,” organized by the Center for the Arts & Religion at the Graduate Theological Union afforded an opportunity for me as curator to reconsider the definition of ‘traditional Islamic art.’ This effort led to the identification of an algorithmic aesthetic of pattern that characterizes artistic production in all media from the 9th through the 12th centuries in what were then Islamic lands, centered in Baghdad, but extending from Spain across North Africa through the Middle East and Iran to Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.

Review Of Designing Identity: The Power Of Textiles In Late Antiquity. Edited By Thelma K. Thomas, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity. Edited by Thelma K. Thomas, with contributions by Jennifer L. Ball, Edward Bleiberg, Kathrin Colburn, Helen C. Evans, Christine Kondoleon, Brandie Ratliff, Thelma K. Thomas, Elizabeth D. Williams. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, 2016. 152 p. ISBN: 978-0691169422

This beautifully illustrated book, edited by textile historian Thelma K. Thomas, Associate Professor at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, advances scholarship on textiles of Late Antiquity with interpretive essays by curators, conservators, and historians. As a scholarly contribution offering …

Review Of Woven Luxuries: Indian, Persian, Turkish Velvets From The Indictor Collection, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

LUXURIANT AND extravagant are words that come to mind to describe the sheen of brightly coloured velvets on display in this small but stellar exhibition at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, on view to 1 November. The exhibition presents an exceptional private collection of exquisitely designed velvets woven in lands of the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman empires during the 15th through 17th centuries. Robust blossoms, sinuous vines, and stylised flowers are among the many designs that characterise Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman textiles, including sumptuous velvets with raised pile and metallic threads that shimmer in changing light. Together the products of …

Review Of Eric Broug, Islamic Geometric Design, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

From the eleventh century C.E., Islamic geometric patterns have continued to evolve in complexity, contributing a distinct aspect of Islamic art and architecture that covers a broad geographic range and temporal spectrum. The underlying principles of these patterns are brilliantly explained in narrative and visual formats by Eric Broug, a Dutch design professional, self-trained and with an M.A. in the history of Islamic architecture from SOAS in London. Offering both an analytical and practical understanding of the construction of Islamic geometric patterns, this book is an unusual hybrid of scholarship and art, combining the qualities of a coffeetable bibelot and …

Geometry: Drawing From The Islamic Tradition, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Getting students involved in careful observation and analysis and encouraging their exploration of cultural forms of expression is an excellent means of introducing mathematical ideas. Geometric patterns abound in Islamic art and architecture. Exhibiting great ingenuity over the centuries, Muslim artists and craftsmen created beautiful patterns to adorn architectural monuments and exquisite objects. The Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in India offer the most famous examples of extraordinary patterns using brick and glazed tile, or carved and inlaid marble. Other examples of patterns are made using metal, wood, and fiber. Students may gain conceptual and theoretical understanding of …

Inscribed Cotton Ikat From Yemen In The Tenth Century Ce, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

More than a thousand years ago, Baghdad was capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbasid caliphs, and Yemen was a flourishing center of agriculture and trade. Among its famous products were dyestuffs, and cotton cloth with warp stripes, patterned using techniques of compression resist. As the strength of the Abbasid caliphate declined and claims to power gained hold in the provinces, regional artistic styles began to emerge. The rulers of Yemen adopted one of the prerogatives of the Abbasid caliphs, bestowing honor by rewarding their subjects with inscribed textiles called tiraz. From burial sites in Egypt, many such textiles …

Sinan’S Screens: Networks Of Intersecting Polygons In Ottoman Architecture, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

An often overlooked characteristic of Sinan’s architectural production of the 16th century is the use of low screening walls and windows carved of marble with pierced openwork or tracery to let in light and allow for air circulation. Typically these screens display polygonal networks often with intersecting polygons. This paper explores aspects of these carved patterns, which have antecedents in earlier Islamic architecture, attributing particular significance to this architectural feature in the works of Sinan and three successors whom he had trained. These slabs (and their counterparts in forged iron) may be considered études, serving as opportunities for the training …

Review Of Michel & Nosch, Eds., Textile Terminologies In The Ancient Near East And Mediterranean From The Third To The First Millennia Bc., Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Textile production comprised the major manufacturing industry of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean, yet it has received relatively little scholarly attention. As garments and furnishings, textiles may provide warmth and utility, but they are also indicators of status, objects of trade and tribute, products of technology, and economic generators. The role of textiles is both pervasive and complex, yielding rich and specific vocabularies that do not easily transcend time and space for contemporary understanding. This brilliant volume offers a compilation of twenty-two papers that result from an exciting collaboration between the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Textile …

The Decagonal Tomb Tower At Maragha And Its Architectural Context: Lines Of Mathematical Thought, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Of several brick tomb towers constructed at Maragha in western Iran before the Mongol conquests, one in particular, Gonbad-e Qabud (593 H. / 1196-97 C.E.), has generated significant recent attention for its unique patterns with pentagons and decagons. Gonbad-e Qabud is also unusual in having a decagonal plan. While both plan and decoration distinguish it from earlier and later towers at Maragha and elsewhere on the Iranian plateau, the ornamental patterns follow a long line of experimentation with geometric expressions that grace many pre-Mongol buildings in Iran. This article examines in particular the overlapping polygons and radial symmetries of the …

Taking Sides, But Who’S Counting? The Decagonal Tomb Tower At Maragha

Textile Research Works

Lu and Steinhardt introduced the term “girih tiles” to describe the set of equilateral polygons that structures a colorful two-dimensional decagonal tiling on the Darb-e Imam in Isfahan, Iran (1453 CE) with distant roots in the five-fold symmetries articulated in brick on the Gonbad-e Qabud, a tomb tower dated to the late 12th century CE located at Maragha in western Iran. Their work seeks to establish the early existence of quasi-crystalline tilings long before such means of covering the plane were understood mathematically in the West. Questions remained unanswered as to whether those who constructed these monuments were aware of …

Warps & Wefts 2009, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The interlacing of warp and weft defines a woven fabric. The weaver strings warp yarns onto a loom, a frame designed to hold the warps parallel and taut, and then introduces the wefts sequentially. The process is weaving; the result is a textile.

When we think of textiles, we most often think of garments to clothe our bodies and furnishings to supply our domestic needs. But throughout history, textiles have also played a primary role in fashion, drawing on not only color and pattern but also draping qualities and the effects of tailoring to cover (or show off) the body. …

Exhibition Review Of "Cosmophilia: Islamic Art From The David Collection, Copenhagen", Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

THIS EXHIBITION WAS organized by the Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College. It is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title published in 2006 by Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, who also seived as curators, selecting objects in collaboration with the David Collection. The exhibition contains more than I 00 outstanding objects of Islamic art and includes more than 20 significant textiles, which represent diverse geographic origins (Yemen, Spain, India, Egypt, Central Asia, Turkey and Iran); with dates ranging from the 7th through the 19th centuries. Linen, cotton, wool and silk, traditional textile materials, …

From Folding And Cutting To Geometry And Algorithms: Integrating Islamic Art Into The Mathematics Curriculum, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Drawing upon visual forms of expression prevalent in Islamic arts and architecture, this workshop offers handson experience for understanding basic concepts in geometry, with reference to algorithms in processes of patternmaking. Art teachers and math educators may learn a variety of strategies for classroom teaching, adaptable for K-12, to acquaint students with principles underlying patterns in Islamic art. Such patterns relate to the history of mathematics at a time when Baghdad was an intellectually vibrant center of patronage, and al-Khwarezmi was engaged in the development of what we now call algebra and algorithms. Students may explore these ideas through their …

Vanishing Points, Deformed Planes, Negative Spaces, Empty Solids And Topological Genius – Or, How I Got Lost In Bilbao, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Midsummer’s green along the flanks of the Pyrenees in Basque country welcomed us as we drove from Donostia (San Sebastian) west to Gernika and Bilbao. The mountains to the south physically separate this area of northern Spain from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula. To the north lies the Atlantic with its vast expanse of water, gentle waves lapping at the shore. The mountain slopes here are profoundly uplifted and folded – nature’s deformations of the plane – and the steep valleys and rushing rivers exhibit visible geometric perspectives of geological forms. To be here in summer makes one especially …

Islamic Art: An Exploration Of Pattern, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

As an historian of Islamic art in the Department of Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I am continually learning as I endeavor to teach my students about pattern. Teaching about pattern in Islamic art has facilitated my own exploration of geometry in ways that also benefits my students. This visual presentation explores the results of a single assignment that pertains to coloring a linear plate reproduced in Bourgoin’s classic work [6], Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design.

Symmetry And Symmetry-Breaking: An Approach To Understanding Beauty, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Considering the relationship of symmetry and beauty, the author examines three textiles from the collection of Doris Duke at Shangri La in Honolulu. Referring to abstract expressionism of the 20th century as antithetical to symmetry, and the Arts & Crafts Movement of the 19th century as countering the insistency of industrial mass production, Bier explores the relative roles of symmetry and symmetry-breaking in the construction of three embroideries (called suzani, after the Persian and Tajik word for “needlework”), using as her point of departure a recent research initiative, the Shangri La Suzani Project. The study of colors, motifs, stitches, designs …

Patterns In Time And Space: Technologies Of Transfer And The Cultural Transmission Of Mathematical Knowledge Across The Indian Ocean, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

This article explores the potential role of textiles in the transfer of mathematical knowledge from the Indian subcontinent to the central Islamic lands and west- ward to an emerging modern Europe through an inquiry into prospective tech- nologies of textile manufacture and pattern-making. Ikat textiles of the ninth and tenth centuries, found in Egypt but presumed to be from Yemen, serve as a means to explore possibilities of numeration and treatment of the spatial dimension. An initial attempt is made to separate patterning from the technology of textile pro- duction in an effort to treat the mathematical possibilities that patterning …