Digital Commons Network^™

Blinded By The Veil, Laura Stemp-Morlock

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper considers how the intersection of religious ideology, gender, culture and history affect the role Muslim women in QuÈbec navigate for themselves in a society suspicious of veiling. QuÈbec's proposed niqab ban is the latest in a series of events spotlighting the friction between the province's avowed secular policy and its residents for whom religion is not a private practice. When Muslim women wear their veils in public, many QuÈbecois perceive this as a hostile practice directly confronting their "secular values" of equality and liberty, and a symbol of repressive social values and structures. While this is a common …

Marie Watt's Forget-Me-Not: Stitched In Wool, A More Human War Memorial, Rebecca Head Trautmann

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In large wall tapestries, towering blanket stacks, small stitched samplers, and complex installations, Marie Watt explores the personal and collective memories embodied in wool blankets. The artist employs old blankets that are worn with use, faded in color, and stretched out of shape to evoke memories of the many ways blankets comfort and protect us from birth until death. Forget-Me-Not: Mothers and Sons (2008) is an installation piece conceived in response to Watt's dissatisfaction with media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the young lives lost in combat. Desiring to personalize and humanize the stories of soldiers killed …

The Twenty-First Century Voices Of The Ashanti Adinkra And Kente Cloths Of Ghana, Carol Ventura

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Craft production and use are continually adapting to meet the needs of consumers and the market in order to survive. The Adinkra and Kente cloths of Ghana are no exception, having maintained their visibility and viability by addressing changing and challenging economic and political realities. Fabric strips are sewn together to produce rectangular Adinkra and Kente cloths that are wrapped around human bodies in styles determined by gender and rank. These cloths are not only beautiful, but communicate as well. Old and new symbols representing proverbs, beliefs, and politics are woven into Kente and printed onto Adinkra cloths. Commemorative fabrics …

On The Edge: The Artwork Of Linda Wallace And Dorothy Clews, Linda Wallace, Dorothy Clews

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Personal engagement with social and ecological issues Two artists, geographically separated, began a loosely collaborative partnership ten years ago, out of which they quietly tilt at windmills. Refuting suppositional barriers, we create, curate, exhibit and challenge the parameters of how contemporary tapestry weaving is defined. Dorothy Clews is quietly, passionately, concerned with ecological issues. Through her tapestries she explores the evolution of something regarded as unchangeable and enduring into something fragile and mutable. Her art work references the slow erosion of the belief that interactions between humanity, the environment and ecology will remain stable and continue to support life, as …

Interior Iron Curtains: United States Textile Design Of The Cold War Era, Morgan Walsh

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Starting in 1947 and lasting through the mid-sixties, the political attitudes and cultural mentality of United States Cold War crept into design, imposing codes of conduct by means of material goods and a distinct domestic aesthetic. In direct response to fear associated with the possibility of devastated nuclear landscapes, nature-inspired motifs on curtains and draperies allowed inhabitants to create a controlled situation, enclosing the interior of the home and shutting out the perils of manmade destruction outside. Likewise, seemingly abstract patterns mimic scientific images of atomic energy, atom and h-bombs, and airplanes, providing a new common visual language to help …

A New Interpretation Of Certain Bobbin Lace Patterns In Le Pompe, 1559, Laurie Waters

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Volume 1 of the 16th century pattern book "Le Pompe" was printed by the Sessa brothers for Matio Pagano in 1557. Volume 2 appeared in 1560 with a new set of patterns. These works are among the earliest existing devoted entirely to bobbinlace. The patterns are drawings meant to be interpreted by the lacemaker. Most are highly adaptable to the plaited techniques we now associate with Venice. But more flowing designs are also present (fig 1), and seem to point the way toward tape lace development, or perhaps a side branch that was not fully developed in subsequent years. Little …

Made In America: Yarns From The Heartland Brown Sheep Company, Wendy Weiss

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Approximately 40 million knitters and crocheters live in the USA. According to Becky Talley, Sheep Industry News, Associate Editor, in 2007 Brown Sheep Co. was the largest producer of natural fiber knitting yarns in the United States. They sell their yarn at local yarn retailers, Internet sales from their own web page and those of their retailers. This paper teases out the story of a family run operation in western Nebraska that serves the appetite of a population of yarn consumers, primarily at the handcraft level. Owner/operators, Peggy Wells, the daughter of Harlan Brown, founder of the company, and her …

Clothes Make The Page: Uniforms In The U.S. Capitol, Felicia Wivchar

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When thinking of a uniform in the U.S. Capitol today, the first image conjured is most probably a middle-aged man in a dark suit. Business attire has long been the standard dress for both Members of Congress and their office staff. However, this de facto uniform is not the only dress code for the Capitol complex. Within these grand and historic buildings, it is often taken for granted that spaces will appear pristine and practical functions will be seamlessly maintained. The groups of laborers that have long helped maintain this illusion have also long been clad in assigned uniforms specific …

Art And Politics: Contemporary Arpilleras, Flora Zárate

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In explaining connections between art and politics in my arpilleras (appliquÈ pictures), I discuss themes drawn from my life, my relatives' and other Peruvians' lives, and the experiences of fellow immigrants in the United States. In Alcamenca (Ayacucho, Peru), where I was born, we inherit from our ancestors the arts of spinning, weaving and sewing. In our isolated town, we lived from raising animals, agriculture, and textile production, and by barter except at the weekly market. As a child I wanted to leave, when people returned from the city for fiestas, with new clothes and jewelry. Later we did follow …

“Lest We Be Shamed”: Italian Renaissance Taste For Textile Ensembles, Rosamond E. Mack

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the second half of the fifteenth century, lavish displays of luxurious textile ensembles became obligatory on grand occasions in Italian courts and city states. Such displays demonstrated the political and cultural power of persons, families, and governments. Among the courts of northern Italy, competition was so keen that rulers and their spouses personally took charge of new purchases, and temporary loans from family and friends. Voluminous correspondence documents the quantities and qualities calibrated to the occasion. For example, in 1468, Duchess Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan assembled the hangings for the wedding of her son Galeazzo Maria at the …

Lister Hill Letter - September 2012, Lister Hill Library

Lister Hill Letter (2011-2015)

No abstract provided.

The Changing Politics Of Textiles As Portrayed On Somali Postage Stamps, Heather Marie Akou

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When Somalia became an independent nation in 1960, the change in power was celebrated with new postage stamps. Departing from the royal portraits and vague images of "natives" favored by their colonizers, Somalis chose to circulate detailed images of local plants, animals, artisanal products, and beautiful young women in wrapped fabrics. In the early 1960s, these images were fairly accurate representations of contemporary fashions. Over the next twenty years, with a few notable exceptions, these images became more romanticized focusing on the folk dress worn by nomads in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Confronting drought, corruption, and economic …

Iberian Carpets, Wool, And The Making Of Modern Spain, Carol Bier

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Carpets of the Iberian Peninsula, woven in the 15th and 16th centuries, represent diverse cultural traditions at a time of great political transformation. With the fall of Granada in 1492, Christian dominion was firmly reestablished. Despite radical shifts in patronage from Muslim to Christian in previous centuries, the weaving of carpets with wool pile seems to have flourished in established production centers. Following the Arab and Berber conquests of Andalusia in the early 8th century, there is scant evidence for rug-weaving but a significant group of carpets survives from the 15th century, which stylistically reflects earlier traditions of carpet-weaving from …

The Soviet “Invasion” Of Central Asian Applied Arts: How Artisans Incorporated Communist Political Messages And Symbols, Irina Bogoslovskaya

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The physical imposition of Communist rule in Central Asia was accompanied by parallel attempts to expand the Soviet footprint in the realms of ideology and aesthetics. This paper discusses the Sovietization of Central Asian applied art: specifically, the way that Soviet political messages and symbols were actively promoted and incorporated in traditional art production - such as ikat silk and other textiles, carpets, skull caps and pottery - in the period 1920-1960. In this way, decorative and applied art became a platform to communicate Soviet ideas and ideology. Yet it would be incorrect to assume that hammers and sickles, tractors …

The Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials (1962-1995) The Pivotal Role Of A Swiss City In The “New Tapestry” Movement In Eastern Europe After World War Ii, Giselle Eberhard Cotton

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

For over thirty years the International Tapestry Biennials were held in the city of Lausanne (Switzerland), making it the world capital of contemporary textile art. The event had come into being thanks to the encounter of Pierre Pauli (1916-1970), the then director of the Decorative Arts Museum in Lausanne, with Jean LurÁat, the French painter and tapestry designer, who had instigated the revival of French tapestry after World War II. The Lausanne exhibition was the first platform - and for many years the only one - to give textile artists the opportunity to explore new techniques and materials. As a …

The Abduction Of Helen: A Western Theme In A Chinese Embroidery Of The First Half Of The Seventeenth Century, Joyce Denney

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The theme of the Trojan War has a long history in works of European tapestry, with examples surviving from the fourteenth century onward. With the rise of European powers in the global trade of the sixteenth century, the Trojan War went global, too. A large embroidered and painted hanging on this theme from the late sixteenth century is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this paper, The Abduction of Helen, part of a series on the theme of the Trojan War, will be discussed in detail; comparative works, both Chinese and European, will also be shown. …

Hostage To Cloth: European Explorers In East Africa, 1850-1890, Sarah Fee

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper considers the political dimensions of the western Indian Ocean trade in handwoven "Muscat cloth". Today little-known or remembered, these striped and checked wrappers and turbans were woven in silk and cotton by pitloom weavers in Oman's port towns for both local use and export. Especially in the 19th century, a large quantity was shipped to East Africa. While the volume of this trade may have been small relative to imports of cottons from India, Europe and America, evidence shows that the qualitative impact of Muscat cloth on East African dress, arts, ritual and economy was significant and enduring. …

Thangchhuah Puan: The Highest Status Mantle Among The Mizo People Of Northeastern India, Barbara G. Fraser, David W. Fraser

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Mizo are a large sub-group of the Chin (also known as the Zo, Lai or Kuki), a loosely related group of two million people living in the hills of western Myanmar (Burma), northeastern India, and southeastern Bangladesh. The Mizo strive to attain merit through success in hunting, war, accumulation of wealth, and communal feast giving involving a series of five separate feasts. A Mizo man who has either hosted two complete series of five communal feasts or killed an entire series of wild animals attains the greatest merit and is known as Thangchhuahpa. Such men were held in high …

Embroidered Relations In Kutch: Women, Stitching And The Third Space, Michele A. Hardy

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The embroidery of Gujarat State in India is relatively well known to Western textile enthusiasts. Often referred to as shisha or abla embroidery in reference to the tiny mirrors it includes, it is the subject of numerous books and exhibitions some of which were organized to help preserve traditions from the 1960's. Jain's seminal work, Folk art and culture of Gujarat (1980), for example, catalogues the Shreyas Collection, developed in the late 1970's in anticipation of the demise of many folk crafts in Gujarat. This paper examines the fraught context of embroidery in Kutch, the largest district in Gujarat, since …

Queen Alexandra’S 1902 Coronation Gown, Donald Clay Johnson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Queen Victoria's wearing black mourning clothes for 40 of the 63 years of her reign prompted much discussion between fashion-setting Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra about what should the new queen wear for her coronation, the first state occasion in which they, as king and queen, could define taste and fashion for what was to become the Edwardian era. With such a long interval of time since the last coronation there were no strong expressions of traditional attire for such a ritual occasion which prompted the new king and queen to think expansively about the roles and functions the coronation …

Analyses Of Dye, Weaving And Metal Thread In Ottoman Silk Brocades And Their Reproduction, Recep Karadag, Emine Torgan, Yusuf Yildiz

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Some Ottoman silk brocades samples were provided from Topkapi Palace Museum collection in Istanbul. In this study, an analytical method based on a RP-HPLC-DAD is developed for the identification of dyestuffs in the historical art objects. The extraction of dyestuffs from the silk brocades was carried out with hydrochloric acid / methanol / water solution. The most important dyestuffs detected were natural dyes apigenin, indigotin, carminic acid, ellagic acid, etc. dyes which are found in historical silk brocades. Analyses of historical samples were compared with analyses of unmordanted silk, mordanted silk, biological sources, silk dyed according to historical recipes and …

Knit And Crochet Heritage Museum: A Work In Progress, Karen D. Kendrick-Hands

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The concept of a Knitting Heritage Museum arose from a perceived need to collect, preserve, document and share knitted and crocheted objects, tools, and related study materials. This entity would raise the status of knitting and crochet, and create opportunities for scholarly research and enhanced visibility, as achieved by quilting and other fiber art centers. The author has concluded, after interactions with various museums and textile collections, that knitting and crochet are generally underrepresented. For valid reasons, documentation of objects that do exist is often incomplete or inaccurate and access for both study and exhibit is extremely limited. Although a …

The Cultural Politics Of Textile Craft Revivals, Suzanne Macaulay, Jillian Gryzlak

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This proposal is for a joint presentation by professor and graduate student critically appraising the cultural politics of textile revitalization projects. We envision our presentational framework to be modeled on a conversation, which compares the implications of our different experiences as a folklorist doing fieldwork in Colorado's San Luis Valley and a weaver participating in a workshop located in the Bargath district of Orissa, India. One of our main interests, which is conditioned by the assumption that "all tradition is change," examines the political basis for such workshops that attempt to revive traditional crafts as economic redevelopment projects. Questions arise …

The Politics Of Pastoralism: Navajos, Churras And The Challenges Of Sustainability In A Globalizing World, Kathy A. M'Closkey

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Navajos, or Dine', were dramatically affected by rapid changes in two of the three largest post- Civil War domestic industries: agriculture and textiles. In my 2010 TSA paper, I revealed how changes in the wool tariff triggered an escalation in textile production by thousands of Navajo weavers, as traders sought ways to market the unstandardized wool clip. Another under researched aspect of Navajo history concerns how the federal government's haphazard attempts in up-breeding Navajo flocks to national market standards triggered a failed development policy, resulting in the reduction of one-half their livestock during the Depression. For sixty years the government …

The Many Shades Of Cochineal Red Workshop Review And Recap, Tal Landeau

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Michel Garcia’s workshop The Many Shades of Cochineal Red at the in Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia, was packed with multiple steaming pots, a couple of blown fuses and multiple vibrant hues of red, purples and oranges. Garcia demonstrated how the selection of mordanting processes used in conjunction with cochineal dye resulted in different nuances of the color red in the final dyed cloth and yarn. As a bonus and demonstration of other reds from natural dyes, Garcia also used madder to dye more fiber.

The three mordanting methods outlined by Garcia were what he called the classical method, …

“By Your Exertions Conjointly With Ours”: British Printed Cottons In Brazil, 1827-1841, Sarah B. Parks

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Beginning with the arrival of Portuguese colonists in 1500, Brazil attracted the attention of traders throughout the Atlantic world. England's close commercial and political ties with Portugal, and later with Brazil itself, allowed British merchants to dominate trade with the South American state. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the production of printed cottons in Britain had expanded thanks to technical and chemical innovations. Simultaneously, the new nation of Brazil developed trade policies favoring British goods, including desirable printed textiles. In 1834, just twelve years after declaring independence from Portugal, Brazil became the single largest market for English …

History Under Foot: Politics, Patriotism, And The “Liberty Rug”, Amy Poff

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In January 1918 President Woodrow Wilson was given a Karnak Wilton carpet woven by the Shuttleworth Brothers Company of Amsterdam, New York, and inspired in part by the Statue of Liberty lighting ceremony he officiated in 1916. Featuring at its center the Statue of Liberty, surrounded by symbols of America's past and present, the rug remained at the White House throughout Wilson's presidency. Presented shortly after America's entrance into World War I and just weeks after Wilson's now-famous "Fourteen Points" speech, this "Liberty Rug" provided a symbolic narrative of the triumph of American progress while serving as physical proof of …

A Wari Tapestry Textile In A Tiwanaku Tomb From The Osmore Valley, Moquegua, Peru, Amy Oakland

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the Andes, ancient textiles have been discovered in abundance in the elite tombs of royal personages. The arid climate particular to the coast of Peru and northern Chile has preserved outstanding collections of these textiles. Exquisite textiles at the site of Chimu Capac in the Supe Valley on Peru's central coast were discovered in the beginning of the twentieth century by German archaeologist Max Uhle sponsored by Californian Phoebe Hearst. Many of the artifacts from Chimu Capac attest to elite status and the site may have been a burial ground for Wari administrators or even perhaps Wari royals in …

Liturgical Vestments For Cathedrals During The French Concordat Period (1801-1905) A Political Strategy, Maria Anne Privat Savigny

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

After the Concordat of 1801, the French Church has a new status: the Cult Administration has been founded and becomes a powerful mean for controlling and financing religious art projects as well as a strong political implement for each political regime during the 19th century. We propose to study the impact of this policy on the orders and financing of pontifical vestments for bishops when they celebrate the Mass in their cathedral. Pontifical vestments are at the center of the Mass celebration as a symbol of the agreement existing between the State and the Church. This financing policy has been …

Challenging The Politics Of Creating Art In The 21st Century: An Artist/Educator's Perspective, Claire Campbell Park

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The politics of creating art pertains to assumptions relating to a given cultural sphere or theory that are concerned with power and status in society. From the perspective of an artist and educator, I will question prevalent assumptions in the contemporary culture of making and teaching art, and present alternative approaches inspired by textile artists from diverse cultures. What makes art "strong" - must we assume attitudes and mediums traditionally in the male domain? Are art students encouraged to "fit in" to the current scene, as opposed to developing their own creative integrity? Does "pushing the envelope" necessarily mean "beyond …