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Documentary Film Presentation Local Colors: Natural Dyeing In A Milas Carpet Weaving Village, Ulara Tamura, John Wells

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This documentary, filmed in 2006, examines the process of naturally dyed carpet production in a village in the Milas region of Muğla Prefecture in southwest Turkey, a region well known as a traditional Turkish carpet production area. In large numbers of villages of this region, carpet weaving is the household based work of every woman who lives there.

In this paper, I aim to add more detailed information and discussion specifically on the colors and dyes of the carpets shown in this film. First I will introduce the varieties of the natural dye materials the villagers use one by one. …

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

Ethnic Dress: Reflecting Ancestral Roots

Unknown to the vast majority of the world, many people in northern Vietnam continue to wear a distinctive costume that speaks of their ties to a unique ancestral past, ancient beliefs, and time honored cultural traditions. While ninety per cent of Vietnam’s population of 84 million is from the majority group known as Viet Kinh, Vietnam is in actuality a fascinating composite of fifty four ethnic groups. Approximately thirty of the minority groups live in northern Vietnam. Varying in size from two hundred to half a million, these groups are minute in comparison to the …

Textiles, Masculinities And Spontaneous Communities In The Burning Man Project, Susan Kaiser, Denise Nicole Green

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

What is Burning Man?

Burning Man organizers assert that “trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.” Such enigmatic and authenticating discourse permeates the Burning Man website, as it seeks to affirm itself as a mythical, enchanted, and fantastical Bohemian space. Quite simply, the Burning Man Project is an annual festal gathering in the desert, where people come together from across the globe to form a community known as Black Rock City. The annual …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Purpose of Treatment

Sacred garments worn by the male members of the Hawaiian ali’i, or chiefs, these feather cloaks and capes serve today as one of the most iconic symbols of Hawaiian culture. During the summer of 2007 the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawai`i, under the supervision of its conservator, Valerie Free, commenced a project to stabilize the cloaks so that they could be safely exhibited in the museum. This project was funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Over the course of the summer three of the twelve cloaks in the museum’s collection were …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Preface

Today I will present the history of the founding of the Yuntdag cooperative in Orselli village in western Turkey. This cooperative is a member of the DOBAG Project, or the Natural Dye Research and Development Project (Dogal Boya Arastirma ve Gelistirme Projesi). DOBAG consists of two projects, one in Orselli and another in Ayvacik, both in western Turkey. By telling this story, I will show how “insiders” and “outsiders,” villagers, expatriates, textile experts, international dealers, and friends worked collaboratively to commodify a women’s heritage product and transform rural life in western Turkey.

Introduction

Harald Bohmer, who founded DOBAG in …

“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 is a high-end clothing, mail-order catalog company that has built its reputation on clothes made from finely crafted textiles in luxury fibers. The company appropriates elements from various textile practices and fuses them with Western fashion. The company simultaneously stresses distance and connection, colonization and celebration. We cannot simply locate the company in the rural Kansas town in which the corporate headquarters are based. Rather, this company straddles multiple geographic, temporal, and cultural locations, while simultaneously trying to ground its products in Peru. But we’re not in Kansas anymore, and we’re not in Peru, either.

I have chosen …

Atlas Today: Patterns Of Production, Bazaars And Bloomingdales Uzbekistan And Xinjiang, China, Mary M. Dusenbury

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In nineteenth century courts of the khanates and oasis cities of Central Asia, rulers, wealthy merchants and other well-to-do men and women wore boldly patterned warp-ikat and ikat velvet robes, often stunning in their patterning and variety. Nineteenth century ikat costumes and other textiles are well documented in private and museum collections today and have been the focus of considerable attention by collectors, dealers, and scholars since the 1970s. This robe is from a Turkish collection of Central Asian ikats given to the Textile Museum in Washington D.C. in 2005 by the collector Murad Megalli (Fig. 1).

Nineteenth century ikat …

The Cloud Brocade And Yangzhou, Ying Wang

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The cloud brocade, yunjin, is a unique production of Nanjing. The royal court had monopolized this kind of textile during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The incredibly rich textures and fantastic designs of the so-called cloud brocade fascinate people even today. The textiles studied in this paper are from the collections of the Research Institute of Yunjin at Nanjing. This research institute has been working on preservation and excellence for the cloud brocade in its classical style and technique.

Yunjin is the only kind of textile of China that cannot be replaced by modern weaving machines; in present-day …

The System And The Development Of Contemporary Quiltmaking In Japan, Nao Nomura

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Within just 30 years of the first introduction of American quilts to Japan, quiltmaking has become one of the most popular forms of needlework among Japanese women. It is estimated that there are now 2 to 3 million quiltmakers in Japan, which is one of the world’s largest quilt populations. Unlike American quiltmakers, who often learn to quilt through informal practice with friends, families or local communities and by attending short-term workshops, many Japanese quiltmakers learn quiltmaking within an established organizational structure that administers teaching and certification programs.

This paper examines Japan’s unique approach to teaching quiltmaking through the …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the last third of the twentieth century, a revival of quiltmaking occurred throughout the world along with a concurrent emergence of quilts as a focus of documentation and study. The rise of the feminist art movement in the 1960s and a heightened national interest in American history spawned by the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976 paved the way for a burst of interest in historical and contemporary American traditions, women’s artistic contributions, crafts in general and quiltmaking in particular. Millions of individuals began making quilts, an art form that had languished after World War II. By 2006, there were …

Embellishments Of The Alaska Native Gut Parka, Fran Reed

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Dealing with the various and extreme weather conditions in Alaska is a serious matter. Coastal Native Alaskans have been surviving in these severe environments for millennia. Without a local general store in which to buy a nice rain slicker, one must be resourceful with what is available. Between the hot summers and frigid winters are the transition seasons when it rains. Bird skins and fish skins were used extensively to make raincoats but it is the gut skin parka that proved so universal along the coast of Alaska (Fig. 1). From village to village different preparations, stitching methods and artistic …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Secret Flower Language, Women and Expression

In the romantic minds of the Victorian’s with their interest in medieval chivalry and sentimental symbolism, an obligation to social etiquette caused extreme censorship of what was considered appropriate conversation. This combination created a society that utilized and applied symbolic meanings of objects to express what otherwise could not be spoken. The Victorians followed upon the interest in botany and the natural world developed by the educated and leisure classes of England in the mid-18th century. They continued this interest, which developed into a fascination with the study of horticulture, botany and gardening. …

Acknowledgments, Pat Hickman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Tom Klobe and Reiko Brandon deserve our very special thanks for the organization of such a splendid symposium, which indeed exceeded our expectations and goals. Thanks are also due to the Hawaii Organizing Committee who worked so hard to make available both Hawaii’s rich cultural heritage and its creative involvement today, as expressed through textiles. The participation and contribution of more than thirty museums, arts, and cultural organizations to the theme, “Textiles as Cultural Expressions”, celebrated Hawaii’s rich and diverse cultural heritage. The textile community in Honolulu came together as never before and the city and state responded with welcoming …

Author Biographies

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Author Biographies A-Z

Copyright And Disclaimer

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Copyright and Disclaimer

Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, Inc.© 2009, Textile Society of America, Inc. ISBN 0-9645106-7-7

Copyright of individual papers remains with each author. All rights reserved. Published 2009. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, except brief excerpts for the purpose of review, without written permission from the Textile Society of America. Students and researchers wishing to cite the work of specific authors are encouraged to communicate directly with those individuals as many of these papers represent work in progress. …

Introduction, Reiko Brandon, Tom Klobe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Aloha and Welcome

The Hawai‘i Organizing Committee for the11th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America and the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel extend Hawai‘i’s fabled aloha to scholars, artists, museum and gallery professionals, educators, and textile enthusiasts from around the world.

Honolulu, the cosmopolitan capital of the state of Hawai‘i, is a meeting place of Western, Asian, and Pacific cultures, languages, and arts. Hawai‘i’s rich international diversity provides an appropriate site for discourse on the symposium theme Textiles as Cultural Expressions.

We are delighted that the symposium program is strongly international with presenters from East and Southeast Asia, the …

Table Of Contents

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Organized Sessions and Presentations

Pre-Symposium Event: Writing with Thread Colloquium

Microcosm of a Textile World: A Close Examination of Material Culture of the Miao People in Guizhou, China

Old Fabrics, Scented Textiles, Changing Values

Mediation and Negotiation of Textiles

Emblematic Power of Textiles

Archaeological Textiles

Beyond the Tradition: Extraordinary Textiles from the Southern Andes, Peru, Bolivia, Chile

Development and Tradition

Notes from Uzbekistan

Textiles and Identity

Walking A Line: Gps And Satellite Technologies As Narratives, Ruth Scheuing

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Over the last year I have been using a GPS (Global Positioning System) device to track my trips as drawings and a personal narrative. These lines form patterns with many variations. My recent Jacquard weavings were records of satellite images of the earth, received through the process of ‘remote sensing’, performed by a machine, instructed in this task. This presentation will briefly describe GPS and satellite technologies and discuss how these different ideas link up with my earlier work as an artist.

Walking as a conceptual practice has an interesting history. It deals with a process rather than a …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 20:1 — Winter 2008, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

Hawaii's Textile Resources Featured at Site Seminars, 11th TSA Biennial Symposium, Honolulu, Hawaii, September 24–27
President's Letter
TSA News
TSA Member News
Visual Language of Cloth: Commemorative Handkerchiefs
Pre-Symposium Colloquium, Post-Symposium Tour
Publications News
Featured Collection: Hidden Textile Treasures at the Armenian Museum and Library, Watertown, Massachusetts
Collections News
Exhibition Reviews
Calendar-Exhibitions
Calendar-Virtual, Lectures, Workshops, Tours
Conferences & Symposia
Employment

Flow, Sharon L. Kennedy

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Symbolizing purity, sustenance, tranquility, power, movement, and continuity, water is a source of life as well as destruction and death. Its surface serves as a metaphor for self-reflection and contemplation. It flows over cultural and physical boundaries. Water is indispensable to human survival, yet many take it for granted. We pollute it, misuse it, and fight over it. It is easily accessible to some while nearly out of reach to others. Flow explores the theme of water as subject and symbol, natural wonder, recreational resource, and environmental concern.

Artists with an affinity toward nature, especially landscape painters, chose water as …

Metaphors Of The Heart, Sharon L. Kennedy

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

The images in Metaphors of the Heart are the creations of impassioned photographer Luis Gonzalez Palma. The Mayan and Mestizo subjects of Palma's portraits radiate beauty and spiritual strength and at the same time an intense sorrow that tugs at the heartstrings. His photographs of empty rooms are lonely yet elegantly dignified spaces. For the viewer, the emotional connection is immediate.

Palma's life in Latin America, a place rich in cultural heritage and political struggles, and his Catholic upbringing might explain his desire and perhaps also his need to express these dualities in his photographs. Palma was born in Guatemala …

The Purpose Of Labor, Robert Silberman

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

For Gail Kendall, in decoration there is delight. No subscriber to the modernist dogma expressed by the architect Alfred Loos - that "ornament is crime"Kendall covers surfaces with eye-opening designs. Instead of the streamlined forms and unadorned austerity of high modernism, Kendall complements subtle washes or spots of color and delicate linear tracings with an unrelenting dot mania and frequent use of gold. The dots, sometimes only tiny specks, enliven the surfaces while demonstrating the expressive possibilities of even the simplest mark. The gold, far from indicating kitsch luxury, offers a reminder of the unique visual quality of gold's magical, …

Omoshirogara Textile Design And Children’S Clothing In Japan 1910-1930, Jacqueline M. Atkins

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textiles provide excellent visual canvases for the presentation of new cultural values and ideas, and the traditional clothing of Japan, which encompasses a kimono’s individuality in its surface design, offers an ideal example. The early 20th century in Japan was a culturally and technologically expansive period in which changing societal trends and mores were reflected in textile designs that presented a visual compendium of the ‘modern.’ These designs, termed omoshirogara (interesting designs), mirrored contemporary popular culture and captured the essence of a rapidly modernizing country.

These dramatic textile designs appeared in adult kimono, but the range of designs for children—especially …

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 …

The Colour Of Women’S Culture: Natural Dyeing As Self-Expression In America, Japan, Norway And Australia, Karen Diadick Casselman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Natural dyes are front and centre in academic and craft circles. The resurgence of attention is due to several factors. One is the popularity of natural dyes among European archaeologists and chemists who rely on dyes as an analytical tool for dating textiles. Scholars worldwide have developed a deeper cultural context for early textiles by studying dye origins, horticulture, early dye technology, and ancient trade in dyestuffs. Gender is now a prominent theme, as are ethical considerations, ecology, ethnicity, and aesthetics. Dyes have surmounted the art/craft debate because their postmodern applications encompass many disciplines. From agriculture to zoology, natural dyes …

Chinchorro Twined Shrouds, Vicki Cassman, Nancy Odegaard, Bernardo Arriaza

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The first inhabitants of the South Central Andes arrived to the Pacific coast of what is now Northern Chile and Southern Peru about 8000 BC. The early Chinchorro were fisher-hunter-gatherers that made use of two media for their artistic expressions, their own bodies and large canvases made from twined reeds and sedges. Mats and textiles were used for a variety of domestic and personal uses, including shelter, packaging and shrouding the dead. It is likely they were used as blankets for the living as well. The textile shrouds and stylistic mummification techniques employed by the Chinchorro culture predate pottery, agriculture …

Meanings And Messages: Quilts To Comfort The Families Of America’S Fallen In The Afghanistan And Iraq Wars, Jonathan Gregory

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Beginning in 2003, grassroots quiltmaking projects were founded in the United States in response to the deaths of American soldiers in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. The author conducted an oral history project involving the founders of three of these quiltmaking projects and other quiltmakers who were active within them in order to understand the meanings of making and giving quilts and the meanings of the quilts themselves.

Two primary sites of meaning were identified in the study: 1) the internal motivations that inspired quiltmakers to begin and continue participation in a project; and 2) the textual, symbolic, and personal …

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 …

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 …