Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Stitch In Time: New Embroidery, Old Fabric, Changing Values, Annin Barrett

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Using contemporary embroidered artwork as a bellwether for changing social relationships, this paper will discuss how values regarding time, family and gender roles have evolved in the past couple of generations. Artists such as Orly Cogan, Louise Bourgeois, and Shanon Schollian embroider on vintage textiles to tell a new story about contemporary life. The past is invoked by the use of recycled household cloth, freshly stitched with a witty approach toward domestic imagery.  This contrast between old and new textile layers signifies an elegiac distance from past ways of living and serves as a measure of how much society has …

Catching The Light, Catching The Waves: The Suzani Collection Of Doris Duke At Shangri La In Honolulu, Hawai‛I, Carol Bier

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Among the earliest collections of suzani in the United States is that acquired by Doris Duke, kept at Shangri La, the home she built in Honolulu. Nine of the suzani she purchased in India while on her honeymoon in 1935. In January 2005 the Shangri La Suzani Research Project initiated a collaborative effort to document Duke's collection with respect to materials, stitches, designs, patterns, colors, and ground fabrics. Suzanis represent an urban embroidery tradition in the 19th century and perhaps earlier; they are worked by young women of Uzbekistan and neighboring regions in Central Asia. Bright and colorful, they are …

Norwegian Natural Dyeing: Art, Craft, Gender And Innovation - Natural Dyes As A Tradition In Norway, Mette Biering

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper describes how the knowledge about natural dyes survived the introduction of aniline dyes to Norway in the last quarter of the nineteenth-century. How this happened involved women, for there was a great campaign to keep the traditional colors alive for the continued use in woven cloth, coverlets, tapestries and folk costumes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century great efforts were made by women to restore and re-design traditional folk costumes; they were therefore in a position to keep the dye knowledge in the face of industrial competition. There was a country-wide search to gather dye recipes from …

Social Cohesion And Cultural Expressions: The Case Of The Sacred Textiles In The Armenian Orthodox Churches Of Istanbul, Marlene R. Breu, Ronald T. Marchese

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper reports on data collected from textiles used in the religious life of members of the Armenian Orthodox Church community of Istanbul, Turkey, specifically consecrated items associated with the expression of the Divine Liturgy.  Our analysis of selected objects and their inscriptions revealed a valuable source of information about the culture and how it expressed itself in one of the key aspects of Armenian identity as a minority population in the Islamic society of Istanbul—its religion.  The production and use of these artifacts contributed to the cohesiveness of a people both in Istanbul and in the Diaspora, where Armenians …

A Poem Is A Robe And A Castle: Inscribing Verses On Textiles And Architecture In The Alhambra, Olga Bush

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper studies the interrelationship between textiles, architecture and poetry in the Alhambra, the palatial complex of the Nasrids, the last Muslim dynasty in the Iberian Peninsula.  Poetic figures likening architecture to textiles in parietal inscriptions, which I will call “textile metaphors,” are the crux of this interrelationship.  I limit discussion to a single example from the epigraphy of the Alhambra: a poem inscribed in the interior of the Qalahurra al-jadıda, a tower-palace in the palatial complex.  The focal point is the term muwashsha, common to the vocabulary of textile design and literary form, which is further employed here to …

Embroidering The Golden Chersonese: Metallic Thread Needlework In The Malay Peninsula, Hwei-Fe’N Cheah

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Metallic thread embroidery is a historically significant form of textile decoration in the Malay peninsula, Ptolemy’s “Golden Khersonese” of ancient times.   Pillow ends, cushion covers, food covers and decorative hangings elaborately embroidered with gold- and silver-wrapped thread were conspicuously displayed at court and at weddings as symbols of rank and wealth.  Undertaken by noblewomen, metallic thread embroidery was a point of pride and skillfully crafted items were presented as gifts to foreign royalty.  Although no longer as visible, metallic thread embroidery has nevertheless retained a place in ceremony as part of Malay adat or custom and is now valued as …

From Construction To Ritual Function: An Exploration Of New Guinea Fiber Masterworks, Jill D’Alessandro, Christina Hellmich

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Non-loom techniques used by generations of women in New Guinea to create everyday necessities, and by men to fabricate sacred ritual objects reveal a mastery of the fantastic and ephemeral materials found in their island surrounds. Collectors Marcia and John Friede have amassed a collection of over 3000 works that comprise the Jolika collection of New Guinea Art at San Francisco’s de Young Museum including many historic tours de force made exclusively of plant fibers and materials.  These works celebrate the rich and diverse local and regional artistic traditions based on core fabrication techniques of tapa making, plaiting, coiling, twining …

“Revisiting The Ocucaje Opened Tunic From The Textile Museum; Washington, D.C.: Textile Models And The Process Of Imitation”, Sophie Desrosiers

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Features of the Ocucaje textile (accession number 1959.11.1) belonging to the Textile Museum Washington, D.C. have previously been analyzed by Mary Frame as representing designs derived from thread and sprang imagery.  A new look at the textile reveals a textile model. The origin of this model will be traced as well as the innovation of new procedures used in the process of imitation.

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Feather capes and cloaks of the ali`i communicate the history of the Hawaiian people through their presence in museum collections around the world. The collection of thirteen of these textile garments at the Bishop Museum attests to the legacy of the museum’s founders: the desire of the descendants of the ali`i  to preserve their heritage so that future generations may continue to learn about Native Hawaiian culture, its history and values. As such, the ahu`ula are central to the narratives describing that history and serve as signifiers of its values. From the life of the original owner, to later use …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the summer of 2007 a team of six people gathered in Tashkent, at the Central Asian heart of the ancient Silk Road. We were two museum curators, three artists and university professors and a photographer. We came from the United States and Japan. We were interested in contemporary textile production, the role of textiles in daily life and the rich cultural heritage of the region. We traveled for three weeks throughout Uzbekistan – from the comparatively lush Ferghana Valley in the east (silk moiré, ikat, silk velvet ikat), to Boysun in the southern mountains near Afghanistan (tent band rugs, …

Industrial Production And The Hand Process: Making A Bridge, Catharine Ellis

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The power loom has long been a time and labor saving device resulting in a separation of the weaver/designer from the process of making cloth. This is evident in the Taiten shibori fabrics of the early 20th century, the only form of Japanese loom woven shibori. Taiten fabric was woven of plain weave with heavier threads placed at intervals in the warp. When the cloth is removed from the loom the heavy threads are pulled to form a resist for dyeing. While developing my own process of woven shibori I was not able to understand why the Japanese never developed …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Language of Flowers, a dictionary of symbolic meanings assigned to individual flowers, was established in Europe during the early 19th century as a result of the leisure classes’ interests in botany and a social preoccupation with romance and chivalry.

Victorian upper class women, isolated within their assigned domestic sphere had a limited number of acceptable activities available for them.  With restrictions place upon them by society regarding appropriate behavior, the possibility that some women sought methods of covert communication and expression exists.

Embroidery, so inextricably linked to the Victorians’ definition of femininity, could have been an ideal form through …

The Serpentine Essence Of A Chancay Gauze Headdress, Jessica Gerschultz

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A colorful Chancay gauze fragment in the Michael C. Carlos Museum’s collection of Andean textiles deserves consideration for the ingenious yet unpublished technical combination of its weave structure. Its Late Intermediate Period weaver pushed beyond technical limitations to join the laborious techniques of gauze weaving and discontinuous warping to reinforce the cloth’s protective and regenerative functions. Worn on the head during moments of transformation, the headdress would have empowered its wearer in ritual contexts, perhaps helping her to initiate her own rebirth in the afterlife. The weaver’s sophisticated fusion of the two techniques resulted in “jumping” serpentine figures, rendered in …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

For one week of the year nearly 50,000 individuals make the pilgrimage to the desolate Black Rock Desert in Northwestern Nevada to participate in the creation of culture. As an experiment in ephemeral Bohemia, the Burning Man Project (BMP) provides a space for unbridled creative expression. This festal gathering seeks to replace commodified with communified material culture. The latter works to move beyond the capitalist “disconnect” between production and consumption, toward a model that bridges the two.

The BMP is a work in progress, with a reflexive awareness of the challenges involved in integrating collective participation and a gift economy …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

DOBAG, a carpet weaving cooperative in western Turkey, founded in the 1980’s, is famous for revitalizing natural dyes in new-production textiles of “indigenous” design for export.  It is also known for its work in sustaining women’s artistic production and helping villagers remain in rural regions, rather than migrate to urban centers.  This paper considers the complex network of individuals who came together in the history of the founding of the cooperative.  In 2003, the director, Ahmet Çinar, and in 2007, one of the founders, Josephine Powell, died.  As a result, I have been rethinking the collaborative efforts of expatriate and …

Supplementary Warp Patterned Textiles Of The Cham In Vietnam, Michael C. Howard

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The difficult supplementary warp weaving technique appears to have been developed initially by Tai-speaking peoples in what is today southern China. The decorative technique subsequently diffused across Mainland Southeast Asia as far as Bhutan as well as to the southern Philippines and Indonesia. Use of the technique has declined considerably in recent years, until today it is still employed by only a few peoples in Southeast Asia. In the case of the Cham of southern Vietnam, the technique has not merely survived but it remains one of the dominant decorative techniques used by Cham weavers. The paper provides an examination …

Hand-Spinning For Traditional Garments In Ladakh, Tracy P. Hudson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This presentation examines the living tradition of hand-spinning wool for garment cloth in Ladakh, North India.  In the villages of Ladakh, the technology of spinning has not significantly changed for centuries.  Villagers typically spin and weave wool from the bounty of their flocks to produce items for daily use: clothing, bags, rope, and rugs.  This research focuses on the villages of Skurbuchan and Bodh Kharbu in Western Ladakh, where wool is hand-spun, woven and dyed in a manner representative of the region.  Women in these villages grow up learning the art of hand-spinning during the coldest months, when the household …

A Comparative Study Of Andongpoh And Musam Korean Hemp: The Production Of Two Distinct Qualities Of Hemp Cloth, Min Sun Hwang

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Korean hemp cloth is produced for shrouds, funerary costumes, and everyday summer-wear.  The two different terms used to describe hemp cloth in Korea are Andongpoh and Musam.  They are differentiated by their production processes used to make the yarn. Andongpoh is indigenous to the southeast region of Korea, whereas Musam is produced in eleven different regions throughout Korea and represents the majority of hemp fabric production in Korea.  Traditionally Andongpoh was used as an offering to kings and royal families, while Musam was made solely for the Korean lower classes.  In 2006, at the 10th Biennial Symposium in Toronto, I …

Trade Cloth On American Whaleships, 1820-1870 “Liberty With A Roll Of Calico”, Susan J. Jerome

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 1858, the Canton from New Bedford prepared for a whaling voyage to the Indian and Pacific Oceans with a variety of provisions that included 4844 yards of six different kinds of cloth. Antone de Castra, on the Marcella, invested $4.88 for a total of 25 yards of cloth purchased from the ship’s slop chest between 1854 and 1856. Mrs. Ricketson noted on January 27, 1872, that her husband Captain Daniel Ricketson, traded with natives using “cotton cloth, bleached and unbleached, and red cloth.  He got twenty chickens and quite a number of bunches of Banana and some sugar cain.” …

Rediscovering Camlet: Traditional Mohair Cloth Weaving In Southeastern Turkey, Charlotte Jirousek

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When European commerce expanded during the era of the Crusades, one of the commodities that was avidly sought by merchants reaching the Levant was a textile they called camlet, then known in Turkish as sof.. Camlet in the 15th century was made entirely of mohair, although later forms of European camlet were adulterated with other fibers. The mohair goat was unique to the region once known as Asia Minor (now Turkey), and attempts to raise these goats outside of Turkey never succeeded until the 20th century. By the 16th century  Western merchants mainly sought yarn and  fiber to supply their …

Translation Of Medium: Kesi Meets Painting, Jean Kares

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Pictorial silk tapestry, or kesi, was produced in China beginning in the tenth century as a method of weaving that allowed for designs that were independent of loom controlled patterning.  When Chinese weavers adopted the technique, they expanded its design repertoire from overall patterning to a means of creating pictures, and typically chose similar subjects to those of court paintings, sometimes copying directly from them.  In kesi, the conventions of depiction in painting and tapestry met, and the process of translation from one to the other gave rise to a new mode of expression.  Tapestry method represents a serious challenge …

“Pride And Practicality”, Barbara Kawakami

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Japanese immigrants who came to Hawai‘i in a steady stream beginning in 1885 brought with them a rich cultural heritage; their traditional clothing was an important part of that heritage.  These immigrants had been exposed to little, if any, Western culture in their native Japanese villages.  At first the issei men and women began working in the fields in the rustic cotton kimono they had brought with them from their villages.  But those kimono were ill-suited for work in sugarcane and pineapple fields.  The issei men readily accepted the standard work clothing worn by the other ethnic groups who …

The Usage And Symbolic Meaning Of A Length Of White Cotton Cloth Used In Shamanist Rituals For The Dead In Korea, Jeeun Kim

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As a practicing artist who is using fiber as a medium, I have been interested in the function and symbolism of fiber in traditional custom and culture as well as in traditional craft. In this paper, I focus on the symbolic role of the length of white cloth used in the ritual for the dead called “Kut” in Korea. Kut are not simply symbolic expressions of the belief system but are a deep source of cultural expression as well. In fact, Kut have been primary inspirations for the work of many artists, including my own work.  I will introduce three …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Investigations into the historical, cultural and sociological roles of quilts have become a focus for scholars across a range of disciplines. Scores of grassroots state and regional quilt documentation projects have focused on documenting quilts’ personal and community contexts, as well as capturing the history of their production, ownership, use, and describing their physical appearance. Enabling both scholars and a broad general audience to access this information is central to furthering the role that these ubiquitous textiles can play in such scholarship.  The Quilt Index (www.quiltindex.org) is a comprehensive, digital library that provides access to extensive documentation on quilts and …

Expressions Of Power – Luxury Textiles From Early Medieval Northern Europe, Sonja Marzinzik

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper focuses on luxury textiles from archaeological and non-archaeological contexts in northern Europe from approximately the 5th to 11th centuries A.D. Due to the preservation bias against organics in the archaeological record, today we only catch glimpses of the crucial role that textiles played in the Germanic world. Careful analysis of often minute remains of textiles, supplemented by examination of historical sources underlines their importance. Hence, textiles are not only a source of knowledge for early medieval social and economic relations but they are also markers of long-distance exchange between the North and the Mediterranean and beyond.

Select examples …

Mud And Dirt: Australian Soil As Self-Expression, Di Mcpherson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I was born in Tasmania, Australia’s island state, and that geographical reality is the primary feature of my art work and my dyeing. Although I have also lived and worked in Britain, and in Africa, the natural world around me has colored my aesthetic sense. Dye research and conference participation, and dye workshops I have taught and attended in Canada, the USA, Japan, India, and elsewhere, have helped me integrate my artistic ideas with the ecology of the natural environment which sustains the organisms I use for dyeing. That environment also sustains and supports me, as a fiber artist, physically, …

A Marketplace In Miniature: Norwich Pattern Books As Cultural Agency, Victoria Mitchell

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The paper analyses 18th-century pattern books from the city of Norwich (UK) as examples of cultural mediation. The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai notes that from a ‘methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context’. The books are always on the move, portable, negotiated afresh with each encounter; they are a marketplace in miniature, carrying patterns, fabrics and names across geographical and cultural borders, snippets of detail in sample form linking back to the special relationship between the master weaver and merchant for which Norwich was famous.  The word ‘detail’ (Fr. détailler) is used here …

Prosperity, Longevity, And “Happily Ever-After”: Symbolism And The Sophistication Of Implication In Japanese E-Gasuri (Picture Ikat) Textiles, Ann Marie Moeller

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Ancient luxury fabrics, preserved from as early as the seventh century, testify to the long history of Japanese fascination with symbolic images on cloth.  By the nineteenth century Japanese society had developed a complex vocabulary of symbols that was easily identified by both commoners and elites.  This paper will explore sophisticated, implied messages expressed in this symbolic language in e-gasuri, a textile technique that came to full flower during the same century. E-gasuri is the Japanese term for the process of resist dying thread (ikat) which skilled artisans used to create pictures – sometimes simple, sometimes intricate-in fabric.  Since the …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 1975, the first American quilt exhibition toured some of the major cities in Japan including Tokyo and Kyoto and attracted a large number of audience. This exhibition made American quilts widely known to Japanese women and quiltmaking soon became a popular form of needlework among the middle-class women. Now, Japan boasts one of the world’s largest quilt populations and exhibitions, and many classes are offered all over the country throughout the year. In contrast to American quilters who often learn to quilt through informal practice with friends, families or local communities and by attending short-term workshops, many Japanese quilters …

Representation And Self-Presentation In Late Antique Egypt: ‘Coptic’ Textiles In The British Museum, Elisabeth R. O'Connell

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Modern Akhmim was a productive source of “Coptic” textiles entering international collections in the late nineteenth century. Fragments said to have come from the site constitute the majority of registered textiles held by the Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department, The British Museum.  In Late Antiquity, Akhmim was the location of Panopolis/Shmin, one of about forty metropoleis and a city relatively well documented in contemporary textual and other archaeological sources.  This is precisely the period in which most of Egypt’s residents became Christian.  The abundance of material culture representing Panopolis/Shmin provides an opportunity to explore and challenge the categories scholars have …