Art and Design Commons^™

Italian Bedfellows: Tristan, Solomon & “Bestes”, Kathryn Berenson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Two surviving late fourteenth-century quilted furnishings, the Coperta Guicciardini in the Museo Nazinale del Bargello, Florence, and the Tristan Quilt in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, depict scenes from the legend of Tristan, one of King Arthur’s knights. Both museums attribute the furnishings to a southern Italian atelier. Research to-date essentially treats these works as if, like Athena from the head of Zeus, they burst complete. Yet by the twelfth century Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Norman occupation and active trade with the Levant, all had contributed to the culture of southern Italy. Prime evidence is the mosaic floor, dated …

Eliza Calvert Hall, A Book Of Hand-Woven Coverlets, And Collecting Coverlet Patterns In Early Twentieth Century Appalachia, Philis Alvic

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In her 1912 book, Eliza Calvert Hall describes looking out of her window and seeing coverlets thrown over tobacco wagons on way to market. She would run out and try to bargain with the owner for the coverlet. She collected coverlets, their design names, and their patterns. Since Hall supported herself with her writing, she counted on her coverlet book appealing to the wide audience of people interested in the Colonial Revival in home decoration. Although hall published the book, she was just the more visible of those interested in coverlets during the early twentieth century. Throughout Appalachia, there were …

Fish In The Desert – North Africa’S Textile Tradition Between Indigenous Identity And Exogenous Shifts In Meaning, Silvia Dolz

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Among the oldest handcraft products of North Africa are woven, knotted, and embroidered textiles (flat woven fabrics, knotted carpets, clothing) primarily made of wool and hair from sheep, goats, or camels. Those products have great importance, beyond their practical purpose, as a communicative and artistic medium. Changes and re-evaluations of the textile from a utilitarian object with potent pre-Islamic and Islamic symbolism towards a modern abstract art object reveal centuries of cultural transfer between the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe on the one hand, and between North and West Africa on the other. At the same time, this has …

The Tent-Dweller: Visual Markers Of Migration In Art, Sara Clugage

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The current migrant crisis has brought new complexity to an object that enables transition: the tent. Tents are structures most often meant to be temporary-they both practically enable journeys and visually signify the temporary. A language of migration, territory, and dislocation is mapped onto canvas, ropes, and poles. Migration depends on concepts of land rights, movement, and the finite duration of a journey. As Deleuze and Guattari set for in “A Thousand Plateaus,” migrants move from one place to another but are defined as belonging to those spaces. Nomads, on the one hand, do not have land distributed to them-they …

Reawakening Chahta Nan Tvnna (Choctaw Textiles), Jennifer Byram

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Choctaw people have crafted textiles from the land for thousands of years. Native to Mississippi and Alabama, U.S.A., the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma resides today in the Southeastern part of the state and numbers over 200,000 citizens. This paper comes out of the tribe’s Historic Preservation department’s work in conjunction with community efforts to reawaken Chahta nan tvnna, Choctaw textiles. By piecing together disparate parts of the Choctaw textile narrative, the Choctaw community is creating new textile work that recalls the ancestors and brings the identity of Chahta nan tvnna to new generations of Choctaw artisans.

Milingimbi Artists Partnerships, Louise Hamby

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Aboriginal women artists who live on the island of Milingimbi in eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia have had a long engagement with people outside of the community. This began with the arrival of Macassan traders over 400 years ago who came primarily in search of trepang. They brought new things and ideas with them; some became absorbed into the lifestyle of the local people. One item in particular is most relevant to the Deep Local and those operating outside of it. The praus that brought the Macassans to Arnhem Land were powered by sails. The Arnhem …

A Local Motif; Use Of Kōwhaiwhai Patterns In Printed Textiles, Jane Groufsky

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper considers the role of patterns derived from kowhaiwhai in printed textiles, and how these have been used to project a national identity. Kowhaiwhai refers to the design traditionally used my Maori (the Indigenous people of New Zealand) on parts of meetings houses, canoe paddles, and other painted objects. Although kowhaiwhai art has developed to include figural representation, it is the curvilinear decoration based on the natural forms of koru (fern shoots), kape (crescent), and rauru (spiral) which has become a distinctly recognizable “New Zealand” pattern. Situated in the meeting house, kowhaiwhai designs have a style and meaning which …

The Techniques Of Samitum. Based On A Reconstruction Of A Silk From The Oseberg Burial, Åse Eriksen

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

A collection of samitum was found in the Norwegian Viking burial Osebert (834 CE) in 2014. I got the opportunity to study some of the fragments and could reconstruct a nearly full pattern unit from six narrow bands, once cut from the same fabric. I wove a small piece of this fabric in my ordinary flatloom, using both modern dyestuff and fabric spun silk material. Fragments found in Egypt from 400 AD show that both tapestry and taquete were woven in the same fabric. When searching for the loom used for the original samitum fabric, I made a vertical warp …

Indian Basketry In Yosemite Valley, 19th-20th Century: Gertrude “Cosie” Hutchings Mills, Tourists And The National Park Service, Catherine K. Hunter

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Basketry is the highest art form of Native Americans in California. I will focus on Yosemite Valley starting in the 1850s when Native Americans adapted progressively to contact with miners, settlers, and tourists. As a Research Associate at the Peabody Museum, Andover, Massachusetts, I inventoried the Native American Basket Collection. The unpublished Hutchings Mills Collection, acquired by Gertrude ‘Cosie’ Hutchings in Yosemite prior to 1900, caught my attention. In 1986, the Department of the Interior requested the collection be loaned, exchanged, or purchased as “the single most important assemblage from that period.” The collection did not leave Andover; however, one …

Tinctorial Cartographies: Plant, Dye & Place, Anna Heywood-Jones

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

We live in a plant-dominated biosphere, and yet the relevance and meaning of vegetal life, beyond its contribution to human existence, is rarely considered. This way of thinking has led us to see nature as external to ourselves, as “other,” as that mysterious realm beyond the human sphere of being. As in visual culture, plant life possesses signifiers and coded meanings in its contextual configurations. Botanical literacy offers insight into environmental, sociocultural, and historical narratives of place, as the forests and herbaceous margins of our communities speak of complex past, a parallel history of survival and adaptation. Plants and textiles, …

Embroidering Paradise: Suzanis As A Place Of Creative Agency And Acculturation For Uzbek Women In 19th Century Bukhara, Shannon Ludington

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Central Asian women have long been a point of fascination, written and sung about by others. Exoticized as an oriental “other,” there are many legends but only few historic details known, and then recorded not by themselves but by foreign men. A number of excellent books on women in Uzbekistan under the Soviet Union, and on Uzbek craft and culture in general have been published but most authors conclude there simply is not enough evidence to say anything more about Uzbek women from their own perspective before Soviet times. In Embroidering Paradise: Suzanis as a Place of Creative Agency and …

Occam’S Razor: Origins Of A Classical Turkish Carpet Design?, Sumru Belger Krody

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This case study will explore the origins of a Turkish carpet design by discussing a thirteenth century Mamluk textile cover in The Textile Museum’s collection. Seemingly little connected textile types help us understand how textile motifs and designs moved from one to another, from one to another type, from one culture to another, from one part of the world to another, and from one period to another through the old trade routes. Examining these factors and looking beyond a single type of textile are of paramount importance for understanding and evaluating textile design traditions. The first section of the paper …

Containing Tradition, Embracing Change: Weaving Together Plant Materials In Northern Latin America, Kathryn Rousso

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

From southern Mexico to northern Colombia, palm fronds, wild pineapple fibers, agave fibers, wild bamboo and cane have been woven into bags, baskets, mats, hats, and brooms for as long as anyone can remember. These items carry great historical and cultural value to many Indigenous people including the Otomi (Mexico), Maya (Mexico and Guatemala), Lenca (Honduras), Ngobe-Bugle (Panama), Embera (Panama and Columbia), plus the Guane and Zunu (Columbia) providing a “sense of place” for those who harvest, prepare, weave, and use or sell plant material woven items in each of their unique environments. Spanish colonization, civil wars, modern politics, tourism, …

The Rayed Head And Stepped Platform: A Core Symbol Of The Southern Andean Iconographic Series, Nancy B. Rosoff

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper will explore various manifestations of the Rayed Head motif that is found on textiles produced by the Nasca, Sihuas, and Pucara cultures during the Early Intermediate Period (200 BCE – 600 CE), in the southern Andean region of South America. The Brooklyn Museum’s famous Nasca mangle, also known as “The Paracas Textile,” features repeating images of the Rayed Head motif on its interior cotton panel. Sihuas mantles also display distinctive manifestations of the motif in the form of a large rectangular head with highly stylized features and surrounded by radiating appendages. The late textile scholar and archaeologist Joerg …

Local Wear: A Chat About Textiles & The Body, Emily J. Pascoe

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

In this presentation, I propose that worn-in garments are a shared aspect of the relationship between humans and textiles, while also being unique to the user. The relationship between natural, cultural, and material forms, resulting in wear on textiles, begins with the human body. The human body is the most universal local. It is the essential qualifier to be a part of the human species. Although it is a biological form, how the body behaves, and the shapes it is molded into, are influenced by culture. The textiles that enclose the body accrue signs of the interactions. Even if the …

Silk Velvets Identified As Byzantine: Were Warp-Looped Silk Pile Velvets Woven Under The Byzantine Empire?, Sumiyo Okumura

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper will examine the possibility of whether warp-looped pile velvets, made of silk, were woven during the Byzantine Empire. This study is a continuation of my research for “Velvet and Patronage: the Origin and Historical Background of Ottoman and Italian Velvets.” Research has been conducted under these five themes: 1. Byzantine silk industry; 2. The terminology of velvet in Greek; 3. Velvets in Byzantine written sources; 4. Historical background: the relation between Byzantines and Latin powers, Turks and the Middle East; 5. Latin trade in the Black Sea and 6. Velvet production in Anatolia in the Byzantine period.

The Untold Story Of Inuit Printed Fabrics From Kinngait Studios, Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, Canada, Roxane Shaughnessy, Anna Richard

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Textile Museum of Canada holds a collection of close to 200 printed fabrics designed by Inuit artists at Kinngait Studios in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, Canada in the 1950s and 1960s. The pieces are owned by the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (WBEC) and are on longterm loan to the Museum. Building on centuries-old Inuit graphic traditions, printmaking was introduced in Kinngait in 1957 as part of a larger initiative to encourage handicraft production for sale in the Canadian south. By the 1960s, the studio had a number of Inuit artists who contributed to the Kinngait Studios’ print program which …

The Radical Fiber Art Practices Of The Yarn Mission: A Case Study, Lila Stone

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This paper aims to investigate how The Yarn Mission uses fiber arts practices to challenge racism and sexism through the lens of a case study. The Yarn Mission is a “pro-Black, pro-rebellion, pro-community” knitting collective that formed in St. Louis, Missouri in response to the tragic death of Mike Brown at the end of 2014. It now has chapters in Minneapolis, MN; Atlanta, GA; New York City; and Wilmington, DE. This research draws on a series of semi-structured interviews (with questions that prompt discussion) with selected founders and current members of The Yarn Mission. I will conduct both phone and …

Living Organisms For Living Spaces: Shifting The Function Of Material, Juliana Silva Diaz

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

This document explains the creative and analytical processes behind the project Living Organisms for Living Spaces. This art project examines the conceptual considerations around material by analyzing ‘objects’ – specifically fabric and textile ornaments – from Colombia’s material culture. The project explores the symbolic meaning of these objects that have both a Catholic and colonial legacy in society.

Sanquhar Gloves: An Exemplification Of Deep Local To Pan Global?, Angharad Thomas

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Hand knitted gloves with unique patterning have been produced in the small Scottish town of Sanquhar for probably 200 years. They continue to be produced there today, demonstrating a “deep local” presence spanning many generations. Meanwhile, knowledge of the gloves has spread globally, including the English-speaking world as well as Europe and Scandinavia. Aided by modern social media they have become “pan global” as exemplified in the author’s blog documenting “The Glove Project” (https:knittinggloves.wordpress.com/), the Ravelry group dedicated to Sanquhar knitting (http://www.ravelry.com/groups/sanquhar-knitting-group) and an ongoing online exhibition for the Center for Knit and Crochet USA (http://sanquhargloves.centerforknitandcrochet.org). …

The Wagga Quilt In History And Literature, Diana Mary Eva Thomas

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

The Wagga quilt fits squarely into the Australian tradition of ‘making do.’ These quilts were constructed from recycled materials that were available at the time-for the shearer or drover that was wheat sacks, for the poor family on the land it was clothing that could no longer be worn because it was too threadbare, for Depression-era women it was the samples that tailors or fabric salesmen no longer needed. But Waggas are not only the products of hardship on the land. Many of the surviving quilts were used in homes in reginal towns or the suburbs or large cities such …

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, …

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, …

Schoolgirl Embroideries: Integrating Indigenous Motifs, Materials, And Text, Lynne Anderson

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Hand embroidery was an integral part of female education in Europe, America, and their colonized territories until the late 19^th century. All girls embroidered at least one sampler and many stitched more than one. Because needlework was part of the school’s curriculum; a sampler’s composition, technique, and text communicate a great deal about the teacher’s goals, as well as community and family expectations, including those of indigenous students. This presentation explores ways in which indigenous motifs, materials, and text were integrated into schoolgirl samplers and other girlhood embroideries, leaving visible evidence of cross-cultural accommodations. Motifs are recurring patterns or …

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. …

Threads, Twist And Fibre: Looking At Coast Salish Textiles, Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

Coast Salish textiles are: remarkable for their quality; unusual in the fibres used; notable in their designs; singular in the innovative processes used to manufacture them. Salish textiles were determined by geography, shaped by trade, and influenced by colonization. That the textile tradition has survived is a reflection of the prestige they hold and the importance of the textiles in the Coast Salish culture. Relatively unknown and underappreciated, the older textiles deserve to be looked at with fresh eyes and modern methods that bring to light the outstanding abilities of the Coast Salish women in the creation of these important …

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

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings

During my six months in Chiapas, I worked for the weaving cooperative Mujeres Sembrando la Vida (MSV), a partner organization to Natik. Natik works with grassroots organizations in Mexico and Guatemala with a focus on economic development and education. MSV is a cooperative of sixty women weaving from the municipality of Zinacantán1 founded by Doña Magdalena and currently run by her two daughters Yoli and Xunka. Zinacantán is a Tzotzil Mayan village in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Chiapas has the highest population of indigenous people and is also the poorest state in Mexico with a poverty rate of 75.7 …