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Textile Society Of America Newsletter 20:3 — Fall 2008, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

TSA 2008 Symposium: "TSA Membership Provides Rich Program in Hawaii"
President's Letter
TSA News
TSA Member News
Collections News
Conference Reviews
Book Reviews
Exhibition Reviews
Calendar: Exhibitions, Lectures, Workshops, and Tours
Calendar: Conferences and Symposia
Positions

Soft Or Modern? Delineating Curtains In Domestic Interiors Of Modern Architecture, Açalya Allmer

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

These are the words of the Bourgeois, the fictive character in Le Corbusier’s seminal book, The Decorative Art of Today. Le Corbusier’s witty attack on curtains was common in the dominant rhetoric of modern architecture in which drapes and curtains were regarded as superficial, fleeting, and effeminate. In spite of this, curtains were never a legitimate discussion among modern architects. Conceivably this explains the lack of scholarship on the use of drapery and curtains in modern architecture. In this paper I will deal with domestic interiors; exploring the correlation that exists between the re-presentation and function of curtains in …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I am a weaver, a dyer, an artist, and an educator. I speak to you today from the perspective of a maker because it is from the process of making that I have researched and learned what I know about taiten shibori.

My own work has been defined for the last number of years by an original process that I call woven shibori. The genesis of that process was the introduction to stitched or nui shibori. As I made hand stitches into a piece of cloth in preparation for making a resist for dyeing, I realized that a …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Using recent embroidered artwork by Ghada Amer, Orly Cogan, and Louise Bourgeois 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. Rozsika Parker’s pivotal 1984 book, The Subversive Stitch, recognized the significant relationship between women’s social history and their embroidery styles, passed down through generations in Europe and America. We can extend that analytical approach to embroidered artwork being made today. Parker’s book ends with 1970s feminist art, such as Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party. This work achieved a kind of equal but …

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 at the same time both fragile and powerful. Perfumed textiles and costume are a standard part of every culture, yet few objects have been identified, and virtually none have been preserved. Perfuming was traditionally used to mask bad odors 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, fragrant oils and fuming pans. Unintentional perfuming also occurred, of which we …

Blanket Statements, Issue 92, Summer 2008

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 92, Summer 2008

Good Girl, Erika C. Navarrete Anderson

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I have always had a narrative sensibility, drawing from memory, stories, and personal experience. Perhaps it was the abundance of story telling and gossip I absorbed growing up. The dominance of women in my family had a profound influence on how I created narratives in my earlier work. They remain core influences, and through them I have developed further, reaching out past linear narrative and specific story to focus on the psychology of internal and external experience.

When I began my MF A it was the first time in two years I was 'getting intensive feedback on my work. What …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 20:2 — Spring/Summer 2008, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

TSA 2008 Symposium Speakers: "Hawaii Calls: Announcing Keynote and Plenary Session Speakers, 11th TSA Biennial Symposium, Honolulu, HI, Sep. 24–27"
President's Letter
More Symposium News
TSA Member News
Publications News
In Memoriam: "Ursula Eland McCracken, Former Director, Textile Museum, 1942–2008"
Collections News, Calls for Papers
Book Reviews
Exhibit Reviews
Calendar: Exhibitions
Calendar: Lectures
Calendar: Workshops, Tours, Conferences and Symposia

Blanket Statements, Issue 91, Spring 2008

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 91, Spring 2008

Warps & Wefts 2009, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

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

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

Blanket Statements, Issue 94, Winter 2008–2009

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 94, Winter 2008–2009

Constructing Entropy, Xanthe Isbister

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Significant portions of my life have been spent in the wilderness of Nothern Canada. These experiences such as hiking, exploring, and prospecting, that began in early childhood created in me a profound respect and concern for the wilderness environment. I scek to capture and express this "sense of place" in my work. In the last th ree years visits to this region of Canada, or to any wilderness area, for that matter, have been minimal. This absence has created a drive within mc to employ memory, perhaps idealized, as source material in this ceramic sculpture. A demanding and labor -intensive …

Decay Of The Domestic, Kimberly J. Thomas

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Because I was an adult when my parents divorced, I was aware of how the tumultuous situation and new knowledge were working to change my childhood memories. Past events became tainted, clarified, or muddled. Different from my memories was the idea of history, specifically a family's history. My inner narrative changed and to this day differs from my parents' narratives. This was a shocking realization of the subjective nature of history. Ultimately, the events of the divorce made me unsure of things of which I had been certain. Through these photographs I am questioning my ideas about family, memory, history, …

What Is In Front Of You?, Susan A. Dewsnap

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Pots are familiar forms, approachable and understood. They are opened, looked into, lifted and held and this is when their hidden virtues of suggestively vast interior, weight and gravity are revealed. I continue to be intrigued by the questions that pots provoke: those of making, possibilities of use and by the endless manifest forms in which they appear throughout various cultures of the world. My recent work has been an investigation into the dynamics of how the drawing on the surface and the shape of a piece can be intimately connected, that one cannot exist without the other. I aspire …

Recollection, Eriko Fujita

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

World events, political satire and social commentary are expressed in my artwork. believe that under the current political circumstances, history is often ignored, forgotten or miscommunicated. My work is a response to the misinterpretation and continuous change in the world around us. I am interested in looking into the relationship between three countries, Japan, the U.S. and China. I grew up in Hiroshima, Japan until I was sixteen years old. Every summer, schools in Hiroshima have an intense educational program that teaches students about "peace" and how it is important for people to know that there is no such thing …

Traditional Textile Materials Of Baekje Kingdom, Mi Young Suh, Kil Soon Park

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The purpose of this study is to analyze the traditional textile materials of Baekje including the sorts of material, colors, and patterns. This study is qualitative research using documentary records related with the costume of Baekje and evacuated data such as “Yang-Jikgongdo”, on the wall paintings of Seonwun-temple, Wajeon(tiles), and the relics from King Muryeong's dome and other domes.

The results of study are as follows:

1) Textile manufacturing technology of Baekje which had been developed since Mahan era greatly prospered in Baekje era, and high quality silks, hemp, wool, and leather were used as dress material.

2) Six basic …

11th Biennial Symposium Program, Part 1, Textiles As Cutlural Expressions

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

No abstract provided.

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

An eighteenth-century book of woven samples can be considered as a seminal link between the production of raw materials in one cultural context and clothing or furnishing in another. In bringing images of such samples from Norwich to Hawaii for a twenty-first century conference on Textiles as Cultural Expressions I am also conscious of mapping an openended dialogue which engages the historical and the contemporary. This perspective is recognized by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai when he says that ‘from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context.

Thus, although consideration of books and …

The Serpentine Essence Of A Chancay Gauze Headdress, Jessica Gerschultz

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A small but fascinating Chancay gauze fragment in the collection of the Michael C. Carlos Museum stands out as an exemplary object that embodies the symbolic associations and aesthetic principles of the Peruvian coastline during the Late Intermediate Period (Fig. 1). Its weave structure, production process, iconography, and polychromy unite in reinforcing the protective and regenerative purposes of the original headdress. Consisting of variably spun threads knotted together, its unique discontinuous warp relates to its function in funerary and ceremonial contexts. Significantly, its weaver pushed beyond technical limitations to bring together the laborious techniques of gauze weaving and discontinuous warping …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Twined textile shrouds, beginning at least nine thousand years ago, were an integral and relatively unchanging feature of Chinchorro mummy bundles, though Chinchorro mummification practices dramatically varied through the millennia. Twined mats were used like casings, enshrouding the bodies, like a postmortem amniotic sack made from vegetal fibers. They carried the individuals to the after world protected in the belly of the earth. Chinchorro mummies beginning with the earliest dated individual, known as Acha Man, from 9,000 B.P. through and into to the next cultural phase, Formative 3,000 -1,500 B.P., were enveloped in a reed shroud. The use, materials, structures …

The String Or Grass Skirt; An Ancient Garment In The Southern Andes, Amy Oakland

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction to Session and South America

The regions of South America specific to our session concerning extraordinary textiles from the Southern Andes include the dry Pacific coast of southern Peru and northern Chile. Among the earliest inhabited sites of South America are those from the coast near Arica, Chile and the interior desert of the Pampa de Tamarugal. It is here that Chinchorro (9000-3000 B.P.) burials and later Formative (3000-1,500 B.P.) cemeteries of closely related coastal people known as Quiani and Fladas del Morro have been excavated (Fig. 1).

Although humans inhabited the coast and highlands of South America for …

Spinning Pattern, Ann Pollard Rowe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Ecuadorian textiles are in general more austere than those of southern Peru or Bolivia, but there are some interesting things if you look carefully enough. The focus of my paper is a woman’s wrap and carrying cloth, locally called a rebozo, from the Salasaca ethnic group in central highland Ecuador (Figs. 1-2).1 It was collected in 1966 by Frances Ruddick, then a Peace Corps volunteer working in Salasaca, and given to The Textile Museum in 2004. It is a large rectangle, 2.23 meters long and 1.02 meters wide, in purple wool with some narrow white cotton stripes, mostly near …

Identification Of Red Dyes In Textiles From The Andean Region, Ana Roquero

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

The identification of dyes and pigments is nowadays very precise by means of different systems of chromatographic analysis. Nevertheless, as the same dye component can be found in different plants and animals, it is important when studying dyes in textiles to consider the geographical and cultural context of both the textile and the possible dyestuffs used historically in the area.

In the case of South American textiles, the major source of bibliographical information about the subject can be found in the Spanish Chronicles from the Americas, produced during the XVI–XVII centuries. Although European textile technology was introduced in the …

Tunics From The Azapa Valley, Late Formative Period. A New Weaving Tradition In The Lower Valleys, Liliana Ulloa

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Context

Due to the short distance between the Pacific Ocean and the highest point of the Andes, the area of Arica has been for millennia a frequently used passageway for human groups going between the coast, the valleys, the sierra, the highland and the eastern side of the Andes. (People also moved from north to south along the coastal border.) The Azapa Valley was probably one of the natural roads and several pre-Hispanic archaeological sites are located at the base of the hillsides.

The Formative Period in this area presents two stages: the Early Formative Period (1100-560 BC) (Santoro …

Woven To Shape: A Pre-Columbian Trapezoidal Tunic From The South Central Andes In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Elena Phipps

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Garments used throughout the Southern Andes from the early Pre-Columbian era to at least the time of the Spanish arrival in the sixteenth century, traditionally were constructed of single or multiple webs of rectangular four-selvaged cloth sometimes folded and seamed, but rarely cut to shape. As a result, the drape and style of most garments retained the rigid outlines of their originally constructed rectangular format.

Sometime after the eighth century A.D., along the far south coast of Peru and northern Chile, a different garment style developed. This featured a tunic with wide, curving shoulder, tapered sides, and sometimes bulging …

The Use Of Trapezoidal Tunics With Curved Warp Borders As A Means To Define The Pica Tarapacá Cultural Group Of Northern Chile (900-1200 Ad), Carolina Agüero

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

When the circulation networks implemented by Tiwanaku in the South Central Andes broke down, there began a process of political disintegration that materialized into a series of villagelevel territorial and political units competing for resources – a process with significant social and economic consequences (Schiappacasse et al. 1989).

It has been suggested for the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1450 AD), that the Tarapacá region was united and controlled by a socio-political unit that reformulated the social and geographic landscape. The reformulation incorporated resources from different ecological zones by means of a dispersed settlement pattern and llama caravanning practices, all of …

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 north-western Europe. Select case studies of the 6th to 10th centuries AD, with reference to earlier and later examples, are used to introduce the contexts in which such textiles are found and to illustrate in what manner they accentuated the status of those in power.

The period under discussion saw fundamental change in the transition from Late Antiquity to a number of Germanic successor states of the Roman Empire and in the firm establishment of Christianity north of the Alps. These sociopolitical transformations found their reflection in material …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

It is said that Korean hemp was already in use in BCE 2333 and that by the 7th century it had become one of the primary fibers used. Today, Koreans manufacture hemp cloth for shrouds, funerary costumes, and everyday summer-wear. There are two types of Korean hemp cloth: Andongpoh (Seang-neang-ii), which is produced in Andong County and adjacent areas; and Musam (Ik-neang-ii), which is produced in eleven different regions throughout Korea. The majority of hemp fabric production in Korea is Musam, and in Boseong County, in southern Korea, there is a particularly long history of Musam hemp …

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

Medieval Persian poet Farrukhi Sistani writes, “I left Sistan with merchants of fine robes/ The robe I bore was spun within my heart/ And woven from my soul.” To write in these terms is to weave a text. Another poem of the qasida type by Nasir-i Khusraw varies the analogy, “I shall make a castle of my qasida and within it / Create gardens and porticoes from its verse.” A poem, then, is both a robe and a castle.

Jerome W. Clinton brings these and other samples together to examine “metaphors of craft,” the better to understand the construction of …

Textiles Recorded: Fashion Reconstructed Through Aztec Codices, Jennifer E. Siegler

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The historical documentation of the use of textiles during the Aztec empire as tribute offerings and sumptuary laws indicates the elevated role of textiles at the time. Yet, further research is warranted on the artistry of these textiles. This is difficult because the climate of central Mexico is not conducive to preserving fiber materials; fortunately, the rich manuscripts of this region preserve many images of textiles created during the Aztec empire. Early colonial manuscripts, many of which are copies of pre-conquest manuscripts no longer extant, preserve images of textiles from the pre-conquest period. These manuscripts provide invaluable information regarding the …