Art and Design Commons^™

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 …

“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, a high-end clothing company, has built its reputation on selling clothes made from finely crafted textiles using luxury fibers.  Self-consciously marketing itself as a celebration of cross-cultural exchange, the company appropriates designs from Andean textiles and fuses them with elements from Western fashion and other global textile practices.  Through transnational and transcultural design, production, and distribution, the company simultaneously stresses distance and connection, difference and sameness, in a constant tug of war over the designs, skills, labor, materials, and products.  In exploring Peruvian Connection’s cultivation of its cross-cultural textiles, I analyze how the company promotes the design, production, …

Ethnicity Mobility And Status – Textiles From The Taklamakan Desert, Helen Persson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Central Asia was a rich cultural melting pot in the first millennium.  Textiles provide a unique opportunity to discover more about its diverse population, different faiths and extensive trade networks.  In the early 20th century, Sir Aurel Stein travelled along the Eastern Silk Road, now within the boundaries of the Peoples’ Republic of China, collecting a wealth of materials from various remote sites.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is the custodian of nearly 600 textile fragments from Stein’s unique collection and this paper will discuss the variety of materials and techniques held by the Asian Department.  This paper will offer …

Eats, Shoots, And Weaves, Lisa Lee Peterson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

“I assume you’re Buddhist?” My face twisted in bewilderment. I didn’t immediately know how to answer this question.

It was Good Friday 1982, the day I first met my in-laws-to-be. My future brother-in-law and his wife had driven to the family farm in northern Indiana, ostensibly to observe the spring ritual with family, but really to observe me. My soon-to-be father-in-law raised his wine glass in a toast “to all of us who celebrate this Easter season.” He then turned to me and dropped his bombshell, “I assume you’re Buddhist?”

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

Garments used throughout the Southern Andean region 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 never cut to shape.  As a result, the drape and style of most garments retained the rigid outlines of their originally constructed rectangular format.   Sometime during the Late Intermediate Period, along the far south coast of Peru and northern Chile, a different garment style developed. It featured a wide, curving shoulder, tapered sides, and bulging lower edges, and …

Embellishments Of The Alaska Native Gut Parka, Fran Reed

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Dealing with various weather conditions is a serious matter in Alaska.  Coastal Native Alaskans have been surviving in severe environments for millennia.  Between the heat of the summer and the freezing cold of the winter is that transitional season when it rains.  Raincoats were fashioned out of bird skins and fish skins but it is the gut skin parka that became the universally adopted garment along the coast of Alaska.  Differing preparation, stitching and styling methods distinguish the many coastal villages and are expressed in embellishments and details that define the region, the culture and the function of these beautiful …

People, Place, Spirit, Denise Ava Robinson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

People, Land, Spirit is about the deep engagement I have for my homeland, Tasmania. It is about the relationship between people, place and spirit.

Indigenous people live in harmony with the land – their very existence in accordance with rhythms of nature.  Many cultures have over time been tattered, scattered or shattered through colonisation, the Tasmanian aboriginal culture being one of them.

Tattered cultures arouse the desire for the retracing of histories, cultural practices and traditions, many of which form the basis of contemporary practices today.  These processes bring deeper understanding and awareness: new cultural practices emerge, and the cycles …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Identification of dyes and pigments is presently very precise by means of different systems of chromatographic analysis. Nevertheless, as the same dye components 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. The presentation shall focus on a single colour: red. Various shades of red are profusely used in textiles from South America. Many of these are obtained mainly from cochineal. However, when analysing the colouring substances of an Andean textile, it is …

Spinning Pattern, Ann Pollard Rowe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Textile Museum was recently given a Salasaca woman’s reobozo, collected in 1966, with an unusual design effect created during the spinning of the weft yarn.  In normal Salasaca women’s wraps, the fabric is dyed wool with a few white cotton stripes along the sides and ends and across the center.  Generally the cloth is woven in an undyed state, and then dyed.  The wool yarns take the dye and the cotton yarns do not, and remain white.  This shawl has these typical white cotton stripes but also an area near one end where the white is not continuous across …

Field Of Flowers: Mughal Carpets And Treasures, Michael Schuster

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Michael Schuster, PhD will be discussing the exhibition Field of Flowers: Mughal Carpets and Treasures. The exhibiton focuses on a rare pair oflarge carpets on from the collection at Shangri La..  Each carpet has anarched interior with pointed ends.  When paired, the carpets form a bold field of flowers with an interior void wherein a person, most likely a royal personage, could have sat in splendor. In mid-17th century Mughal India, the taste for naturalistic floral sprays reached an apogee of artistic expression.  The aesthetic style seen in the carpets and other art forms of the period dominated the arts …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textiles from central Mexico at the time of the Aztec empire are generally ascribed great significance due to the historical documentation of textile tribute offerings and sumptuary laws in which textiles identified social status; however, further research is warranted on the artistry of these textiles.  While the climate of central Mexico is not conducive to preserving fiber materials, 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 …

A New Start: Re-Thinking The Display And Interpretation Of African Textiles At The Detroit Institute Of Arts, Howard Sutcliffe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In November 2007 the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) will open its doors to the public after several years of renovation and rebuilding.  In a radical departure from the traditional chronological and geographical approach to art history the new DIA will provide its visitors with an innovative experience that focuses as much on the stories and connections behind the art as the art itself.  Textiles from the DIA’s encyclopedic collection will play a large and integral role in this new vision, from European tapestry to Native American beadwork textiles will feature prominently in almost every new gallery.

This paper will …

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 examines the process of naturally dyed carpet production in a village in the Milas region of southwest Turkey.  In large numbers of villages of this region, carpet weaving is the household based work of every woman who lives there. The carpets made by these women will be used in their own homes, or play a role as a symbol of wealth within some spheres of the local economy as in the case of dowry or donations to a mosque, or they will be sold as a commodity outside of the village for cash.

In the modern era, the …

Sea Snail Purple In Contemporary Japanese Embroidery, Takako Terada

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Shellfish purple, known also as ‘murex’, is a dye obtained from molluscs and it has long been associated primarily with Central American textiles. It is also a very ancient dye in Japan but it is less well known. The earliest evidence is from the Yoshinogari site which dates to circa 100 BCE, where a shell bracelet shows traces of shellfish purple pigment. This archaeological find is particularly important because in all of East Asia there has been little other evidence of ancient shellfish purple dye.

Several years ago I was asked to investigate the dye. My project was to research …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Three tunics from the Azapa Valley, in northern Chile, dating to the Late Formative Period (330 A.D.)  are presented showing the first complex ways of weaving from this area.  They are woven as warp faced and the pattern design is made changing colors through discontinuous warps and mixing with weft faced weaving at the bottom of the tunics.   One of them has coarse embroidered selvedges, which probably were created as reinforcement for the sides and as decorative features for the textile. The tunics originally formed part of mummy bundles that were excavated in small mounds or funerary túmulos  between several …