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Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 28 (2007), Joanna E. Evans, Virginia Gunn, Eleanor Knowles Dugan, Jonathan Gregory, Lynne Shultis, Carol Williams Gebel, Mary Horton Robare, Laurel Horton

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Joanna E. Evans

The Gingham Dog or the Calico Cat: Grassroots Quilts of the Early Twentieth Century by Virginia Gunn

Rachel's Tat by Eleanor Knowles Dugan

The Joy of Beauty: The Creative Life and Quilts of Rose Kretsinger by Jonathan Gregory

Analysis of a Late Nineteenth-Century Redwork Quilt Top by Lynne Shultis

The Princess Feather: Exploring a Quilt Design by Carol Williams Gebel

Cheerful and Loving Persistence: Two Historical Quaker Quilts by Mary Horton Robare

The Underground Railroad Quilt Code: The Experience of Belief by Laurel Horton

Authors and editor

Index

Simple Complexity, Eric T. Anderson

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

I enjoy a combination of different things. Growing up full of humor and self-awareness, I always knew I would do something artistic. Art gave me creative freedom. Most of my time was used dreaming and imagining, about places, people, and things. Therefore, my roots in the northern Midwest culture and countryside are great inspiration for me. It is in this area of the country where the idea of art and craft are blurred, a place where nostalgic wildlife art shares the same wall with a Monet print and family photos. Unusual artistic conversation happens within that kind of environment, which …

Density, Jesse Ross

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

This work is porcelain tableware and architectural ornament. I choose the context of function because the things we use contain purpose both actual and metaphorical. They are concrete, connected to our lives by necessity, regardless of meaning or aesthetics. Form and surface are more than the residue of concept, they must be specifically engineered for right application. This work, be it shelter, ligbt, containment, etc. is the foundation for the intimacy we feel toward our belongings. That said, utility is only one facet of the objects I make. A Styrofoam cup works well enough, but its expressive potential is limited. …

Inside Out, Caitlin Rose Applegate

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

The intersection, or in some cases, collision between public and private lives, provides a place to peer through the cracks in the mask we put on for one another each day. A glimpse of this fleeting relaxation of boundaries helps us see one another for what we really are. Alone or in intimate groups, my sculptures describe the vulnerability and insecurity most of us feel beneath our perceived exteriors. I look at the ways in which we define ourselves for others, at the awkwardness found there, and at what happens when that pretense is stripped away. Despite attempts to clothe …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 18:3 — Fall 2006, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

TSA Symposium 2006: Last-Minute Symposium Preview
President's Letter
TSA News
TSA Member News
Education News
Collections News
In Memoriam: Carol Dean Krute
Featured Collection
Exhibition Reviews
Book Reviews
Conference Review
Calendar-Exhibitions
Calendar-Virtual, Lectures, Workshops, Tours
Calls for Papers
Conferences & Symposia
Grants

Blanket Statements, Issue 85, Summer/Fall 2006

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 85, Summer/Fall 2006

Blanket Statements, Issue 85, Summer/Fall 2006

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 85, Summer/Fall 2006

Blanket Statements, Issue 84, Spring 2006

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 84, Spring 2006

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 18:2 — Spring 2006, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

TSA Symposium Highlights, October 11–14, 2006
Symposium Exhibition
President’s Letter
TSA News
From the Nominating Committee: TSA Board Nominees
TSA Member News
Featured Collection [Collections of the Kennedy Museum of Art, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio]
Exhibition Reviews [The Katha Collection: Fabricated Tales from Kala Raksha, Artist’s Center, Mumbai, India, March 6–12, 2006]
Book Reviews
Collections News
Calendar-Exhibitions
Calendar-Lectures, Workshops
Grants
Opportunities
Calls for Papers
Conferences & Symposia

Islamic Art: An Exploration Of Pattern, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

As an historian of Islamic art in the Department of Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I am continually learning as I endeavor to teach my students about pattern. Teaching about pattern in Islamic art has facilitated my own exploration of geometry in ways that also benefits my students. This visual presentation explores the results of a single assignment that pertains to coloring a linear plate reproduced in Bourgoin’s classic work [6], Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design.

Blanket Statements, Issue 86, Winter 2007

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 86, Winter 2007

American Artist: A Retrospective, Audrey S. Kaunders, Janice Driesbach

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

One of Nebraska's most celebrated artists, John Robert Weaver is the subject of this retrospective exhibition documenting his long and prolific career, fittingly on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

Although a single exhibition, the artworks are displayed in two separate museums located 130 miles apart. The Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA), Kearney, and Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, have complementary missions, and John Robert Weaver: American Artist relates well to both. At the Museum of Nebraska Art, the emphasis is on art and artists connected to Nebraska, while Sheldon addresses American art. …

Cartography, Cloth And The Embroidered Tale, Bettina Matzkuhn

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I have recently been researching maps and their connections to textile. Looking back on my own body of work, I realize that maps have frequently provided a sense of geography and metaphor as I continue to seek ways to tell stories that are important to me. Dennis Wood describes mapmaking as “a transformative process.” I would argue that working with cloth is also transformative -for both the cloth and the maker.

Looking at maps has expanded my ideas of narrative. I like Margaret Atwood’s definition of narrative. She says it’s “one damn thing after another” with the operative word being …

Weaving Independence From A Distant Cottage Industry, Fenella G. France

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

The fabric of flags is inextricably woven into our cultural heritage. Throughout civilization flags have heralded national identity in war and peace, as symbols of both victor and defender. Research into the origins of early 1800 flag fabrics wove a fascinating tie to England, where the wool fabric was made, and why it survived while the weaving industry was mechanized during the industrial revolution. Bunting fabric provided the canvas for the flag as a symbol of a nation and its people. This makes the history of bunting and its struggle for survival into the nineteenth century, an integral facet …

Preserving Provenance: Collaborative Conversation With A Textile Collector, Susan M. Strawn, Mary A. Littrell, Linda Carlson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Donations of textile collections are essential for universities and museums that rely on historical and ethnographic textiles for research, teaching, and exhibitions. In turn, collectors who have amassed substantial numbers of textiles seek appropriate donation venues. Provenance related to collecting individual textiles may be lost, however, before a donor selects an institution, or before the donation has been accessioned into a university or museum collection. A donation received after the demise of a donor who did not document individual pieces limits the provenance—the history of the source and ownership—of individual textiles. Without provenance, it is tempting to see even …

The World Of Words: A Major Contribution From Linguistics To The World Of Textile Making Off-Loom, Michelle Beauvais

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Despite not being an historian, I can agree with others that the study of ancient textiles cannot help but be bound up with the history of “fléché” (making braided arrowhead-design sashes) and that such study necessarily involves the archaeology of textiles. While such research is naturally specialized, it is particularly valuable when talking about a product and a “perishable” concept, like the classification of textiles in history. Over and above the terminology aspect, I have studied the confusion concerning the classification of “fléché.” Given the lack of guidebooks in French dealing with key topics like the three Supercategories of fabricmaking …

Talking About Textiles: The Making Of The Textile Museum Thesaurus, Cecilia Gunzburger Anderson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The vocabulary for talking about textiles has always been rich and evocative, but at the same time quite varied based on many different factors, such as the specialties, nationalities, geographic foci, and professions of those involved in textile conversations. Textile artists and practitioners often use different terms than academic textile historians; researchers of European historical textiles use different terms than researchers of ethnographic textiles, who often introduce foreign terms into the discussion; and, even within the English language, North American textile specialists often use different terms than their British counterparts.

This bounty of terms can be exhilarating, but when it …

The Documentary Value Of Repairs To The Hwarot, The Korean Bridal Robe, Kisook Suh

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Hwarot is the most sumptuous bridal costume in Korea. Only noble ladies and members of the royal family wore this robe until the late Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Later, commoners were allowed to wear the Hwarot and it is still worn in the contemporary wedding ceremony in Korea. Although the later Hwarot for commoners was plainer, it retained the same design and the structure of the early one.

The earlier Hwarot shows the excellence of gungsu (宮繡), the palace embroidery, of the royal workshop of the Joseon dynasty. Because of the delicate nature of the materials, not many of these …

The Never-Ending Possibility Of Textile Art Education, Jan-Ru Wan

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textiles have an intimate relationship in everyone’s life - whether one is aware of it or not. Textiles reveal so many stories and memories from every culture and society. My mother was an educator in a home economic school and I was trained by her hands; I was constantly busy helping her with quilting, embroidering, stitching, and making clothing. I grew up appreciating the dedication and skill in textile works. But it is the passion for story telling and the conceptual part of textile more than the desire to creating beautiful textile alone drove me toward the path of textile …

Difficult Subjects, Wendy Weiss

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Textiles, Clothing and Design Department in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska has a graduate program that offers Masters of Arts and Master of Science degrees. Students have the choice of completing a thesis, project or coursework for their degree. Students who elect a project emphasis, notably in textile design and textile history/quilt studies department enroll in a graduate seminar called TXCD 873 Design Perspectives & Issues, which is described in the course bulletin as a:

Seminar [that] combines readings and discussion of contemporary issues in design with creative applications. The course culminates …

“Tie It On Tight, Girls!” Speaking And Acting Through Cloth In Southern Madagascar, Sarah Fee

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

It was another scorching day at the height of the dry season. Masy had come to visit me, bringing her basket of cotton to work. A Tandroy woman’s hands should never be idle. She began pinching out cotton seeds and the gathered girls and I picked up handfuls to join her. At one point, when conversation lagged, Masy held up a piece of cotton fluff and spontaneously began to tell a tale.

Long ago, we did not know woven cloth, but dressed in cotton fluff. Once there was an unhappy senior wife. She was unhappy because her husband loved his …

Construction Of Social Relationships Through Clothes: Gender, Caste, And Inter-Religious Relationships In Kutch, India, Miwa Kanetani

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This study examines the manner in which the odhani—a head cover cloth used by women in the Kutch District, Gujarat State, India—is worn, in order to explain how clothes create social relationships, like gender, caste, and inter religious relations.

One of the limitations of previous studies on Indian Muslims is that this community -- a minority -- was discussed separately from Hindu society, which has a different social system and structure. However, in reality, both communities share a common culture to a large extent, and regularly interact with each other. Their clothes provide a new perspective for understanding the …

Delineating Women’S Historical Lives Through Textiles: A Latvian Knitter’S Narrative Of Memory, Eileen Wheeler

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In presenting and analyzing the narrative of a woman who knitted for survival, I engage two continuing marginalizations in mainstream history; that the lives of ‘everyday’ women are poorly delineated and that the realm of textiles is undervalued as a source of knowledge.

Outside the visual art domain the status and potential of textile study, with its associations of domesticity and craft, is little valued. Yet textiles have a history of being associated with many other aspects of women’s lives, a relationship that is slowly being probed for the knowledge it may hold (Parker, 1984; Tickner, 1988; Ulrich, 2001). Through …

Stories Underfoot: Reconstructing A Filipino American Identity From A Patchwork Rug, Rachel Morris

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As Eliza Calvert Hall’s words suggest, a patchwork quilt, made up of a lifetime of castoffs and remnants, not only brings together the artifacts of intimate relationships and events in an individual’s life, but also becomes something larger – a tangible extension of memory itself. Operating on the premise that “material objects… can [not only] act as the analogues of human memory... [but also] prolong and preserve them beyond purely mental existence, ” the material bases for my research are several patchwork floor mats from my childhood home that my family refers to as, Apo Nananag’s rag rugs. My grandmother, …

The Troyes Mémoires: A Translation Of A Script For A Late Medieval Choir Tapestry, Tina Kane

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The subject of this essay is a late medieval French manuscript, comprising a set of written instructions for the iconographic program to be depicted in a set of a medieval choir tapestries. It is a rare piece of primary material that fills a gap in our understanding of how narrative programs for such tapestries were constructed. The manuscript is entitled: Mémoires provided to painters commissioned to design the cartoons for a tapestry, destined for the collegiate church of St. Urban of Troyes, representing the legends of St. Urban and of St. Cecilia.

These tapestries were to have hung over the …

The Swedish Presence In 20th-Century American Weaving, Marion T. Marzolf

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Swedish weavers who arrived in the United States in the early 20th century before World War I found hand weaving a dying art in the United States, but their own skills were valued. American textile mills produced inexpensive and vast quantities of fabrics, but there was also growing interest in reviving the lost arts and crafts of the Colonial and pioneer eras. Influence from the European Arts and Crafts movement and the Bauhaus design philosophy was growing in modern America. These factors created new opportunities for a revival of hand weaving.

Sweden, by contrast, had retained its strong craft tradition …

The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: Modern Art And The Kimono, Valerie Foley

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 2003 I enrolled in a master’s degree program in arts administration. In addition to such classes as exhibition planning, appraisals, and computer applications, we had two sweeping modern art surveys, which took us from the birth of impressionism in the 1860s to emerging artists of the 21st century.

For one end term project, we each had to design a complete hypothetical exhibition, from mission statement to budget to invitation card to gallery space. The only restriction was that we had to demonstrate on paper that we could actually pull it off.

At that time, I had recently seen a …

Textile Narratives In Book Form, Robin E. Muller

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I am a weaver and textile artist who has moved into working in the book form. As a teacher at an art college I have been looking for ways to explain this movement by myself and several other textiles artists, like the late Shereen Laplantz who wrote a book on book arts techniques after many decades of making plaited baskets. I have the pleasure of doing that today with three esteemed colleagues: Laura Strand, of Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Susan Warner Keene, Toronto, Bronfman award winner, formerly at Sheridan College, and Pam Scheinman, artist and historian Montclair State University, …

Suellen Glashausser: Books As Revelation, Pamela Scheinman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Suellen Glahausser insisted she was a professional artist because she wasn’t suited for anything else. Just as she assigned herself a weekly day to see art in New York, packing a sandwich and apple so as not to waste precious time, Glashausser pushed her own work into new territory with each annual exhibit at Amos Eno Gallery, the cooperative she joined in 1976. Her titles were terse and descriptive: Mounds (1977), Stacks (1978), Fences (1979), Trestles (1980), Paper Shadows (1982), Columns/Wedges (1984), Gardens (1985), etc. They reflected her interest in structure, repetition and infinite variation. These concerns also appear in …

Design Sources: The Edges Of Fiber Geometry, Barbara Setsu Pickett

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

My investigation began with the analysis of the stitched geometrical patterns used in the Japanese textile tradition called sashiko. This technique requires only needle, thread and countless hours of patient stitching. I became intrigued with the hemp leaf pattern called asa-noha. The crossing white stitches on a field of deep indigo blue, conjured up memories of starry constellations and the pinpoint, accurate mapping of laser surgery. When I look from one star to another, the stars seem to twinkle. I believe this illusion happens because the stars share rays. Looking at one star’s center invariably decomposes its neighbors.

Upon …