Art and Design Commons^™

Crochet Lace As Expression Of Digital Culture, Gail Kenning

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Human designed, physical textile patterns such as lace are familiar in our everyday lives and the historical, geographic and cultural significance of these patterns, and their aesthetic and/or mathematical characteristics, have been extensively investigated and documented. However, their evolutionary potential remains under-theorized. While the digital environment is increasingly used as a design aid in the production of textiles, its potential for exploring the evolutionary possibilities for lace has not been fully investigated. This paper discusses an experimental research art project that explored the evolutionary potential for lace patterns within the digital environment.

Human designed, hand-made domestically produced physical textile patterns …

Donning The Cloak: Safavid Figural Silks And The Display Of Identity, Nazanin Hedayat Shenasa, Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This study examines the function of figural silk textiles from Safavid Iran (1501-1722) as visual transmitters of identity. Textile historians and connoisseurs have admired figural silks for the technically advanced weave structures, delicate textures and brilliant colors, but the narrative motifs featured in a sub-genre of these compositions set them apart from other luxury textiles. The emphasis of this study will be on scenes depicting events and characters from Iranian poet Nizami’s twelfth century epic poem, Layla and Majnun.

The appeal of narrative textiles among the Safavid elite will be analyzed in relation to political and religious conditions that propagated …

Kākahu As Cultural Identity, Christina Hurihia Wirihana

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As Maori, we recognise ourselves as Tangatawhenua, literally meaning people of the land. We acknowledge our Earth Mother, Papatuanuku and Sky Father, Ranginui as the kaitiaki, guardians of our natural world. The natural fibres of Harakeke, commonly known as NZ Flax, was the most extensively used fibres in the production of traditional clothing, fishing nets, lashing, baskets and other functional forms that contributed to the survival of my people. The medicinal values of Harakeke also played a major role. The process of extracting the fibres (muka) from Harakeke continues today as it did many many years ago. The humble kuku, …

The Centre For Advanced Textiles: A Case Study In Uk Digital Textile Culture, Eulanda A. Sanders

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

If textiles serve as records of a culture’s history and values, how should we approach and evaluate the integration of digitally-created and digitally-produced textiles? How do the application of digital technologies encourage or inhibit cultural expressions?

Government and academic institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) are actively trying to support and invigorate what is being called the ‘research culture’ in the UK, yet the ability to create and maintain sustainable research centres in the creative textile fields have proven to be difficult. Through reflectively analysing the creation, re-evaluation and re-focusing of the Centre for Advanced Textiles (CAT) at Glasgow School …

Meanings And Messages: Quilts To Comfort The Families, Jonathan Gregory

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction During the American Civil War, 1861-1865, women from the northern states made at least 250,000 quilts to supply bedding to the Union Army in the field and in military hospitals through the aegis of the U. S. Sanitary Commission. Southern women carried on similar types of relief work for the Confederate Army, though with far fewer resources to draw upon. Hundreds of red and white quilts were made as fundraisers for the American Red Cross during the First World War. And Mennonite and Mormon women from Canada and the U.S. made and shipped thousands of quilts in a massive …

Warp The Loom – Wrap The Dead Trapezoid Shaped Textiles From The Chiribaya Culture, South Peru, Ad 900-1375, Wynne Minkes

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Trapezoid shaped garments are not common in the Andean Pre-Columbian cultures. Generally, men and women wore sleeveless tunics made from the whole woven fabric without cutting and sewing it into any shape as did the Europeans for instance. The lengths of these tunics ranged from chest to ankle. Often the shorter tunics were complemented by loincloths or skirts. The number of fabrics needed to make these garments would vary: one web folded in half or two or more webs sown together. The warps were hardly ever cut from the loom bar and wefts would be inserted up to the heading …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin is now within the boundaries of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Taklamakan is one of the largest sandy deserts in the world and covers an area of 270,000 km2. It is bounded by Kunlun Mountains to the south, Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan to the west and north. Life-giving water from the mountains forms rivers and lakes and hence creating lush oasis on the borders of the desert. Neolithic stone tools show that humans have long been present in the area. Branches of trade routes, later known …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This analysis includes the kinds, colors, and patterns of textile materials, and shows Baekje attained a high level of weaving culture. Baekje was one of three kingdoms of ancient Korea (B.C.18-A.D.660). The territory of Baekje (Fig. 1) was included current Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, Gangwon-do, Chungcheongnambuk-do and Jeollanambuk-do during the fourth century. Also, Baekje influenced Japan many things about textiles including weaving technique. The study analyzed the documentary records of Baekje, such as literature, historical works, excavation reports, and preceding studies.

The kinds of the textile materials of Mahan, pre-country of Baekje, and Baekje were obtained from historical documentations. The textile materials …

Crochet Lace As Expression Of Digital Culture, Gail Kenning

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Human designed physical patterns, while having been investigated extensively in terms of their historical, geographic and cultural significance and their aesthetic and/or mathematical characteristics, have not been fully investigated in terms of their evolutionary potential. This paper discusses an experimental art research project which focuses on human designed, physical textile patterns to explore pattern as process and investigate the potential for these patterns to evolve and become emergent.

The experimental art projects focused on lace and in particular, crochet lace pattern forms commonly referred to as doilies.1 Crochet lace patterns are widely recognized, domestically produced hand-made physical patterns …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Ladakh is in the Indian Himalayas, in a high-altitude region that culturally overflows into Pakistan and China. Ladakh is part of the state of Jammu & Kashmir, in India. The most significant factors influencing the culture and traditions of Ladakh are climate, isolation, and inaccessibility. These factors result in a highly practical culture. Ladakh is isolated from the outside world for much of the year because of extreme cold and harsh winter weather. By necessity, Ladakhis have developed traditions and techniques to make the most of their resources, under specific and extreme climatic conditions. Thus their traditions are based in …

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

Good afternoon. I am Jeeun Kim. I am a working artist and I teach fiber-art classes at universities in Seoul, Korea. My interest in this topic began with a textile history class I took at UH. The class was taught by Pat Hickman, my mentor, and covered the history of world textiles and the social roles and transformation of traditional textiles. This class stimulated my curiosity about the textiles of my own culture. The class taught me to look not only at the appearance of textiles and how they are made but also to look at the social roles of …

Claudy Jongstra: Transmitting Craft Heritage Through Contemporary Architecture, Susan Brown

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Felt has a unique history as both a craft medium and an industrial material. Recently, it has become a material of intense interest to architects and designers. Felt is a very ancient and primitive material, made by simply matting together wool fibers with moisture and friction. It is a manufactured product, yet it shares many properties with purely natural materials. As a raw material for design, felt has incredible range — it can be made thin and translucent, or very dense and thick, even hard. Its plasticity is inviting a shift in the relationship of textiles to architecture and design. …

The Centre For Advanced Textiles: A Case Study In Uk Digital Textile Culture, Eulanda A. Sanders

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

The faculty and graduate students at the Centre for Advanced Textiles (CAT), located in the Glasgow School of Arts in Scotland, have created a unique academic environment that not only employs culture in design inspiration, but also creates a dynamic academic culture. The team consists of the following five, individuals who are all practicing designers and researchers: Alan Shaw, Industry Coordinator; Vicky Begg, Bureau Coordinator; Helena Britt, a Practitioner/Educator/Graduate Student; and Andrew McDonald, a Research Assistant/Graduate Student and J.R. Campbell, the Research Fellow/Coordinator. Each faculty member and graduate student on this team interacts with each other on various activities …

Black Silk, Brown Silk: China And Beyond—Traditional Practice Meets Fashion, Abby Lillethun

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This report discusses black-colored silks from southeastern Asia that are often referred to as “gummed” silks. These silks are treated with iron-rich mud that coats the silk filaments and creates a deep black color (often in conjunction with a previous coloration). The report covers three areas. Firstly, I review various names used for black mud-treated silks and begin to contextualize the production and use region. Two mud-treated silk samples from early-1930s Southeast Asia are introduced in this discussion. Secondly, I initiate investigation into the role of mud-treated black silks in Chinese fashion history during the transition from the late-imperial era …

Analysis Of Two Chinese Canton Silks: Jiāo-Chou And Xiang-Yun-Shā, Shu Lin

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Jiāo-chou (黑絞绸) and Xiang-yun-shā (香雲紗) and are two types of Chinese Canton silk. According to Qing (or Ching) Dynasty documents, Jiāo-chou and Xiang-yun-shā were available as early as the 5th century and these textiles, as well as garments fabricated from them, were exported from Canton as early as the 15th century. Contemporary historians suggested that garments fabricated in Jiāo-chou and Xiang-yun-shā were worn by Chinese in the Honolulu area in the early-20th century. A few of these garments can now be found in the Antique Asian Costume Collection at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM). According to the accession …

Donning The Cloak: Safavid Figural Silks And The Display Of Identity, Nazanin Hedayat Shenasa, Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

In a red world bathed in shimmering gold light, a man sits with his head in his hand as wild beasts encircle him. He is emaciated, has unkempt hair, and wears only a waistcloth—but he has a dreamy smile on his face. Nearby, a camel bears a palanquin carrying a stately woman, her head tipped to one side, arm outstretched from the window of her traveling abode toward her lover. Beneath her, the signature “Work of Ghiyath” is woven in Kufic script inside an eightpointed star on the palanquin (Fig. 1).

This depiction of the literary characters Layla and …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

It is well known that mohair, derived from the Angora goat, was long unique to Turkey, and only successfully reared outside of that region in the 150 years. The term Angora is an archaic spelling of the city now known as Ankara, now Turkey’s capital, but in the Ottoman era it was a sleepy town known as a center for weaving and selling the mohair raised in the region.

As the ambassador from Emperor Ferdinand of Austria to Constantinople, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbeq made a journey into Anatolia to Amasya in 1556, where Sultan Suleyman was encamped, one of the …

Translation Of Medium: Kesi Meets Painting, Jean Kares

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

My current project places kesi, or pictorial silk tapestry, in closer proximity to the discourse of Chinese art history, and raises questions about the hierarchical categorization of creative production. Kesi was produced in China beginning in the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127 CE) as a method of weaving that allowed for designs that were independent of loom controlled patterning. When the weavers employed in imperial workshops adopted the medium, they expanded its design repertoire from overall patterning to a means of creating pictures. Indeed, a kesi artwork functioned as a painting, both visually and in its role as an art …

Abstracts

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Abstracts A-Z

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Among late antique textiles in the British Museum Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan (hereafter, AES), nearly half (c. 135) are said to have come from the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmim. If the attribution to the site is correct, the textiles provide the Museum with an excellent opportunity to discuss the transformation of Egypt in Late Antiquity through the lens of death and burial.

The late antique site is well represented in Greek and Coptic literature and by the material culture of the city and its cemeteries. The modern name Akhmim holds a vestige of the name Min, the …

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

During the time in the Andes known as the Late Intermediate Period (900-1450 AD), the Tarapacá region was socially integrated with societies that articulated resources from different areas through numerous strategies of exploitation. Dispersed settlements in the region suggest methods of habitation like those known to llama caravan traders. Although it has been explained how, in this period, the Pica-Tarapaca Complex controlled the territory, it has not been studied how the inhabitants of the area understood their common identity. It might be assumed that if identity is recognized as one aspect of sociopolitical connection, then affiliation with the Pica-Tarapaca Complex …

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

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

“My windows hung with lace curtains (Valenciennes, Venice, Bruges, Scotland) combined according to the formula:  =  m (m - 1) (m - 2) … (m – n + 1).”  These are the words of Bourgeois, the fictive character in Le Corbusier’s seminal book The Decorative Art of Today (1925). 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. This paper deals with curtains in domestic interiors, exploring the correlation that exists between the representation and function of the drapery in modern architecture: …

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.