Art and Design Commons^™

From Benaras To Leh - The Trade And Use Of Silk-Brocade, Monisha Ahmed

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A weaver in Benaras sits at his pit loom meticulously creating a textile piece of Mahakala, the god of protection for Buddhists.

A lama at the festival (’cham) at Hemis monastery performs the religious dance, the Mahakala image on his apron (pang-kheb) gazing out at the devotees as he pirouettes around the courtyard.

The two descriptions given above demonstrate the beginning and end of the journey of silkbrocades from Benaras to Leh. This paper looks at the historical context of the trade in silkbrocades from Benaras to Leh, and discusses how this trade first started. It …

Wesley Simpson: Designer, Stylist And Entrepreneur, Lynn Felsher

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Over 20 years ago, The Museum at FIT received an anonymous gift of approximately 165 small textile samples and 27 scarves from the company, Wesley Simpson Custom Fabrics, Inc. The textiles dating from the late 1930s through the 1940s were designed for moderately priced women’s apparel. Printed on rayon crepe grounds, they were typical of the period, loose painterly florals, paisleys, conversationals, and small geometric, abstract and stripe patterns on light-colored grounds or discharge printed on dark grounds. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Brooklyn Museum of Art also have substantial holdings of Wesley Simpson Custom Fabrics, and an …

Silk In Ancient Nubia: One Road, Many Sources, Nettie K. Adams, William S. Webb

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Silk in ancient Africa? Most of us think of ancient Africans as members of a tribe, living by subsistence farming or herding, in villages of grass houses. But Nubia, the ancient Kush, located along the Nile in southern Egypt and the northern part of the Sudan, (Fig.l) was inhabited by an African people who, by 1800 BC, had developed their own high civilization. The Kushites were suppliers of ivory, ebony, gold, ostrich feathers, animal skins, and slaves to ancient Egypt and elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. In exchange they received a wide variety of manufactured goods.

By the fourth century …

From Benaras To Leh - The Trade And Use Of Silk-Brocade, Monisha Ahmed

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A weaver in Benaras sits at his pit loom meticulously creating a textile piece of Mahakala. the god of protection for Buddhists.

A lama at the festival ('cham) at Hemis monastery performs the religious dance, the Mahakala image on his apron (pang-kheb) gazing out at the devotees as he pirouettes around the courtyard.

The two descriptions given above demonstrate the beginning and end of the journey of silkbrocades from Benaras to Leh. This paper looks at the historical context of the trade in silk-brocades from Benaras to Leh, and discusses how this trade first started. It …

Woven Bands, Medicines And Recipes: Cod. Pal. Germ. 551. The Adventures, Provenance And Contents Of A 15' Century Manuscript Held At The Library Of Heidelberg University In Germany., Ute Bargmann

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Today, we are going to visit Heidelberg, the city where the earliest German University was founded in 1386. On account of its romantic setting, it became one of the internationally popular institutions in the 19th century. Here, we will visit the University Library, where the manuscript we are to discuss today is housed. It is on the shelf in the Department of Manuscripts, bound in a modest working cover of the 19^th century.

History. - We shall embark on a journey of more than 500 years into the past and through some very trying times that helped shape …

Peacock Alley: Highway 41 And The Growth Of The Chenille Bedspread Industry, Ashley Callahan

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the fall of 1935. a newspaper editor traveled from Oklahoma City to Atlanta to attend a baseball game, and along the way encountered a stretch of road near Dalton. Georgia known as Bedspread Boulevard. He recorded his experiences in his daily column: "Twisting through northern Georgia late Saturday afternoon, dodging cotton wagons and trying to get an eyeful of the gorgeous tints that glorified the turning trees in the mountains, I thought I saw a washing strung on a line by the roadside. Soon another flashed past. Then they followed in regular succession. . . . Is it possible …

From Court To Convent: A Silk Embroidered Sampler From Colonial Mexico, Bobbie Sumberg

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Silk appears frequently in many Mexican textiles and garments such as rebozos, skirts, and huipils or blouses. In this paper I discuss a different tradition, that of sampler embroidery in the urban style.

Yrene Escandon was reported to be a lady in waiting for Empress Carlotta, who reigned in Mexico with her husband Emperor Maximilien from 1 863-1867. During this time and before entering a convent after her service she and some friends embroidered a sampler replete with floral, religious, animal, and bird motifs. Using this remarkable piece in the collection of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa …

"Dichotomies In Silk: Past And Future", Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The traditions of silk weaving and hand dyeing of silk cloth have been an integral part of the Japanese society and aesthetic, as exists in the Imperial Court of Japan. To this day, the Empress still cultivates the same strain of silkworm koishimaru, dating back to the Nara period (645-794).

Currently, only a fraction of the raw silk materials (reeled silk yarn and cocoons) used to produce Japanese silk textiles are actually produced by Japan. Competition from current foreign imports, textile manufacturers' indifference to the quality of raw materials, and decreasing usage of kimonos challenge the viability of labor-intensive …

The Impact Of Silk On Ottonian And Salian Manuscripts, Stephen Wagner

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In keeping with the theme of the symposium's title, "Silk Roads, Other Roads," the medieval roads that this essay will travel converge in a number of ways. Most importantly, two distinctive art forms came together for a brief period in Germany during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the period of Ottonian and Salian rule. The two products, silk and illuminated manuscripts shared important qualities. Not only were they among the most luxurious objects of the middle ages, but they also assisted bishops and rulers advance their political programs. This phenomenon developed as a result of increased interaction with a major …

Japanese Kimono Fashion Of The Early Twentieth Century, Annie Van Asche

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper examines the development of popular kimono fashion from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. I focus on kimono worn by modem-thinking young women whose wardrobes, by the 1920's, included both new Western and recreated Japanese garments and accessories. The meisen kasuri kimono, the most popular new style of kimono among women living in the growing urban metropolitan centers, is highlighted. It covers an unprecedented historical period of rapid modernization and Westernization of Japan, which brought about societal changes that dramatically--and positively--transformed the lives of Japanese women. I begin with a historical sketch of the industrialization of …

Textiles, Scholarship, And Art Education: An Art College Perspective, Wendy Landry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In many communities the art college is the last formal refuge of active textile-making knowledge and heritage. This location appears to value playful, risky, or challenging material explorations which might result in creative design or meaningful visual expression. This should be the best environment for cultivating adventurous students able to integrate a wide range of experience and resources towards generating new ideas for interesting contemporary textiles. It could be a good place in which to discover how textiles contribute to human experience and history, and how they are meaningful. However, I submit that this art environment is still detrimental to …

Embodying Embroidery: Researching Women's Folk Art In Western India, Michele Hardy

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

South Asia is home to an incredibly rich variety of embroideries that include folk, courtly, ritual, and commercial traditions. The scholarly literature on South Asian embroidery has been meagre however and historically emphasized professional embroideries at the expense of the folk^l. With few recent exceptions² folk embroidery in the Sub-Continent has most often been described and classified without reference to the women who make it or the specific cultural traditions that support and give meaning to it³. These 'characterising' accounts of folk embroidery are likely the result of historic circumstance and ancient bias⁴ but …

Exceptional Textiles For Today's Interiors Weaving Our Way Through The Design Community's Exclusive Showrooms, Mia Backman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This site seminar will begin with an introduction to the role of designer showrooms and their significance to the interior design community. Following this brief introduction, we will visit two textile showrooms: Donghia and Old World Weavers. These innovative showrooms were chosen for their diversity, leadership, and distinctive market positions. Donghia is known internationally for their creative weave structures that interpret classic forms into fresh modern designs. These light catching textiles are truly the antiques of the future. Old World Weavers industry expertise in the area of recreating historic textile documents has opened the doors to such restoration projects as …

Analyzing Patterns In Oriental Carpets: Through Symmetry To The Mind Of The Maker, Carol Bier

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Typically in Oriental carpets, many patterns combine to make the whole. Within an oblong field there is often an overall repeat pattern arbitrarily cut off by borders. Field patterns cover the plane, while border patterns are linear. Patterning -- and color -- in Oriental carpets is carried by the pile (supplementary weft-wrapping) that projects from the surface of a plain weave foundation.

If we take as our definition of pattern the systematic repetition of a unit, distinctions become clear between designs and patterns. While the possibilities for designs are limitless (within the constraints of a medium), the possibilities for repeating …

Marion Dorn: The American Years, Whitney Blausen

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Marion Dom, (1896-1964) was an American-born designer of both printed and woven furnishing fabrics and of rugs and carpets. Dorothy Todd, writing about Dom in 1932 for the Architectural Review, called her the "architect of floors".

Like many of her contemporaries, Dom's earliest textiles were batiks. She learned to design for industry by participating in the textile contests and classes championed by M.D.C. Crawford and sponsored, in part, by the trade paper Women's Wear.

In 1923 Dom emigrated to England, where she designed on a regular basis for such firms as Warner & Sons and the Wilton Royal Carpet …

The Weft-Twined Structures Of Cloaks Of The New Zealand Maori, Margery Blackman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Maori cloak

After the settlement of New Zealand in about 1200 AD, Maori women adapted wefttwining techniques for constructing wann clothing suited to the cooler climate of their new habitat. The principal garment was the cloak made with yarns prepared by working and twisting the long fibres extracted from the sword-like leaves of the indigenous plant Phormium tenax, commonly known as New Zealand flax.

The historical evolution of the Maori cloak is largely unknown as only a few fragments and one cloak found in a burial cave are known to be earlier than the cloaks collected by Captain …

Brokers Of Textile Traditions: The Case Of The Shopkeepers In Turkey, Marlene Breu, Ronald Marchese

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Over the course of the past twenty-five years a cultural transformation has taken place in the Turkish Republic. Overshadowed in more recent years by the political confrontations between secularists and Islamists, an unchecked inflationary spiral that has devalued the national currency, and the social upheavals associated with economic disparity, this cultural transformation has garnished little attention from the more traditionally defined scholarship on the modern Middle East. Revolutionary in nature, it is the result of several factors, among them socio-economic changes brought about by a shift in world markets and the liberalization of the Turkish economy. It is responsible for …

Ilonka Karasz: Making Modern, Ashley Brown

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Born in Hungary and "discovered" in New York's Greenwich Village, Ilonka Karasz (1896-1981) brought a unique and remarkable talent to early American modem textile design. Though little known today, her contemporaries described her as "one of the best designers of modem textiles," and noted the "widespread influence among textile manufacturers" of her modem textile designs. Her exploration of textile design from 1915 to 1935 contributed to an exciting time in the history of American textiles when American manufacturers used American designs, experimented with new uses for textiles, and developed new textile materials. Karasz's textile designs from the 1910s reveal her …

A Look Inside And Behind Central Asian Ikats, Annie Carlano

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The recent publications and exhibitions about Central Asian ikats have been highJy acclaimed projects in both their scholarly and their interpretive excellence. Extensive information about the ikats is now available. But while much of the history of these silk luxury items is known, much less has been written about the "flip side" of the story, the original or indigenous linings of the robes and backings of the wall hangings. There are two types of such textiles. The earliest extant fabrics are the woodblock printed chit type which have been well researched. This presentation will focus on the other, more esoteric, …

Between Tradition And Modernity: Textile Design Education In Lyons At The Beginning Of The 20th Century, Florence Charpigny

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

With regard to textile design in general, and Lyonnais designers in particular, there is still no global synthesis and very little detailed research available. Yet, some studies were published in Lyon, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, by local historians with family, professional and cultural links with the silk manufactures. It is not coincidence that their work occurred at this period: at the end of the 19th century, the Lyonnais silk industry went through a series of serious economic and structural crises. The change begun at the beginning of the 19th century with the …

The Mystery Of The Eisenhower Toile, Cindy Cook

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Eisenhower toile is a twentieth-century textile with a story to tell-through its motifs and its creators. The motifs in this toile represent the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower's life. The creation of the Eisenhower toile is a story of mystery and intrigue involving a famous American couple, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower; a prominent interior designer, Elisabeth Draper; a prestigious textile company, F. Schumacher & Co.; and a mystery designer.

The Eisenhower toile is a printed cotton produced by F. Schumacher & Co. of New York from 1956 to 1960. Schumacher produced the 36" wide fabric with a 36" repeat …

An Early Seventeenth-Century Japanese Textile In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Joyce Denney

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As a site seminar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a rare early seventeenth-century Japanese robe (kosode) in the Museum's collection (see ill.) was examined in depth. The sumptuous complexity of the textile from which the robe was made was analyzed, with emphasis on the textile's makers and their methods as well as the markets of the period.

The ground fabric, a white float-patterned plain-weave silk, was probably produced in China. During this period Chinese silk was highly prized in Japan; nevertheless, this imported cloth was then highly embellished. The textile was resist-dyed in irregularly bordered bands that …

The "New Deal" Child Artist: Textiles From The Educational Alliance Art School, Joanne Dolan

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

INTRODUCTION

Progressive educational theories, many which had their roots in the late nineteenth century, were put to the test as a result of the Federal Art Project initiative. A small collection of printed textiles at the Museum at FIT produced during the second half of the nineteen-thirties at the Educational Alliance Art School in New York City reflect philosophies relevant to the period of the New Deal. The textiles represent and illustrate major social forces in America: the late nineteenth century settlement house providing services such as language, citizenship, and skills training; Roosevelt's New Deal and the federal relief efforts …

Transitions And Expansion: The Haskell Silk Company's· Switch From Thread Manufacture To The Production Of Yard Goods, 1880-1882, Jacqueline Field

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Haskell Silk Company of Westbrook, Maine, operated from 1874-1930. At its peak it was above average in size and counted among major U.S. silk manufacturers. The most northerly situated silk mill, Haskell began as one of New England's numerous post-bellum machine thread makers, but within eight years shifted to weaving broadsilks. During this period many New England thread producers made a similar change and at the same time opted to relocate with new plants in the vicinity of New York and northern New Jersey, where a variety of social and economic factors provided an attractive business climate. The Haskell …

Making The Bed: Printed Sheets For Children Since 1960, Sarah Hayne Fitzsimmons

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Before the 1960s, bed sheets were usually white. Any decoration, whether applied by hand through applique, embroidery or crochet, or machine-printed, maintained the monochrome. As screen printing technology and more color-fast dyes were developed, multicolored printed bed sheets began to enter the American market. In 1960, two of the sheet patterns available in the Sears, Roebuck catalog; "Cowboys" and "Kittens," were intended specifically for children. Over the next thirty years, printed sheets for children became an increasingly booming American industry. This paper traces the evolution of these "kid sheets" from a social history point of view; focusing on the developing …

The Calligrammatic Pattern: An Aspect Of Modernism In French Textile Design, Lourdes M. Font

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper is less concerned with Twentieth Century French textiles as such than with what may have inspired their designers, with the possibilities suggested to textile artists in places where art, literature and design meet. To an artist with an appetite for the new, few places offered more possibilities than Paris in the decades before and after World War I. Between 1910 and 1940, textile designers working in Paris were part of a dose-knit community of the avant-garde that included writers, musicians, architects, painters, illustrators, interior and theatrical set designers, costumers and couturiers -- who not only mingled and took …

Textiles - An Art Form For The 90'S: Advancing Fiber With New Concepts & Marketing Strategies, Elizabeth Gaston, Laura Hill

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This panel discussion provided a forum for an exploration of the place and meaning of contemporary textile art. It was one of several concurrent panels held on the final afternoon of the Sixth Biennial Textile Society of America Symposium. Textiles An Art Form For the 90's brought together artists and enthusiasts from many backgrounds and with different perspectives. Four participants presented formal papers accompanied by slides. This was followed by a panel discussion.

The chairperson was Patricia Malarcher, editor of Surface Design Journal. She shared the viewpoint of the media. Malarcher also presented Susan Lordi Marker's paper. Marker …

Photographic Evidence For 19th Century Central Asian (Kat Production, Kate Fitz Gibbon

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Rare. early photographs can provide both factual information about the various technical processes used to produce Central Asian ikat fabrics and an evocative vision of the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara in the 19th century. These photographs demonstrate the physical structure and equipment of the various craft workshops necessary for ikat production, the preparation of the ikat warp. the application of the pattern, the dye process, and the weaving and finishing of the cloth. Other photographs show the production of the most common 19th century lining materials, and the marketing of ikat in the bazaars.

Ikat fabric received wide distribution …

Moses, Little Red Riding Hood And The Furniture Store: Wimpels (Torah Binders) In The Yeshiva University Museum Collection, Gabriel M. Goldstein

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Yeshiva University Museum (YUM) collection includes 56 examples of the type of Torah binder known as a wimpel. A Torah binder is a strip of fabric which is used to bind together the two staves and parchment of a Torah scroll. The Torah scroll, which contains the text of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), is read in a cycle through the Jewish liturgical calendar. The proportions of the scroll thus change through the year, with one stave bearing the portion of the scroll which has been read, and the other stave bearing the …

Warp Ikat In Mindanao And Indonesia: Some Comparisons And Their Implications, Roy W. Hamilton

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Although textiles were a major focus of Laura Watson Benedict's work, the only book she published deals primarily with Bagobo ceremonial life and-only tangentially with textiles. She never fonowed up with any direct treatment of the textiles themselves and neither she nor anyone since has ever published a systematic description and classification of the warp ikat textiles of the various weaving groups in Mindanao. The work that went into developing From the Rainbow's Varied Hue, involving not only Benedict's collection, but several others around the world, has put us in a much better position for doing so. This paper …