Art and Design Commons^™

Textiles And The Body: The Geometry Of Clothing, Madelyn Shaw

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Physics and mathematics are not usually perceived as being closely connected with textile and clothing design or construction, either by scientists or by artists. Those who make clothing from cloth, however, must always take into account two geometries: the plane geometry of the cloth and the solid geometry of the body. In order to clothe the body we begin with cloth. Woven, knitted, knotted, or otherwise constructed, the inherent structure of cloth reflects mathematical principles. Interlaced threads create square or triangular grids, techniques such as knitting or crocheting can make grids of any shape, from triangular to polyhedral.

Those who …

A Textile Narrative Through The Eye Of A Camera/Through The Eye Of A Needle, Jennifer E. Salahub

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When I began to research needlework in the early 1980s the Library of Congress Catalogue directed me not to needlework, or even embroidery, but to the letter “W” – Women’s Work – the first step in a long and tangled journey. When I recently came across an 1890s photograph of a Canadian woman and her embroidery by Hannah Maynard all I had to do was turn to Google to be directed to the BC Archives. My first reaction was glee – my second dismay – with 300+ hits how could I not know Mrs. Maynard?

To date, Hannah Maynard (1834-1918), …

Constructing Garments, Constructing Identities: Home Sewers And Homemade Clothing In 1950s/60s Alberta, Marcia Mclean

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Home sewing is the most feminine of all the arts and crafts. It is an easy as well as a basic way for a woman to add to her femininity, whether she sews for herself, her children or her home. The woman who sews can be creative, make herself and members of her family attractive, and also stretch the family clothing budget.

The above paragraph is from a home economics thesis written in 1959. It neatly sums up the decade’s attitudes towards femininity and home sewing. In the years following the Second World War, the notions of public, active femininity …

Cotton To Cloth: An Indian Epic, Uzramma

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The cotton handloom industry of India is one of the great manufacturing institutions of the world: its looms have run continuously for five thousand years. Remnants of cotton thread have been found in the ruins of the Harappan civilization [5000-3500 BC], and the weavers of India have supplied the markets of the world with cotton cloth since at least the first century of the Christian era. The golden age of Indian cotton in recorded history stretches from that time until the beginning of the nineteenth century and there are testaments to the quantity, quality and variety of Indian cotton fabrics …

Speaking When No One Else Can: Textiles And Censorship, Jessica Hemmings

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textiles from around the world are capable of conveying sophisticated narration. But in regions where censorship, both in the form of overt government censorship as well as individual self-censorship exists, the ability of textiles to narrate becomes a crucial tool in the discussion of topics otherwise left unspoken. Textiles can offer a form of communication that, ironically, may go unnoticed precisely because of the “innocent” materials in which these messages are told. A growing “illiteracy” to alternative modes of narration such as those offered by the crafts offers an ideal foil for such sensitive conversations. As record keepers these textiles …

Changing Face Of Ottoman Imperial Image: Carpets Of Dolmabahce Palace, Turkiye, Elvan Anmac, Filiz Adigüzel Toprak

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As a result of Westernization act within the State, flourishing from the end of 18th century, essential alteration took place in the social and cultural life in the Ottoman Empire. Western influence asserted itself intensively as soon as Sultan Abdulmecid (1839-61) was enthroned; it was Western style which was immediately imitated in State Governance as well as in every aspect of life, in architecture, architectural decoration, in furnishings, in clothing and home textiles such as upholstery fabrics and carpets used in Sultan Palaces. One of the most striking references of this alteration is the Dolmabahce Palace which was built in …

High Style And Cleanliness: Oriental Rugs In Toronto Homes 1880 - 1940, Neil Brochu

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Academic scholarship pertaining to Oriental rugs, which began at the end of the nineteenthcentury, has concentrated mainly on connoisseurship and the study of the cultures of origin and the peoples that have produced these items with a particular bias for items produced without the taint of Western influence. Little attention has been paid to the actual consumption of Oriental rugs in the West and the general influence of this trade on the evolution of decorative taste or how they may reflect changes in cultural and social attitudes. Oriental rugs within the Canada have received even less attention leading to assumptions …

Designing For Future Textiles – Challenges Of Hybrid Practices, Zane Berzina

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The potential of the future for both science and design lies in a multidisciplinary approach. Disciplines are merging, boundaries are melting and “many […] technologies are not significant when looked at in isolation, but become of critical importance when coupled with other technologies.”

Introduction

This paper offers a condensed case study of a cross-disciplinary practice led Ph.D. research “Skin Stories :: Charting and Mapping the Skin” which dealt with issues across the fields of design, art, textiles technology, electronics, biology, material science and psychology in an attempt to bridge the gap between aesthetics and technology. The artistic investigation examines skin …

A Collaboration Through Academia Into Industry, Vita Plume

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This presentation is about two collaborative projects, Lees Carpets Funded Studio and Ameleon, of which I have had the honour to be a part. My involvement in these projects is a result of being on faculty in the Department of Art and Design at North Carolina State University.

I joined this University for several reasons. An important one among them was research. When I was hired, I understood this to mean the continuation of work on my artistic textile production. While I have in fact continued on this research line as well, in this paper I will discuss two collaborative …

Sustainability Of Handwoven Carpets In Turkey: The Importance Of Technical Distinctions Between Regional Carpet Styles, Feryal Söylemezoğlu, Sema Taği

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

In Turkey, hand-made carpet-weaving is a widespread handicraft which many people are effectively busy with. It is also an important area in which unemployed labour can be put to use.

Carpet-making is a traditional craft that has been practised in Turkey since ancient times, and is still found in almost all regions today. Actually, in rural areas, many families still derive significant income from carpet-making.

The reasons why hand-woven carpet-making is crucial for Turkey can be listed as follows:

• Because of the socio economic conditions that currently exist in Turkey the rate of unemployment needs to be reduced, particularly …

Sustainability Of Handwoven Carpets In Turkey: The Context Of The Weaver, Kimberly Berman, Charlotte Jirousek

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Forms of Production

Past research, conducted mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, has identified three forms of production in which carpets are woven as commodities. These are petty-commodity production, the putting-out system, and workshop production.

Petty-commodity production involves weaving in the home, with the male head of the household or other male relatives selling the finished product to a carpet dealer or at a local or regional market (fig. 1). The family owns the loom and other weaving supplies, and family members purchase or prepare the yarn themselves. Under the putting-out system, the yarn, rug patterns and perhaps the loom …

Unraveling The Story: Art Holmes’ War Correspondent Uniform, Courtney Stewart

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

War correspondents have, and continue to risk their own personal safety in order to capture a story and communicate news. The first war correspondents from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Art Holmes and Robert Bowman, shipped out from Halifax in late 1939, and for the duration of the war vested themselves in standard military attire. Identical to that of the soldiers on the front whose stories they was capturing, Holmes and Bowman were given military uniforms. Although correspondents were neither soldiers nor members of the armed forces, they were given military priority and respect by association of what this uniform signified. …

Messages From The Past: An Unbroken Inca Weaving Tradition In Northern Peru, Lynn A. Meisch

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The only documented unbroken Inca weaving tradition thrives today in the Huamachuco region of northern Peru (La Libertad Department), where females in several Andean communities weave belts chronicled in A.D. 1590 by a Mercedarian Friar Martín de Murúa. Murúa was entrusted with collecting tribute from and Christianizing the indigenous population of Yanaca in the Province of Aymarays (in modern Apurimac Department in central Peru). His contemporary Guaman Poma accused Murúa of exploitation of the Indians and drew him beating an elderly male weaver (Guaman Poma 1980 [1615]: fig. 647). In his manuscript titled, “History of the Origin and Genealogy of …

Contemporary Hemp Weaving In Korea, Min-Sun Hwang

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Until the 1900s, hemp was one of four traditional textile fibers in Korea, the others being cotton, ramie, and silk. The production of hemp fabrics had traditionally been for family use, but since the 1950s, that tradition has ceased to exist. The present status of hemp production is, therefore, extremely limited to the rural regions, and practiced by only a small number of the elderly (fig. 1). Of the approximately thirteen hemp cultivation regions (fig. 2), the city of Andong developed a different technique in hemp fiber-making from the rest of the regions and this paper will cover hemp fabric …

Elemental Pathways In Fiber Structures: Approaching Andean Symmetry Patterns Through An Ancient Technology, Mary Frame

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Repetitive pattern is laden with meaning in many cultures. In Andean cultures, where no alphabetic writing system was developed during prehispanic times, patterns and graphic codes carried a large cultural load. It is crucial to have appropriate tools to investigate the integrated properties (symmetry, color, number, direction, etc.) in the graphic codes of the ancient Andes. In this paper, I will propose some modifications to the prevailing approach to symmetry classification that better fits the patterns in Andean textiles.

Approaches to Symmetry Patterns, Modern and Ancient

An approach to classifying symmetry patterns that is called “plane pattern analysis” has been …

Nasca Needlework And Paracas Procession, Lois Martin

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Among the treasures in the Brooklyn Museum is an ancient cloth from the South Coast of Peru: 38.121, sometimes known as “The Paracas Textile,” and now more often as “The Brooklyn Museum Textile” (BMT) (fig. 1.). First acquired by a Peruvian collector around 1912, the cloth shuttled between New York and Paris in the 1920’s and 30’s, inspiring great interest and numerous studies. One of these, Raoul d’Harcourt’s Textiles of Ancient Peru and their Techniques (1934), has been in reprint since 1962, and continues to intrigue fresh audiences.

The BMT was one of several spectacular fabrics that spurred archeological exploration …

Brides And Grooms: Embroidery Of The Epirus Region, Sumru Belger Krody

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Traditional marriage ceremonies in the Epirus (Ípeiros) region of northwestern Greece were some of the most extravagant wedding celebrations among the Greeks on the mainland and islands. The textiles produced for the young bride’s trousseau were as elaborate as the celebrations. They included garments for her and her husband and textiles for their home. These textiles tell us many things about the region’s political, economic and artistic history. Ottoman Empire held the Greek mainland and islands in their control for centuries leaving their mark in many aspects of daily life and the arts and as an extension of arts in …

The Narrative Scheme Of A Bengal Colcha Dating From The Early 17th Century Commissioned By The Portuguese, Barbara Karl

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In this article I analyse the iconographic programme of a large size embroidered textile dating from the early 17th century from the Hugli region in Bengal. The textile is part of subgroup (c) of the Solomon group. India has an extremely rich textile tradition. Every region has its peculiarities and techniques. Quilts were made all over the Indian subcontinent throughout the ages. Worn out clothes were not thrown away but were instead reused: Several layers of cloth were laid upon each other and were sewn together to be used in Indian homes. Most of them were very simple but some …

White Snake, Black Snake Folk Narrative Meets Master Narrative In Qing Dynasty Sichuanese Cross-Stitch Medallions, Cory Willmott

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The cross-stitch medallion in figure 1 was collected by my grandmother, Katherine Willmott, in the early 1920s when she was a missionary in Renshow, Sichuan Province, West China. Many years after I inherited it, I learned that it depicts a folk narrative called “White Snake; Black Snake” that was traditionally performed both on stage in the legitimate theaters and in Chinese shadow puppet dramas (Highbaugh n/d:6).

The story may be summarized as follows: There were two female snakes, White Snake and Black Snake, who were inseparable friends. They both changed into beautiful young women. White Snake got married and bore …

Narratives Among The Mola Blouses Of The Kuna: A Blending Of The Old And New Worlds, Teena Jennings-Rentenaar

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Kuna of the San Blas (Kuna Yala) region of Panama are highly regarded for the mola panels that they make using appliqué and reverse appliqué. These panels form the front and back of blouses that the women and their daughters wear both in their daily lives and for special occasions. Mari Lynn Salvador found, when doing her research on the making of mola panels, that there are different types of designs and that these categories are recognized by the Kuna women themselves as being distinct. Each of the different categories requires a different approach to its manufacturing process.

One …

Investigation Of A Colonial Latin American Textile, Elena Phipps, Lucy Commoner

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Introduction

Museum collections often contain works of art of uncertain provenance. Additionally, hybrid works attributed to Colonial cultures reflect the composite nature of a cross-cultural society integrating native and foreign traditions. An interdisciplinary technical study often is needed to identify such an object, including where it was made, when and by whom. The following paper presents the results to date, of a collaborative investigation from art historical, scientific, and conservation perspectives, of a textile belonging to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. (fig. 1).

Catalogued as Colonial Peruvian, the textile was considered for inclusion in the Metropolitan Museum’s Colonial Andes: Tapestries …

About Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Textile Society of America, Inc. provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles worldwide from artistic, cultural, economic, historic, political, social and technical perspectives.

National Office

Textile Society of America (TSA)

Kim Righi, Executive Director

P.O. Box 70

Earleville, MD 21919-0070

Phone (410) 275-2329

Fax (410) 275-8936

TSA Board of Directors 2006-2007

Officers

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Task Representatives

Co-Chairs, TSA 10th Biennial Symposium - Toronto 2006

Co-Chairs, TSA 11th Biennial Symposium - Honolulu 2008

2006 Proceedings Editors

Newsletter …

Abstracts

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textile Society of America

10th Biennial Symposium 2006

October 11–14, 2006

Harbourfront Centre

Toronto, Ontario

A-Z

Author Biographies

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textile Society of America

10th Biennial Symposium 2006

October 11–14, 2006

Harbourfront Centre

Toronto, Ontario

A-Z pp. 1-26

Acknowledgements, Carol Bier

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Nataley Nagy and Frances Dorsey deserve our very special thanks for the organization of such a splendid symposium, which indeed exceeded our expectations and goals. Thanks are also due to the dedicated staff of the Textile Museum of Canada, of which Nataley is Director, and to the staff at Harbourfront Centre, and its Director, Melanie Egan. We also thank Debbie Adams of Adams + Associates Design Consultants, Inc., who served as artistic director for the Symposium; her designs, logo and artwork, have served us as well for the Proceedings.

Ann Svenson Perlman stepped in to take on the role of …

Introduction, Frances Dorsey, Nataley Nagy

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Textile Society of America's 10th Biennial Symposium took place in Toronto, October 11- 14, 2006. The Textile Museum of Canada and Harbourfront Centre co-sponsored the event. A springboard for discussions across disciplines, the symposium offered in-depth explorations of specific topics related to textiles. The Program, which serves as the Table of Contents, includes presentations about textiles and trade, education, ritual practices, cultural transitions, cultural and gender issues, and contemporary art practices, offering an enticing and savoury array of narratives and conversations about textiles. The organized sessions, panels, and plenary programs are designed to raise questions that encourage our talking …

Notes On Editing, Carol Bier, Ann Svenson Perlman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Sixty-six papers and more than ninety bios and abstracts are included in this publication of the Proceedings of TSA's 10th Biennial Symposium in Toronto. The Proceedings reflect in text and image the substance and the intellectual vibrancy that characterized the Textile Society of America's 10th Biennial Symposium in Toronto. The contents are published substantively as submitted. Our editorial efforts comprised formatting of more than 500 images and preparing each paper to a standard visual style of presentation.

We have endeavored to bring all papers into a consistent visual format, suitable for either screenviewing or hard-copy print-out. Since the symposium was …

About The Authors

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

About the Authors

A-Z

Nettie Adams

Monisha Ahmed

...

Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Stephen Wagner

Mike Cloud: Systems, Daniel A. Siedell

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Mike Cloud was born in 1974. He received a BFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago and studied at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 2003. He has had solo exhibitions at the Max Protetch Gallery in 2003, 2004, and 2006. His work has been featured in National Projects at PSl Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City and in Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

"So a lot of painting for me is just trying to find out what is believable and what kinds of painting can be honestly generated."

"The …

Who Is Imitating Whom?, Sharon L. Kennedy-Gustafson

Sheldon Museum of Art: Catalogs and Publications

Photographers create images that look like paintings, and painters make paintings that look like photographs. Who is imitating whom and why?

Long before photography was invented painters who could depict realistic imagery were held in high esteem. When photography was first invented, its ability to capture reality was also greatly admired. Over time, however, its status declined and eventually it was viewed as merely a mechanical tool with little artistic value.

Henry Peach Robinson (1830-1901) popularized the emulation of painting and encouraged artificiality in photography. It was believed that if a photograph were made to look like a painting it …