Fashion Design Commons^™

Performance, Adaptation, Identity: Cantonese Opera Costumes In Vancouver, Canada, Jean L. Kares

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Photographs of the 1936 Vancouver Jubilee Parade show Chinese men and women wearing Cantonese opera costumes that appear to be similar, if not identical, to ones in the collection of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. In this highly public forum, they portray the role of “Chineseness” for the non-Chinese audience, reference the power of temple festival dramas, and assert their presence and aspiration to be accepted by mainstream society. By reconfiguring costumes for public display, Chinese immigrants employed material culture in a strategy of performance, adaptation, and identity. This connects to matters still pertinent today: …

Imperial Versus Local Perceptions Of Indian Textiles, Donald Clay Clay Johnson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition in London brought together arts and crafts from around the world particularly those produced in the British empire. The great popularity of the exhibition documented how much people in Britain delighted in seeing the huge diversity of artistic expression from around the world. The following decades witnessed similar exhibitions in various European cities as well as contained the growth and development of museums. While Indian textiles had long fascinated people in Britain and had been eagerly purchased, museum holdings in both India and Britain of these distinctive fabrics have remained minimal. British collecting activities and …

Resilient Threads Telling Our Stories Hilos Resilientes Cosiendo Nuestras Historias, Carolina Paz Gana, Lynne M. Jenkins

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Sewing is traditionally women’s work. Often characterized as homespun, even quaint, it is associated with the domestic sphere. What at first glance may appear charming belies the persuasive ways in which women work with textiles to depict apartheid in South Africa,1 identity,2 forced migration,3 grass roots activism,4 encoded messages,5 and remembrance of murdered and missing indigenous women.6 Perhaps that is why the powers that be are mostly unaware of its subversive potential, and thankfully so, as this potential remains under the radar “sew” to speak while galvanizing those at the margins. How might sewing bring women together in a circle …

Aesthetics, Economics And The Enchantment Of Cloth, Janis Jefferies, Barbara Layne

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In a changing world everyone crafts, designs and engages in making: each individual person and each collective subject, from communities to cities and regions, can define and enhance a life project. We are witnessing an unprecedented wave of social innovations, sometimes using technology and sometimes not. As these changes unfold, an expansive open set of process and practices in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Most revolutions are about energetic movement and upheavals; even if ideas take a while to become ideologies, we don’t think of them as slow events. But the phrase also makes us …

Drawing, Stitch, Translation, Archive, Janis Jefferies

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles was founded in 2002. Inspirational textiles teacher, Constance Howard, established the Collection in 1980. Constance joined Goldsmiths as a teacher in 1945 and founded the acclaimed textile courses which closed in 2008. Internationally respected, she remained involved with the College until her death in 2000, when she donated her textiles collection to the College on the basis that it would be stored in perpetuity. . It is important to note that modern, historians have relied – often of necessity – on documentary or visual sources to research textile history. We have …

Recycling Sprang, Carol James

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In this talk I would like to explore some of the evidence of sprang in history, how sprang travelled from place to place and some of the ways it was modified as it travelled. I will then suggest that sprang could be an exciting technique for the 21st century. First let me explain how this technique works. Sprang is a braiding technique. The worker winds one continuous thread around and around a frame. The worker then manipulates the threads at one end, and a mirror-image structure magically appears at the other end of the frame. Structures that lend themselves to …

Ingenious And Practical; Parallels In The Making Of Arimatsu Trade Cloth And Contemporary Designers’ Production, Ana Lisa Hedstrom

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Yoshiko Wada introduced me to shibori in1976, and for over 40 years I have worked with shibori techniques based on the concepts of Arimatsu shibori. I had been aware of the Congo trade era and often peppered Yoshiko with questions about this curious chapter in the Arimatsu history. When I saw the textiles that Yoshiko has displayed here, I became very excited. There is an old axiom that nothing is ever really new. I love to see textiles that connect to my own decision making as a dyer, and where I can totally empathize with the artisan’s hand and eye. …

Batik, Ja, Batik: Wiener Werkstätte Batik From The Los Angeles County Museum Of Art And Cotsen Textile Traces Collections, Michaela Hansen

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 1919, the Viennese cultural critic Adolf Loos addressed a newspaper column to the “ninety percent” of female artists who “call themselves that because they can batik.” Bemoaning shop windows filled with batik cloths and neckties, Loos stated: “To the modern human being…batik [is] an abomination.” Derisively likening the skill required of a batik artist to “drop[ing] a May bug into an inkwell and then let[ting] it crawl around on a prettily dyed, magnificent piece of…pongee silk,” Loos advised practitioners to seek a dry cleaner to “fix” their dye work by erasing it. “The danger is great,” he went on; …

Seafarer People And Their Textiles From Erub Arts, Torres Strait, Australia, Louise Hamby, Valerie Kirk

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A quote from Florence Gutchen, an artist from Erub (Darnley Island) in the Torres Strait, 180 kms NE of mainland Australia, sets the scene for this document. “We hear the wind…We are seafarer people. Our livelihood depends on the sea. We are saltwater people and we are the seafarers.” The geographic location of her current home is crucial to the understanding of not only the textiles artists produce but to all of their work. Their island in the eastern part of Torres Strait plays a major part in how their identity as Erubians is expressed through textiles. This paper primarily …

The Effect Of Colonization And Globalization In The Shaping Of Phulkari: A Case Study Of The Textiles Of Punjab, India, Anu H. Gupta, Shalina Mehta

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Hand woven fabrics and embroidery are known to be some of the most ancient form of handicraft nurtured in almost every corner of Indian subcontinent. Embroidery is often an expression of the maker especially women depicting their emotions on fabric and their lived histories. Usefulness of this form of decoration is reflected in the fabrics used in clothing for humans as well as domesticated animals, household articles and decorations in temples. Besides being practical, these ethnic embroideries have symbolic and traditional purposes.1 It expresses several cultural metaphors of a community. It is also one of most distinct forms to study …

The Nature Of Collaboration In The Digital Age, Pauline Verbeek-Cowart

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I proposed this talk because the subject matter "Collaboration in the Digital Age" seemed timely and relevant. What I hope to achieve with this paper is to present initial material that could start a dialogue; a conversation that needs to happen to clarify what "Collaboration in the Digital Age " means. I am going to give an example of a truly magnificent collaboration and compare and contrast that with my personal trajectory. I want to preface this by saying that my comments are filtered through the lens of a maker and an educator. I chair the Fiber program at the …

Early Modern Needlework Pattern Books: Tracing The International Exchange Of Design, Lisa Vandenberghe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Needlework pattern books, a genre that first appeared in the early 16th century as printing-press technology became widely available, were some of the first art books for the common people. Their pages offered charted, linear, and figurative designs in a wide range of complexities and styles. I use the term “needlework” to represent the group of decorative textile-arts which these books target. This includes a range of techniques that use a needle alone or with other tools, such as embroidery, lacemaking, knitting, and tablet and small-loom weaving. Students of women’s history may know the pattern books for their introductory pages …

Exploring Origins: The Technical Analysis Of Two Yoruba Masquerade Costumes At The National Museum Of African Art, Rebecca Summerour, Odile Madden

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Egúngún masquerades are traditions in which composite ensembles are worn and danced to commemorate lineage ancestors in West African Yoruba communities. This technical analysis of two 20th century Egúngún in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art (NMAfA), referred to as 2005-2-1 and 2009-15-1 (fig. 1), investigates materials in these colorful costumes. The Yoruba are a cultural group rooted in Southwestern Nigeria, Benin, and Togo with a diaspora in Africa and the Americas. In their traditional belief system, Egúngún are the embodiment of lineage ancestors. Fully concealed maskers incarnate individual or collective spirits, providing opportunity for the …

“The Consular Collections At The National Museum Of American History” Opening Plenary Session: Crosscurrents: The Transnational Flows Of Textiles, Madelyn Shaw, Amy J. Anderson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Hidden away for decades within the Department of Textiles, Division of Home & Community Life, National Museum of American History, was an extraordinary group of nearly 1000 textile samples collected by US consuls around the world between about 1898 and about 1920. The Commerce Department transferred them to the U.S. National Museum (now NMAH), in the 1920s. The samples range in size from just a few inches square to a few feet. The information that came into the collection with each sample, from lists or scraps of paper attached by the consuls, was typed onto onionskin typing paper or cardstock …

Kanga Textile Design, Education, And Production In Contemporary Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Mackenzie Moon Ryan Phd.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

While today kanga textiles are commonly thought of as bearers of east African or Swahili culture, this industrially produced textile emerged from a complex history of global trade networks serving local consumer demands. Worn widely throughout the east African region, this textile emerged as a fashionable garment preferred by women along the Swahili Coast of east Africa in the late nineteenth century. Shortly after its introduction in 1886, these inexpensive printed textiles became favored consumer goods throughout the wider region, stretching from present-day southern Somalia, throughout Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Malawi, and into eastern DRC and northern Mozambique. (Closely …

West African Indigo Textiles Under Influences: The Fouta-Djallon Wrapper And The Mauritanian Melhafa, Annie Ringuede

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The cloth-dyers of West Africa are known to produce indigo textiles which reputation needs no making. These various productions, often times centuries old, have been continuously exposed to the turmoil of a variety of external events which have often made them very fragile or, on the other hand, have brought about prosperity. Among those events, let us cite the caravan trade across the Sahara and the Sahel, the establishment of trading posts by the Europeans on the Atlantic Coast, the Senegal River and the Niger, the slave trade, the development of small indigo factories, colonization by the English, the French …

Tradition And Transition: The Changing Fortunes Of Barkcloth In Uganda, Sarah Worden

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Scottish travellers, missionaries and colonial officials were among the first Europeans to visit east and central Africa. The objects they collected whilst living amongst those whose customs and traditions were so unfamiliar, form the backbone of the National Museum of Scotland’s early ethnographic collections. These collections are tied into the complex historical relationships between Scotland and Africa, however, it is often the case that little was documented regarding the collectors particular collecting strategies or acquisition. In these collections is a type of cloth, barkcloth, a material which predates weaving and is probably …

Revitalization Of The Handloom Heritage Of Chhota Udepur, Gujarat, Bhatia Reena Phd., Pawar Pooja

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The rich and beautiful products of the weavers of India have been rightly called “Exquisite poetry in colourful fabrics.” These beautiful traditional textiles were woven on the simple loom and the technique has been passed on through generations. However, many traditional weavers have either lost or are fast-loosing the essence and aesthetics of their indigenous crafts and craftsmanship. The researcher’s concern is for the preservation and revitalization of one such handloom heritage, the tribal cloth of Chotta Udepur, Gujarat, before it vanishes from our sight was high. Snow ball technique was used to draw a convenience sample. The data was …

Tracing Textiles, Motifs And Patterns: Historical To Contemporary, Liz Williamson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Global trade, design influence and inspiration are central to the history of Indian textiles. Estimates vary but it appears Indian textiles have been traded for over 4500 years. Indian expertise in dyeing, weaving, embroidery, printing has been internationally recognised and sought after in all parts of the globe for centuries – it dominated this global trade with double ikat patola traded to Indonesia; Indian chintz’s and Kashmiri shawls to Europe. Indian textile production and trade has been well documented by many researchers and in recent exhibitions such as the Fabric of India at the Victorian & Albert Museum, London in …

Trading Traditions: Continuity, Innovation And Resource Use Of Forest Fibers Among The Ye’Kwana And Ayoréode, Laurie Wilkins, Ines Hinojosa

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The challenge of contemporary tropical forest conservation is to maximize community development while minimizing harvest impact on forest resources; to encourage indigenous participation in the research and development process; to insure the sustainability of both the resource and the enterprise; and to add value to forest products at the local level. From this broad conservation objective, non-timber forest products (NTFPs) emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as the forest enterprise that might be less environmentally destructive than timber extraction, cattle ranching, and cash crop agriculture, and contribute to rural livelihoods and conservation. Since that time, these concepts have been both …

Kalamkari Or Chintz: An Anglo-Indian Hanging In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Melinda Watt

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will present ongoing research on a unique and important eighteenth-century painted cotton hanging now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as theories on the significance of the narrative depicted in the work. The hanging illustrates one or several military conflicts involving European and Indian combatants, presumably on the Indian subcontinent, and was very likely commissioned by someone connected with the British East India Company. (Fig. 1) This hanging was first exhibited when it was on loan to the museum for the exhibition Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 (on view from September 26, 2016 to …

Arimatsu To Africa: Shibori Textiles Developed For African Trade In 1948–49, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Shibori is a traditional Japanese textile term now widely used to classify a variety of patterns created on cloth by plucking, stitching, folding and then tightly knotting, binding, or clamping to compress and selectively resist dye penetration. The resulting patterns record the memory on cloth of the processes it sustained. Reading the resist marks on the cloth, shibori artisans can recreate the process or interpret various patterns. For the Textile Society of America’s Fifteenth Biennial Symposium in 2016 I organized a session with papers contributed by Françoise Cousin, Annie Ringuedé, and Ana Lisa Hedstrom and an exhibition titled “Arimatsu to …

Slipstitch: A Survey Of Contemporary Narrative-Based Stitch And Embroidery Practices In Australia, Belinda Von Mengersen

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Slipstitch, an Australian exhibition of contemporary stitch artworks was discussed in a panel session titled, Allegory and Subversion: contemporary stitch narratives, cross-cultural influences and international perspectives. This presentation situated the exhibition as one example within a broader view of contemporary allegorical, speculative and provisional stitch practices emerging within Australia and Internationally. Slipstitch is an Ararat Regional Art Gallery and National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) Victoria touring exhibition (2015-2017), curated by Dr Belinda von Mengersen. Slipstitch presented an Australian perspective on the contemporary uptake of stitch and embroidery practice by a new generation of artists. Long overdue, it was the first …

Abstracts & Author Biographies For Textile Society Of America, 15th Biennial Symposium (2016): Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, And The Port

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Dr. Heather J Abdelnur, Ph.D.

Reena Aggarwal

Patricia Alvarez

Cecilia Anderson

Emily Anderson

Lynne Anderson

Jaiya A Anka

Adebowale Biodun Areo and Margaret Olugbemisola Areo

Margaret Olugbemisola Areo and Adebowale Biodun Areo

David Arrellanes

Jenny Balfour-Paul

Suzi Ballenger

Ruth Barnes

Jody Benjamin

Carole F. Bennett

Julie Berman

Noga Bernstein

Medha Bhatt

Amy Bogansky

Elaine Bourque

Laurie A Brewer

Carrie Brezine

Donna Brown

Sarah S. Broomfield

Susan Brown

Heather R Buechler

Shelby A Burchett

Tara R Bursey

Bonnie S. Carter

Nynne J Christoffersen

Laura Cochrane

Lia Cook

Françoise Cousin

Jamie Credle

Maria Curtis

Pamela I Cyril-Egware

Sonja K Dahl

Mary Lou …

The Fashion Diplomacy And Trade Of Kashmir Shawls: Conversations With Shawl Artisans, Designers And Collectors., Deborah Emmett

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

We travelled to the semi rural outskirts of Srinagar in Kashmir to the home of Muneer, a kani shawl weaver. In a small room on the third floor of his house Muneer sat side by side with his friend Hamid at their loom. Each weaver worked pulling small sticks wound in pashmina threads through the weft while carefully referring to a paper tucked under the warp threads on the loom. The woven design on kani shawls is formed by the manipulation of small wooden sticks called tojis that interlock different coloured threads to complete each weft of the shawl. The …

Applications Of Cross Dyeing With Natural Dyes, Catharine Ellis

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I am a weaver and a dyer with a passion for continued investigation of these disciplines. My work integrates the two processes of weaving on the loom and dyeing the cloth after it is removed from the loom. I have spent over 25 years developing and refining a technique that I have named woven shibori. Supplemental threads are woven into the cloth while it is on the loom. Once the weaving is complete, the supplemental threads are used to gather the cloth, creating a resist for dyeing or shaping.

Both weaving and dying are essential to the final textile. I …

Growing A Dye Garden, Donna Brown

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Imagine looking out from your patio to an inspiring vista of the Denver Botanic Gardens Chatfield Farms (DGB). Add to this a life-long love of natural dyes. Can you envision the garden down there, the blossoms of cosmos and coreopsis, the rows of indigo, the spreading madder, the hopi sunflowers nodding in the breeze? I am Donna Brown and this has been my vision ever since we moved to our “room with a view” that overlooks DGB, a 750 acre native plant refuge and working farm housing the Hildebrand Ranch, an historic homestead with cutting and herb gardens I am …

Bead And Beadwork Traditions: A Study Of Trade And Cultural Exchanges Across The Coast Of Gujarat, East Africa And The Red Sea, Medha Bhatt

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Indian cotton textiles were the key commodity that powered the Indian Ocean trade exchanges. Gujarat played a significant role not only in the manufacture of cotton textiles but also carnelian beads that was used for commercial trade exchanges in the markets of East Africa, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. While these two commodities of trade have been studied separately in detail, less well examined is the interaction between the two and the emergence of glass beads in the commercial exchanges of the trading communities of Gujarat. The bonding of the beads to the fabric led to a sophisticated …

From Chintz To Chita: A Brazilian Textile And The Construction Of National Identity, Willian Nassu

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Bilingualism has always been a constant in my life. My father’s side of the family migrated from Japan as my surname suggests, whereas my mother is of Polish descent. But while my father comprehends Japanese and my mother grasps some Polish, I was denied learning either languages. Since I was born and raised in Brazil, I have Portuguese as my first language, and acquired English as my second. The ability to use these two languages – sometimes mixed and other times switching – along with this multicultural background, has had some ripple effects. The first one was an inclination to …

Cutting Edge Technology: Knitting In The Early Modern Era, Jane Malcolm-Davies Dr.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

New scientific evidence of trade in raw materials and finished goods for the knitted textile trade is emerging from a study of more than 100 extant knitted caps from the 16th century. These long-overlooked archaeological data are being re-excavated from museum archives for analysis in innovative ways. The caps are recorded in European collections as having been shipwrecked, deliberately concealed, preserved in peat bogs, or discarded as beyond use. Many were unearthed during construction work in cities, during building renovations or discovered on the seabed in far-flung locations across Europe – as far north as Norway and as far south …