Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

Batik Of Java: Global Inspiration, Maria Wronska-Friend

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Batik, the technique of patterning cloth through the application of wax, reached the highest level of complexity on the island of Java. While deeply embedded in local traditions and associated with the social order of Java, outside Indonesia batik became a powerful cultural intermediary connecting countries as diverse as Netherlands, Japan, Ghana, India, and Australia. In the early stages, this process was an outcome of the Dutch colonial agency. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries the Dutch East India Company sold Indian textiles destined for Indonesian markets as well as small quantities of Javanese batiks to the Japanese. …

Closing The Power Gap Through Internet Technology: The Artisan View, Judy Frater

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In India today, artisans are considered skilled workers who can realize the concepts of designers. But traditionally, craft was designed, produced, and marketed by artisans. As traditional artisans aimed for new markets, designers took on the role of “interventionists” to bridge the gap in familiarity with new consumers and bring craft into contemporary markets. While this works, unfortunately demoting artisans to worker status results in minimum value for their work, little to no opportunity for creativity or recognition, and waning interest in traditions. Co-design has potential to restructure the relationship between urban designer and artisan. However, often what is called …

Shipibo-Conibo Textiles 2010-2018: Artists Of The Amazon Culturally Engaged, Nancy Gardner Feldman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper considers the intersection of processes of making and cultural memory as contemporary Shipibo artists design, produce, and exchange of their contemporary textiles and art. One sees a continuation of traditional collaborative social networks both in Peru’s deep Amazon region and in new Shipibo communities of Pucallpa and Lima. In cities, they create new artistic networks and expressions of art in ceremony. In these artworks, one sees how Shipibo relationship to the natural world, the forest, plants, animals, and waters reflects deep spiritual beliefs, wisdom, and community knowledge. Shipibo communities in 2017 face ever-expanding challenges from intrusions into their …

Dresden Embroidery In Early Kentucky Counterpanes, Laurel Horton

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper examines four white embroidered bedcovers which include elements done in Dresden work, a distinctive technique combining pulled-thread embroidery with surface stitchery. The distinctive lace-like stitches of Dresden embroidery typically appear in delicate, small-scale applications, such as cuffs, collars, and handkerchiefs. These four counterpanes, made in Kentucky in the early nineteenth century, are among a small number of embroidered white bedcovers that include Dresden embroidery. In contrast with the ancient roots of other stitchery styles, Dresden embroidery emerged in Europe in the 1720s as an inexpensive alternative to delicate Flemish bobbin laces. The technique spread among cottage needleworkers in …

Weaving Authenticity: Artesanías Or The Art Of The Textile In Chiapas Mexico, Addison Nace

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During my six months in Chiapas, I worked for the weaving cooperative Mujeres Sembrando la Vida (MSV), a partner organization to Natik. Natik works with grassroots organizations in Mexico and Guatemala with a focus on economic development and education. MSV is a cooperative of sixty women weaving from the municipality of Zinacantán1 founded by Doña Magdalena and currently run by her two daughters Yoli and Xunka. Zinacantán is a Tzotzil Mayan village in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Chiapas has the highest population of indigenous people and is also the poorest state in Mexico with a poverty rate of 75.7 …

Refashioning Newport: Reuse Of Textiles During The Gilded Age, Anna Rose Keefe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the late-nineteenth century, descriptions of the fashions worn by the summer residents of Newport, RI appeared in magazines and newspapers all around the world. Though contemporary interpretation romanticizes the idea that Newport’s style leaders wore their ensembles once before discarding them, letters and diaries from the Newport Historical Society and the Preservation Society of Newport County detail how clothing was reused and remade across all levels of society during the American Gilded Age. While Newport’s belles sold and traded gowns with friends, remodeled afternoon ensembles into evening gowns, and re-cut and re-dyed their clothing to fit the latest styles, …

Sprang Bonnets From Late Antique Egypt: Producer Knowledge And Exchange Through Experimental Reconstruction, Carol James

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Head coverings are a global phenomenon, worn by people everywhere with various roles and meanings within their respective societies. The sprang technique has been part of the hat-making tradition in various times and places, from Bronze Age bonnets in Scandinavia to hair nets found in modern Eastern Europe. Arid conditions in the Nile Valley communities of Egypt preserved hundreds of sprang bonnets dating to the Late Antique period (c. 3^rd to 7^th centuries) which are now held in many European and North American museums. Among these, the Deutsches Textilmuseum in Krefeld, Germany holds one of the largest collections …

Containing Tradition, Embracing Change: Weaving Together Plant Materials In Northern Latin America, Kathryn Rousso

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

From southern Mexico to northern Colombia, palm fronds, wild pineapple fibers, agave fibers, wild bamboo and cane have been woven into bags, baskets, mats, hats, and brooms for as long as anyone can remember. These items carry great historical and cultural value to many Indigenous people including the Otomi (Mexico), Maya (Mexico and Guatemala), Lenca (Honduras), Ngobe-Bugle (Panama), Embera (Panama and Columbia), plus the Guane and Zunu (Columbia) providing a “sense of place” for those who harvest, prepare, weave, and use or sell plant material woven items in each of their unique environments. Spanish colonization, civil wars, modern politics, tourism, …

Place-Based Textiles In Post Wwii Poland, Jane Przybysz

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When WWII broke out, textile art faculty Stefan and Helena Galkowski left the Arts Academy in Crakow, Poland to take refuge in the countryside. There, they continued their artistic practice, utilizing materials close at hand - undyed sheep’s wool – to make work they regarded as carrying on a distinctly Polish and politically-charged weaving tradition. After the War, even sheep’s wool was scarce. Polish textile artists like Magdelena Abakanowicz seized upon a plentiful local material – sisal – to improvise new textile art-making methods and forms. In the wake of WWII, the nascent Polish communist government saw in pre-WWII artisan …

Rahul Jain’S Reimagined Velvet Drawloom, Barbara Setsu Pickett

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Indian textile traditions are exemplars of Deep Local, firmly rooted in geography and culture. Even family names denote specific occupations; Ansari are weavers; Chippa, block-print dyers; Khatri, bandhani dyers. In the 1980s, two exhibitions introduced me to Indian textiles. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s show, “India Festival of Science included artisans demonstrating their specialties. Ansar Ahmed Ansari, a Varanasi silk brocade weaver, wove sari fabric on a Jacquard loom. After shadowing him for several days, he offered his business card and invited me to visit. In New York at the Met, the India Art and Culture exhibition had …

The Modern Development Of Kyoto Textiles For The Kimono, Keiko Okamoto

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Hand painted yūzen dyeing and other types of yūzen dyeing are considered the main dyeing methods among Kyoto textiles. They were developed between the mid-17^th century and early 20^th century and are still used for the kimono. The kimono and its textiles were spotlighted in Western countries when Japan opened the country to the West in the late 19^th century and had been popular into the early 20^th century. Westerns collected them, wore them, or used them as motifs of their art works. Japanese also took Western motifs in the kimono textile designs, which in turn …

Along A Continuum: Spirally-Woven Beadwork Of The Tlingit, Wasco, And Pit River Peoples, Alice Scherer

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This presentation explores the impact of introducing glass beads on the weaving practices of three Pacific Northwest Indigenous groups. Although Native Americans made and used beads of bone, shell, seed, and stone prior to contact with Western European culture, the 18^th-century introduction of glass beads brought new elements of sparkle, regularity, and color to native art and inspired creative expressions. Faced with the challenge of integrating these new materials, women turned to familiar basketry techniques for ideas, adapting traditional basket-making methods to weave beads and native-made fibers into bags, caps, straps, and hair ornaments. Visual evidence for this …

The Radical Fiber Art Practices Of The Yarn Mission: A Case Study, Lila Stone

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper aims to investigate how The Yarn Mission uses fiber arts practices to challenge racism and sexism through the lens of a case study. The Yarn Mission is a “pro-Black, pro-rebellion, pro-community” knitting collective that formed in St. Louis, Missouri in response to the tragic death of Mike Brown at the end of 2014. It now has chapters in Minneapolis, MN; Atlanta, GA; New York City; and Wilmington, DE. This research draws on a series of semi-structured interviews (with questions that prompt discussion) with selected founders and current members of The Yarn Mission. I will conduct both phone and …

Tapestry Crochet In The Americas, Europe, Africa, And The Middle East: Tradition And Innovation, Carol Ventura

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Tapestry crochet was historically done in just a few countries, but globalization and the internet have spread this versatile art form around the world. Publications and online groups have helped keep this tradition alive and have inspired many innovative uses-from designer accessories to contemporary museum installations. Tapestry crocheted fabric is solid and smooth with motifs and imagery, much like tapestry woven cloth. Because of the similar look and feel, most people cannot tell the difference between the two. Techniques vary from place to place, perhaps because they developed from different types of looped bags, gloves, and bags. For instance, in …

Threading Together Politics And Poetics In Cecilia Vicuña’S Fiber Art, Jacqueline Witkowski

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 2006, Chilean artist Cecelia Vicuña carried thick knotted red strands of unspun wool to Cerro El Plomo, a glaciated peak outside of Santiago. Done in response to government-sanctioned acquisitions of gold and silver mines sitting under the glacier by a Canadian corporation, Vicuña’s use of her quipu-an ancient mnemonic device-tied the historical disappearance of the Incan empire to an ecological devastation occurring in the new millennium. Her actions also referenced the Pinochet dictatorship, as well as her own exile when in 1979, she traveled to Colombia and with a red string tied to a glass of milk, spilled its …

The Wagga Quilt In History And Literature, Diana Mary Eva Thomas

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Wagga quilt fits squarely into the Australian tradition of ‘making do.’ These quilts were constructed from recycled materials that were available at the time-for the shearer or drover that was wheat sacks, for the poor family on the land it was clothing that could no longer be worn because it was too threadbare, for Depression-era women it was the samples that tailors or fabric salesmen no longer needed. But Waggas are not only the products of hardship on the land. Many of the surviving quilts were used in homes in reginal towns or the suburbs or large cities such …

Looking At The Past And Current Status Of Kenya’S Clothing And Textiles, Mercy V.W. Wanduara

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper analyzes and documents traditional textiles and clothing of the Kenyan people before and after independence in 1963. The paper is based on desk top research and face to face interviews from senior Kenyan citizens who are familiar with Kenyan traditions. An analysis of some of the available Kenya’s indigenous textile fiber plants is made and from which a textile craft basket is made. Kenya’s textile and clothing industry has undergone tremendous changes from pre-colonial era (before 1963) to date. Traditionally Kenyans donned clothing made out locally available materials; namely plants and animal skin. Color for these materials was …

The Lévite Dress: Untangling The Cultural Influences Of Eighteenth-Century French Fashion, Kendra Van Cleave

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the final decades of the eighteenth century, France saw a massive vogue for women’s clothing styles that, while adhering to the fundamental norms of French dress, were directly influenced by Ottoman clothing. One of the most popular of these was the levite, a dress that was introduced in the late 1770s and continued in popularity through the late 1780s. Inspired by costumes worn in a staging of Racine’s play “Athalie,” which is set in the ancient Biblical era, the levite initially mimicked the lines of Middle Eastern caftans. Over time, the style developed into at least three different variations, …

The Global Influence Of China And Europe On Local Japanese Tapestries Mainly From The 19th Through Early 20th Centuries, Masako Yoshida

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In general, Japanese culture has developed under the influence of foreign cultures, and textiles are no exception. In this presentation, I will focus on tapestries from the 19^th century (the late Edo period) to the early 20^th century (the Showa period), and discuss how Japanese tapestries achieved their original expression under the influence of Chinese and European tapestries. The Japanese began to seriously produce tapestry weaving around the end of the Edo period, but in the beginning, they just copied Chinese and European tapestries. Regarding these early productions, little research has been accomplished yet. In this presentation, I …

Mashru Redux: From The Calico Museum In Ahmedabad To A Loom In The Great Plains, Wendy R. Weiss

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A zigzag line of resist dye characterizes a fabric called Mashru. It was produced in several different geographic locations; however, this paper discusses examples from India and my efforts to reconstruct patterns that have not been actively produced in this century. The Calico Museum in Ahmedabad is the first place I saw this style of warp resist fabric. The literature says that it was produced for Muslim clients who were not allowed to wear silk next to their skin. The word “Mashru” means “permitted” in Arabic and its Sanskrit variation “Misru” means “mixed.” A mashru fabric historically has a silk …

Cottage Industry As Social Practice: Sustainability Of Handweaving In The Post-Industrialist Era, Maggie Leininger

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

India to Appalachia: How Cottage Industries Preserve Textile Heritage examines the role of the hand weaver and the cottage industry from India to the American Craft Revival in promoting cultural identity through textiles. The migratory nature of textile production both in the pre-and post-industrial practices has long challenged the notion of a pure textile heritage for any culture. However, with the almost simultaneous appearance of Khadi production in India and the American Craft Revival of Appalachia, the allure of the homespun as a cultural asset became a mechanism to offset the impact of textile industrialization. As urban centers increased in …

The Deep Origins Of Kashmir Shawls, Their Broad Dissemination And Changing Meaning. Or Unraveling The Origins And History Of A Unique Cashmere Shawl, Joan Hart

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Emulation is constant in all forms of art. Debates have arisen regarding the nature of this imitation by Europeans of indigenous Kashmir shawls. The intrinsic Kashmiri aspect was the weave itself: nowhere else was a double interlock tapestry twill technique used. The unique fabric originated in Tibet: pashmina from the underbelly of the mountain goat. The shawl was strong, lightweight, and warm. The earliest Kashmir shawls were simple in design: the double long shawls and moon shawls. The earliest shawls had simple motifs, single floral blooms. By the end of the eighteenth century, this motif was compounded to many blooms …

Mind’S Eye And Embodied Weaving: Simultaneous Contrasts Of Hue In Isluga Textiles, Northern Chile, Penelope Dransart

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This article examines the use of hue in textiles woven during the twentieth century in Isluga, a bilingual Aymara/Spanish-speaking community of herders of llamas, alpacas and sheep in the highlands of northern Chile. It pays tribute to the weaving skills of Natividad Castro Challapa and other weavers of her generation, born early in the twentieth century. Aniline dyes were already known to them but, in the course of their lives, they witnessed increasing amounts of industrially manufactured, pre-dyed acrylic yarns arriving in the community. The article explores how weavers incorporated these brightly hued yarns in their textiles to form accents …

Common Sense & Pin Money: The Material Culture And Legacy Of Lula Annie Butler 1909-2009, Robin Michel Caudell

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

“Common Sense and Pin Money: The Material Culture and Legacy of Lula Annie Butler 1909-2009” examines local/global contexts of the late Mrs. Butler’s found quilts, her “make do” ethos, which made a way out of no way decades before recycle, re-purpose and green were hash tags. A lifelong Preston, Maryland resident and domestic worker, Mrs. Butler’s household was outfitted with quilts, tablecloths, aprons, pillows, and shopping bags she created from fabric-sample books and fabric remnants obtained from the late Mrs. Sarah Covey, her longest employer, who operated a drapery and upholstery business in Federalsburg, Maryland. Mrs. Butler’s artistic impulse-vibrant, improvisational, …

Yours, Mine & Ours: Beyond Appropriation, Suzi Ballenger, Charlotte Hamlin

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As textile makers and researchers, we value the indigenous cultural wealth represented in the extraordinary array of textiles available to us through current worldwide channels. For millennia, textiles have been an effective vehicle for cultural intersection and exchange; traditions, materials, motifs, techniques, words, and beliefs are adopted, extended, and enriched by the meeting of peoples. Increasingly-and particularly with the advent of “fast fashion”-textile styles and motifs are being widely appreciated, and subsequently appropriated, without acknowledgement or compensation to the culture from which they derived. Is it possible to create productive collaboration across cultures without exhausting or dispossessing the custodians of …

The Fabric Of War: Wool And Local Land Wars In A Global Context, Madelyn Shaw, Trish Fitzsimons

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the nineteenth century, exponential growth in sheep pastoralism in Australia and New Zealand, and in less predictable locales such as the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and Rapanui (Easter Island), fueled the alienation of Indigenous peoples from their lands. The sheep and their wool, at the heart of these ‘grass wars,’ fed a global industry that supported another kind of war – the mass, cold climate warfare characterizing the century between the Crimean and Korean wars. Not until the second quarter of the nineteenth century did mechanization and factory organization affect wool production, as assiduous Australasian sheep husbandry bred wool staples …

Abstracts Of Papers: Textile Society Of America 16th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Abstracts of 175 papers:

Monisha Ahmed — The Kashmir / Cashmere Shawl – Tradition and Transformation

Philis Alvic — Eliza Calvert Hall, The Handwoven Coverlet Book, and Collecting Coverlet Patterns in Early Twentieth Century Appalachia

Sarah Amarica — Global Threads: Histories of Labour and Cloth in Ann Hamilton and Ibrahim Mahama’s Installation Art

Lynne Anderson — Schoolgirl Embroideries: Integrating Indigenous Motifs, Materials, and Text

Jennifer Angus — Education through Co-Design

Margaret Olugbemisola Areo and Adebowale Biodun Areo — Egungun: Concept, Content and the Dynamic Contextual Manifestations of Yoruba Ancestors Masquerade

Alison Ariss — Wrapped in Wool: Coast Salish wool weaving, …

Milingimbi Artists Partnerships, Louise Hamby

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Aboriginal women artists who live on the island of Milingimbi in eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia have had a long engagement with people outside of the community. This began with the arrival of Macassan traders over 400 years ago who came primarily in search of trepang. They brought new things and ideas with them; some became absorbed into the lifestyle of the local people. One item in particular is most relevant to the Deep Local and those operating outside of it. The praus that brought the Macassans to Arnhem Land were powered by sails. The Arnhem …

Kasb-E-Hunar (Skilled Enclave), Adil Iqbal

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Kasb-e-Hunar (Skilled Enclave) is a sensory film showing a visual documentation of Shu (woolen cloth) making a short interviews with an elderly artisan community for the village of Madaklasht. It invites the audience to engage with the past and present and seeks to provoke conversations about the future and the responsibilities we have, given past mistakes. The film was made over three weeks of anthropological fieldwork in Shishi Koh Valley, Chitral, Northern Pakistan. The film investigates the cultural significance of woolen craft skills, exploring memories relating to handiwork, and the challenges of globalization. It shows the value of traditional skills …

Tinctorial Cartographies: Plant, Dye & Place, Anna Heywood-Jones

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

We live in a plant-dominated biosphere, and yet the relevance and meaning of vegetal life, beyond its contribution to human existence, is rarely considered. This way of thinking has led us to see nature as external to ourselves, as “other,” as that mysterious realm beyond the human sphere of being. As in visual culture, plant life possesses signifiers and coded meanings in its contextual configurations. Botanical literacy offers insight into environmental, sociocultural, and historical narratives of place, as the forests and herbaceous margins of our communities speak of complex past, a parallel history of survival and adaptation. Plants and textiles, …