Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

From The Ancestors Or The Portuguese: Exotic Textiles In Flores And The Solor Archipelago, Robyn Maxwell

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Throughout the eastern Indonesian island of Flores and the neighbouring Solor archipelago, village treasuries usually contain considerable numbers of highly valued textiles and some items of costume. These consist predominantly of important local products clearly made within the particular village or district.

Other heirloom textiles have been acquired from outside the local regions in the distant or not-so-distant past. These exotic heirlooms are often awarded a special place in the hierarchy of textiles found throughout Flores, Solor, and Lembata and, where possible, examines local histories and myths associated with the origins of particular objects or types of cloth.

Further, an …

Market Effects On The Design And Construction Of Carpets In The Milas Region Of Southwestern Turkey, 1963–1993, Charlotte A. Jirousek

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Beginning in 1964 my husband and I were involved in the development of a village carpet weaving cooperative in Southwestern Turkey. We lived with the weavers of Çömlekçi from 1964 to 1966, as part of the first Peace Corps rural community development program in Turkey. Between 1966 and 1969 we continued to work with the cooperative in its efforts to develop markets and quality control standards while working as Peace Corps staff. Since leaving Turkey in 1969, I have visited Çömlekçi periodically, most recently in 1992 and 1994.

The success of the Çömlekçi cooperative in tum generated carpet cooperatives throughout …

The Assimilation Of European Designs Into Twentieth Century Indian Saris, Linda Lynton

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Although so-called "Indian" designs of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century chintzes influenced Western European [Western] textiles almost from their introduction, Western patterns did not impinge on indigenous Indian fabrics, such as saris, until the last half of the nineteenth century.

They were superimposed upon an already complex mix of textile ornamental styles, which can be briefly categorized as: (i) Mughal, (ii) Hindu, and (iii) adivasi (aboriginal). The Mughal style consists of the elaborately patterned prints and brocades typical of western India. It shows strong Persian influences, such as the kalga (Paisley motif); intertwining floral vines (bel); and life-like depictions of …

From Bohemian To Bourgeois: American Batik In The Early Twentieth Century, Nicola J. Shilliam

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In 1919 Pieter Mijer wrote in his influential book Batiks and How to Make Them, "Batik is still a comparatively recent importation; brought here some ten years ago, it was met with absolute incomprehension and lack of interest, but its real merit as a means of decorating fabrics has earned it a place in the industrial art of the nation and year by year it is gaining wider recognition."

This paper briefly considers the rise and fall in popularity of batik in America in the period Mijer indicated: how it changed from being a foreign import chiefly seen in …

Anni Albers: Pre-Columbian Resonances: The Significance Of Pre-Columbian Art In Her Textiles And Writings, Virginia Gardner Troy

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Anni Albers is known primarily for her contribution to the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop and her woven prototypes for industrial production; she has rarely been acknowledged for her role in reviving and redefining the Pre-Columbian fiber art tradition. She researched, analyzed, collected, and extensively wrote about Pre-Columbian textiles. Her seminal text, On Weaving, 1965, is not only dedicated to Andean weavers, "my great teachers, the weavers of ancient Peru," but is essentially a textbook of Andean weaving techniques, revived and meticulously analyzed by Albers. Furthermore, she and her husband, Josef Albers, amassed an important collection of ancient Mesoamerican sculpture, acquired …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 6:15 – Winter 1994, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

Technical Issues
Fiber Identification
Letter from the President
In Memoriam
Letter from the Editor
Travel
Announcements
Calls for Papers
Conferences, Meetings, Symposia
Wanted: Saris to Photograph
Lectures, Workshops & Classes
Fellowships, Grants, Internships
People
Exhibitions
Membership Information
Symposia/Conferences/Seminars – Past/Present/Future
The Eastern Region’s Late Spring Tour of the Renwick Gallery’s Exhibition of Contemporary Navajo Weaving
TSA Bibliography Announced

Wreath And Cap To Veil And Apron: American Modification Of A Slavic Ritual, Patricia Williams

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper explores a wedding custom practiced for more than one hundred years in the Chicago area by the descendants of Czech, Polish, and Slovak immigrant women. Through the custom's existence and perpetuation in America, the role of a transitional rite of passage is chronicled in both the process of assimilation and the preservation of ethnic heritage. The original textile symbols used in the ritual were modified to reflect the differences in culture in the United States but with the "echoes" of European folk tradition still heard. Chicagoans today have continued to modify the custom as the role of women …

Discussion Of "Textile Transformations And Cultural Continuities In West Africa", Christopher B. Steiner

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I have divided my discussion of these papers into two parts. First, I would like briefly to address each of the papers individually—highlighting what I find to be some of the most important issues raised by each. And second, I would like to put forth two dichotomies—(1) regarding the relationship between the sacred and the profane, and (2) on the relationship between aesthetic value and commercial value—both of which strike me as critical organizing principles that join these four papers [those of Judith Byfield, Kathleen Bickford, Lisa Aronson, and Elisha Renne and Joanne Eicher in this proceedings] into a coherent …

Contact, Crossover, Continuity: The Emergence And Development Of The Two Basic Lace Techniques, Santina Levey, Milton Sonday

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

According to the present understanding of the term, lace is a soft pliable fabric, most often white, with a pattern composed of solid and open areas, made either with a needle and thread in a looped structure or with a variable number of threads wound on bobbins and interlaced in a form of braiding. Laces matching that description survive from the mid 17th century onward, with some needle and bobbin-made examples that at first glance appear indistinguishable. Yet each of these totally unrelated techniques has its own history. The purpose of our project is to trace how it happened that …

The Pomegranate Pattern In Italian Renaissance Textiles: Origins And Influence, Rosalia Bonito Fanelli

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The term "pomegranate motif" includes a series of vegetal patterns—the pine cone, the artichoke, the thistle, variants of the tree-of-life motif, and, in particular, the lotus and the palmette. These last two patterns were closely studied by Alois Riegl in his 1893 work Stilfragen (Problems of Style). The term itself came into use during the period of historic revivalism in the latter half of the nineteenth century. At that time important design theorists and practitioners such as Owen Jones, William Morris, and Walter Crane dedicated space in their writings with accompanying plates to the reconstruction of Renaissance pomegranate patterns. The …

The Transformation Of Men Into Masquerades And Indian Madras Into Masquerade Cloth In Buguma, Nigeria, Elisha P. Renne, Joanne B. Eicher

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Kalahari Ijo people of the Niger Delta area of southeastern Nigeria use a group of dark indigo-blue cloths with white patterning to cover the faces of masquerade performers. Subsumed under the name of alubite (masquerade cloth) are at least three distinct types: (1) ukara cloth, an indigo-resist of imported muslin, stitched and dyed by Igbo craftsmen, (2) alubite cloth, a gauze-weave, also an indigo-resist, but of unknown provenance, and (3) pelete bite, an Indian madras from which threads are cut and pulled by Kalahari women to form a new pattern.

The first two types of cloth apparently come …

New Twist On Shibori: How An Old Tradition Survives In The New World When Japanese Wooden Poles Are Replaced By American Pvc Pipes, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The subject of my talk is arashi shibori or pole wrap resist Although at times it is hard to recognize some arashi effects as such, technically arashi shibori is one of many forms of tie-dye. After thirty years of its exploration through art-to-wear, dyed and painted tapestries, three dimensional sculptures, and mixed media in the United States, various forms of tie-dye have now become part of the lexicon of American fabric design and fiberarts vocabulary.

On the one hand, there has been much effort by textile specialists to circumvent the term "tie-dye," due to its association with the Grateful Dead, …

Ethnic Artists And The Appropriation Of Fashion: Embroidery And Identity In The Colca Valley, Peru, Blenda Femenías

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

"When I'm in Arequipa and I see a lady in embroidered clothes, I always greet her; she's from my land, she's my compatriot. . . . [When I teach embroidery] no matter how much one teaches, the motifs don't come out the same. If there are twenty embroiderers, twenty different motifs come out although they have the same name. It's like, even if you're my brother, we're not the same."

These comments by embroidery artist Leonardo Mejfa neatly express the character of Colca Valley ethnic clothes: simultaneously shared and individual. Similar appearance is important in recognizing a compatriot, but an …

Paj Ntaub: Textile Techniques Of The Hmong, Joyce Smith

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Narration of the video:

Who Are the Hmong?

What Is Paj Ntaub?

Why Providence?

Zoua V. Lor

Seng Yang Vang

Lee Khang

Chia Vue Moua

What Next?

Paracas Cavernas, Paracas Necroplis, And Ocucaje: Looking At Appropriation And Identity With Only Material Remains, Ann Peters

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Paracas Cavernas, Paracas Necropolis, and Ocucaje are groups of burials made some 2000 years ago on the south coast of Peru. The Peruvian coast is a desert, and textiles, basketry, and other artifacts made from plant fiber and animal fiber and other organic materials are preserved there in ancient tombs. The Andes is known for funerary traditions that emphasize the dressing of the dead, with documented preservation of mummified ancestors or funerary bundles, and in some cases their participation as ancestors in kin group and community ritual.

. . .

It is clear that there are continuing relations of contact, …

Dressing The Part: Indigenous Costume As Political And Cultural Discourse In Peru, Katharine E. Seibold

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In Latin America, indigenous clothing has often been equated with indigenous cultural identity. When we speak of indigenous fashion as being a marker of cultural identity, we must also examine the more fluid roles of the indigenous individual and community within the state. How is individual, community, and state identity represented? What form does the discourse between the individual, the community, and the state take? Many anthropologists have written of the flexible and strategic use of ethnicity, and costume as a primary tool in the manipulation of ethnic identity. Indigenous, handwoven dress legitimates community as well as ethnic group membership …

Blanket Statements, Issue 39, Winter 1994

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 39, Winter 1994

Rugs And Textiles Of Late Imperial China, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

With successive conquests of the highlands beyond the Great Wall, the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911) formed what was to become China's last empire. Their political expansion encompassed Han Chinese, Mongolians, Turks, Tibetans, and other peoples with diverse ethnic origins, languages and religious beliefs, whose regional economies often relied upon physical features of the land.

Within the Great Wall, to the east and south, silk and sericulture had a long history. Silkworms and mulberry trees thrived in the low-lying agricultural regions populated by Han Chinese. From inland regions rivers flowed to the sea, where coastal cities …

Ancient Near Eastern Fibers And The Reshaping Of European Clothing, Elizabeth J. W. Barber

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In April of 1994, an amazing story hit the news-stands. A group of naturally mummified corpses dated to 2000 BC and later had been found in Chinese Turkestan. Not only were their Caucasian features and blondish hair well preserved by the dry heat of the xinjiang desert, but also their clothes--brightly colored plaids and twills among them (Hadingham 1994). We know from later linguistic records that a group of Indo-European speakers we call the Tocharians had made their way to Xinjiang and the Tarim Basin in early times. We also know that the Indo-Europeans began to spread across Eurasia from …

Frontmatter - Contact, Crossover, Continuity - 1994

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Frontmatter: cover, title page, and copyright page.

Technology And Change: The Incorporation Of Synthetic Dye Techniques In Abeokuta, Southwestern Nigeria, Judith Byfield

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the oriki (appellations) of an 18th-century oba (king) in Okuku, references to cloth and indigo were included in the verses that attested to the oba's wealth and greatness,

Abioye, my father, Olugbola, one who takes the image and all its children to dance

The beauty of cloth dyed in indigo does not fade

Adewale, the indigo is what gives the cloth its worth

The references suggestively point to the aesthetic as well as commercial value of indigo in Yoruba society. Scholars and travelers have long noted the importance of indigo dyed cloth in Yoruba society, and Yoruba women, the …

Akwete-Igbo Weavers As Entrepreneurs And Innovators At The Turn Of The Century, Lisa Aronson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In his discourse on trade commodities, Igor Kopytoff argues that commodities assume what he calls a "cultural biography" through which one sees "the social system and the collective understanding on which it rests" (Kopytoff, 1986:89). What Kopytoff means by this is that commodities take on a life of their own based on the social and economic factors that have come to affect them. This paper will address the "cultural biography" of cloth in Southeastern Nigeria from its origins through trade to its various levels of assimilation both in use and production.

The biography discussed in this paper reaches an important …

The Conversion Of Chinese Court Robes Into Japanese Festival Hangings, Gloria Granz Gonick

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Decorated silken robes historically worn in China to garb the emperor and his family were disassembled and resewn in Japan into hangings for Kyoto's Gion Festival during the 16th to 18th centuries. The twenty robes, which were converted into coverings for festival carts called yama and hoko, include silk tapestry weaves (kesi), brocades, and embroidered examples. Eleven date from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) and nine from the early to mid Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). This distribution contrasts with other world collections of Chinese imperial robes, in which Qing Dynasty examples are far more numerous. In addition to the …

Raphael’S Acts Of The Apostles Tapestries: The Birth Of The Tapestry Reproduction System, Marjorie Durko Puryear

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

As a younger fiber artist at the beginning of my teaching career, I rarely found European tapestries of the 16th through 18th centuries to be more than copies of paintings in a woven mask. The weaver's hand and spirit were only apparent in finite details which were resplendent with meticulous hatching, shading, and delicate slit work, unchanged from the Medieval past. But it was against my art school training to separate art concept from process. I wasn't ready to accept that the weavers were not the artists, and that tapestry was in fact an industry.

More recently, my point of …

Ottoman Silks And Their Legacy, Diane Mott

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, luxury silks of Asia that had for centuries trickled into Europe began to enter in large numbers, fueling an appetite for the rich and exotic that was to have a lasting effect on Western textile design. In turn, expanded trade with the Levant carried Western designs and advances in weaving eastward. The Ottoman Empire, standing at the thresholds of Europe and Asia, was perfectly poised to transmit these East-West currents. Weavers in manufactories in the successive Ottoman capitals of Bursa and Istanbul, the western outposts of the Asiatic silk routes, absorbed …

Charmingly Quaint And Still Modern: The Paradox Of Colonial Revival Needlework In America, 1875–1940, Beverly Gordon

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Despite the self-conscious modernism of the early 20th century, American needlework was filled with images of flower baskets, cozy cottages, spinning wheels, and women in hoopskirts. It was dominated by seemingly old-fashioned and "quaint" techniques, such as cross stitch, patchwork, crewel, and rug hooking. In an era with teeming cities, radio, and cars pouring off the assembly line, needlework came to stand for a romanticized, seemingly simpler and nobler American past. And in an era when women were winning the vote and re-entering the professional work force, needleworkers, in turn, became identified with the domestic homebody of the past. In …

Ancient Andean Headgear: Medium And Measure Of Cultural Identity, Niki R. Clark, Amy Oakland Rodman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

From the earliest recorded periods of southern Andean history, distinctive clothing styles have served to identity specific socio-cultural groups and provide clues about cultural origins. Unique environmental conditions, especially present along the arid Pacific coast of South America, have allowed the preservation of a vast archive of usually perishable material. From the far south coast of Peru to the northern desert regions of Chile, textiles, and especially headgear forms were worn to distinguish between the diverse populations who established permanent settlements along the narrow river valleys linking highland regions and the coast.

The south central Andes region has always known …

(Re-)Fashioning Identity: Late Twentieth-Century Transformations In Dress And Society In Boliva, Elayne Zorn

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The members of most of Bolivia's large indigenous ethnic groups, such as the nearly 22,000 people of ayllu Sakaka of northern Potosi, continue to wear a distinctive daily dress. Such dress nationally and internationally is emblematic of the Sakaka's separate, and to many inferior, identity as Indians. To the wearers also, or perhaps fundamentally, such dress marks a division between clothed indigenous humans (runa) and naked foreign outsiders (q'ara). This interpretation coincides with hegemonic non-Indian evaluations of Indian separateness, but reverses the hierarchy.

Yet most members of these large indigenous ethnic groups, whom I refer to …

Contact, Crossover, Continuity: Proceedings Of The Fourth Biennial Symposium Of The Textile Society Of America (1994) [Entire]

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Preface 7

Contact, Crossover, Continuity: Fiber and Garment

Featured Paper: Ancient Near Eastern Fibers and the Reshaping of European Clothing Elizabeth J. W. Barber 9

Wreath and Cap to Veil and Apron: American Modification of a Slavic Ritual Patricia Williams 19

Panel: Textile Transformations and Cultural Continuities in West Africa

Akwete-Igbo Weavers as Entrepreneurs and Innovators at the Turn of the Century Lisa Aronson 31

What’s in a Name: The Domestication of Factory Produced Wax Textiles in Cote d’Ivoire Kathleen E. Bickford 39

Technology and Change: The Incorporation of Synthetic Dye Techniques in Abeokuta, Southwestern Nigeria Judith Byfield 45

The …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 15 (1994), Virginia Gunn, Fawn Valentine, Merikay Waldvogel, Jennifer F. Goldsborough, Sunny Falling-Rain, American Quilt Society, Beverly Dunivent, Kathleen Curtis Wilson

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Virginia Gunn

Research Papers

Aesthetics. and Ethnicity: Scotch-Irish Quilts in West Virginia by Fawn Valentine

Mildred Dickerson: A Quilt Pattern Collector of the 1960s and 1970s by Merikay Waldvogel

An Album of Baltimore Album Quilt Studies by Jennifer F. Goldsborough

A Literary Patchwork Crazy Quilt: Toni Morrison's Beloved by Sunny Falling-rain

Kit Quilts .in Perspective by Anne Copeland and Beverly Dunivent

Weaving Cloth and Marketing Nostalgia: Clinch Valley Blanket Mills, 1890-1950, Cedar Bluff, Virginia by Kathleen Curtis Wilson

Authors and Editor

Index