Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

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 …

Shifu: A Traditional Paper Textile Of Japan, Hiroko Karuno

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Looking back at the history of Japanese textiles, the beginning seems to be braiding and/or netting fibers made from tree bark or tall grass (Jomon period - approximately C13th - C10th BC.). Weaving seems to appear after the mid-Jomon period. Silk was brought into Japan in the late-Jomon to the Yayoi period (600BC-200AD), and for a long time its use was restricted to the upper class. During the Momoyama period (1573-1603) cotton seeds were introduced and cotton grown in Japan. By the mid-Edo period (1603-1868) cotton cultivation had spread over the southern part of Japan, and cotton became available to …

Textile Art As A Locus Of Colonization And Globalization: The Tapestry Project, Eunkyung Jeong Mfa, Ph.D.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Tapestry Project was a 3+ year effort to plan, fund, design, create, and exhibit a 7’ x 14’ work of collaborative fiber art in a small rural community in Western Oklahoma. This project was remarkable for the ways it exhibited the historical concepts of colonization and globalization. From its inception, the project featured aspects of colonization, since the project’s formally trained founder envisioned herself sharing her knowledge and experience with interested but untrained local amateurs both for nobler purposes but also in order to help ensure her own tenure and promotion. While the “colonial oppressor” eventually succeeded in this quest, …

Byzantine And Oriental Silks From A Royal Shrine In Denmark Ad 1100, Anne Hedeager Krag

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In Denmark, in Odense, the Danish King Canute IV was murdered July 10, 1086, from behind in front of the altar in Albani Church. The king was killed together with his brother Benedict and seventeen of his knights, by Danish rebels. His half-brother Eric I “the Evergood” (ruling 1095-1103) achieved Canute’s recognition as a saint from Pope Urban II in 1098, and in 1100 the shrine containing the body of St. Canute was installed at the high altar of Odense Cathedral.1 St. Canutes remains were wrapped in a silk weaving with eagle motif and put into a shrine. Today the …

Tablet Weaving In Myanmar, Tomoko Torimaru

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Tablet weaving is one of the oldest techniques of expressing patterns, including script, with a warp thread. It is practiced in an extremely limited area and was considered a rare weaving technology. However, in the past it was developed to a level of highly skilled production among the people of Burma (now Myanmar). The scripts reveal the patronage of specific Buddhist believers and sometimes the provenance of the textile. The script on the belt that secures the covering on the sacred book of the palm leaf manuscript of Myanmar includes dates that establish that this type of weaving was practiced …

Importing Irish Linen And Creating American ‘Art Moderne’: An Analysis Of An Early 20th Century Trade Catalog, Lacy Simkowitz

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

During the late 1920s, a collaborative effort was launched by designers and manufacturers in the United States to develop indigenous modern decorative arts and unite art with industry. They were motivated by the realization that Europe surpassed U.S. in the production of contemporary furnishings—a fact made evident at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925, an event that the U.S. tellingly declined to participate in because it believed it could not meet the requirement of presenting new and original designs.1 The exhibition, a selection of which toured the US in 1926, became a model for the …

Mending As Metaphor: Finding Community Through Slow Stitching In A Fast Paced World, Ruth Katzenstein Souza

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

There is a growing movement toward repair and mending to combat the waste and over consumption that is so toxic to our planet. The environmental damage caused by textile production is the second greatest source of pollution after the oil industry.2 In light of these immense issues that are complex and overwhelming I found myself asking; “what can I do to add to the repair of the world?” I realized that we need to mend what we can in our immediate life; to truly see what needs our attention and to assess what is broken and see beauty in the …

Imagining Conquest: El Tapiz And Postrevolutionary Mexico*, Regina A. Root

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When submitting my abstract over a year and a half ago, I had many questions of the artifact to which I would dedicate a year of intense study, the so called Tillett tapestry. I took a giant leap of hope, planning ahead with radical optimism, knowing that nothing had been published before about this subject and thinking through the material I had. Following the leads in this project became more of a Pandora’s box than imagined because its archival recovery process and oral interviews with family members and relatives converged and diverged in unexpected ways. What seemed remarkably obvious became …