Art Practice Commons^™

Blanket Statements, Issue 64, Spring 2001

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 64, Spring 2001

Blanket Statements, Issue 67, Winter 2002

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 67, Winter 2002

Symmetry-Breaking In Oriental Carpets: The Case For Beauty, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

emerges from truth. Symmetry-breaking requires an expectation of symmetry. Often, symmetry-breaking is confused with asymmetry. But, rather, asymmetry is simply the absence of symmetry. For symmetry-breaking to exist, a pattern must first be stablished. Symmetry then is expected, but somehow that expectation is not met. There are many ways to effect symmetry-breaking in Oriental carpets. The study of Oriental carpets may lead one to suppose that in art, as in nature, it is in the approximation of symmetry, rather than in its precision, that beauty is to be found and appreciated. What is an Oriental Carpet? No one ever set …

A Calligrapher's Art: Inscribed Cotton Ikat From Yemen, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Yemen at the advent of Islam and in the ensuing centuries is a little known entity in our contemporary world. A thousand years ago when Baghdad was capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbasid caliphs, Yemen was a flourishing center of agriculture and trade. By camel caravan north to central Islamic lands and in maritime trade with India to the east and Africa across the straits, Yemen's ports of call along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden were emporia for textiles, dyestuffs, and incense.

While today Yemen predominantly imports textiles from abroad, in the early centuries after the …

Blanket Statements, Issue 62, Fall 2000

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 62, Fall 2000

Blanket Statements, Issue 61, Summer 2000

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 61, Summer 2000

Blanket Statements, Issue 60, Spring 2000

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 60, Spring 2000

Review Of Islamische Textilkunst Des Mittelalters: Aktuelle Problemne, Edited By Karel Otavsky., Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Islamische Textilkunst des Mittelalters: Aktuelle Problemne. Edited by KAREL OTAVSKY. Riggisberger Berichte 5. Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 1997. Pp. 219 + 214 figs.

Focusing on textiles of Egypt and North Africa in the Fatimid period (A.D. 909-1171), this volume presents the edited proceedings of a scholarly conference on medieval Islamic textiles held at the Abegg-Stiftung in Riggisberg, Switzerland, 10-11 November 1995. Eighteen papers (published in English, French, or German) by fourteen authors are organized in three sections that deal with the functions, inscriptions, and weaving techniques, followed by a bibliography of references cited, a list of illustrations, and the authors' …

"Gabba" In Encyclopædia Iranica, Jean-Pierre Digard, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

GABBA (gava in Kurdish and Lori, Īzadpanāh, s.v.; ḵersak in Baḵtīārī, Digard, pp. 128-31), a hand-woven pile rug of coarse quality and medium size (90 x 150 cm or larger) characterized by an abstract design that relies upon open fields of color and a playfulness with geometry. This kind of rug is common among the tribes of the Zagros (Kurdish, Lori-speaking ethnic groups, Qašqāʾīs). The first known reference to gabba is found in a farmān by Shah Ṭahmāsp (r. 930-84/1524-76) dating to the middle of the 16th century (Opie, 1992, p. 124). Gabbas were said to have originated in …

Choices And Constraints: Pattern Formation In Oriental Carpets, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Patterns in nature result from dynamic relationships of forces and constraints. What is analogous for patterns in art? Art is created by human hands motivated by inspiration and thought. It is the product of creativity and skill. Creativity is constrained by cognitive processes and skill by the limits of technology. Based upon the author’s studies of Oriental carpets, this paper suggests that patterns in art result from dynamic relationships of choices and constraints. Typically, traditional Oriental carpets from historical rug-weaving regions of the world exhibit a multiplicity of patterns—field patterns and border patterns that express a vast array of designs …

Blanket Statements, Issue 63, Winter 2001

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 63, Winter 2001

Japanese Kimono Fashion Of The Early Twentieth Century, Annie Van Asche

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper examines the development of popular kimono fashion from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. I focus on kimono worn by modem-thinking young women whose wardrobes, by the 1920's, included both new Western and recreated Japanese garments and accessories. The meisen kasuri kimono, the most popular new style of kimono among women living in the growing urban metropolitan centers, is highlighted. It covers an unprecedented historical period of rapid modernization and Westernization of Japan, which brought about societal changes that dramatically--and positively--transformed the lives of Japanese women. I begin with a historical sketch of the industrialization of …

Textiles, Scholarship, And Art Education: An Art College Perspective, Wendy Landry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In many communities the art college is the last formal refuge of active textile-making knowledge and heritage. This location appears to value playful, risky, or challenging material explorations which might result in creative design or meaningful visual expression. This should be the best environment for cultivating adventurous students able to integrate a wide range of experience and resources towards generating new ideas for interesting contemporary textiles. It could be a good place in which to discover how textiles contribute to human experience and history, and how they are meaningful. However, I submit that this art environment is still detrimental to …

Circles And Centers: A Review Article, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Review of: Geometric Patterns from Islamic Art & Architecture, by Robert Field. Tarquin Publications, Norfolk, UK, c1998. AND "The Nature of Islamic Ornament, Part III: Geometric Patterns," exhibition on view March 17-July 18, 1999 in the Hagop Kevorkian Fund Special Exhibitions Gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Circles of equal radius, when tight-packed, naturally combine in two ways. One method yields centers that form a triangular grid; the other method yields centers that form a square grid. These basic mathematical considerations underlie the play of pattern in Islamic art. By selecting centers in a triangular grid, one may establish …

Blanket Statements, Issue 58, Fall 1999

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 58, Fall 1999

Review Of Textiles Of Late Antiquity, By Annemarie Stauffer Et Al., Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

This publication presents twenty-nine superb photographs of a selection of outstanding Late Antique textiles from among more than fifteen hundred classified as Coptic in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accompanying an exhibition of sixty-one textiles (on view 4 December 1995-7 April 1996), this booklet celebrates the "new, accessible storage and ex- tensive visual and documentary archives" (p. 4) of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center at the Metro politan Museum of Art. ...

The study of textiles can tell us so much more about the societies from which they came, about the cultures that produced them--information concerning environmental …

Blanket Statements, Issue 57, Summer 1999

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 57, Summer 1999

Blanket Statements, Issue 56, Spring 1999

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 56, Spring 1999

Blanket Statements, Issue 59, Winter 1999

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 59, Winter 1999

Blanket Statements, Issue 54, Fall 1998

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 54, Fall 1998

Blanket Statements, Issue 53, Summer 1998

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 53, Summer 1998

Blanket Statements, Issue 52, Spring 1998

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 52, Spring 1998

Blanket Statements, Issue 55, Winter 1998–1999

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 55, Winter 1998–1999

Blanket Statements, Issue 50, Fall 1997

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 50, Fall 1997

Blanket Statements, Issue 49, Summer 1997

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 49, Summer 1997

Blanket Statements, Issue 48, Spring 1997

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 48, Spring 1997

Blanket Statements, Issue 51, Winter 1997–1998

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 51, Winter 1997–1998

Review Of The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry And Ornament In Islamic Architecture, By Gulru Necipoglu, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Reviewed work: The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture, Gulru Necipoglu. Santa Monica, CA: J. Paul Getty Publications, 1996.

Reproducing the patterns from a 15th-century scroll (Topkapi Palace Museum Library, MS H.1956) that served as a guide for architects and artisans, Necipoglu brilliantly explores the juncture of geometry and philosophy that informed art and architecture over the centuries. Lucid essays accompany illustrations the scroll's 114 sequential patterns and place this virtually unknown work the dynamic intellectual discourses on geometry, religion and building that taking place in Europe and parts of the Islamic world during the 15th century. …

Blanket Statements, Issue 46, Fall 1996

Blanket Statements: News Publication of the American Quilt Study Group

Blanket Statements, Issue 46, Fall 1996

The Legacy Of Timur: A Small Rug At The Textile Museum, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Among the two hundred lots offered oh the block by Christie's from Bernheimer Family Collection of Rugs in February 1996, a small shaped rug with white ground was acquired by the Textile Museum. The rug was Lot 192, published in the catalogue as an East Persian saddle rug dating to the 19th century. The Textile Museum's interest in the piece was sparked by my hunch, based upon its design, that this rug is far more significant than its published attribution might suggest. A carefully conceived trefoil scroll implies a Timurid heritage. To read the design correctly, it should probably have …