Art Practice Commons^™

Title: Ajrakh- A Textile Tradition In Transition, Sharmila J. Dua Prof. Dr.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The region of Gujarat in the west has been an important textile export zone of India and remains an important source of printed cloth, in terms of both volume and quality. Early evidence of Gujarat’s involvement in international trade of colourful block printed textiles comes from the fragments found at the Fostat excavations in Egypt. These have been dated back to the fifteenth century and have been printed by the resist printing technique. The designs, motifs and colours are typical of the hand block printed textiles characteristic of the region today. Khavda and Dhamadka villages in Kutch were known for …

Dyeing With Morinda Citrifolia: In Pursuit Of Sustainable Future, Sudha Dhingra

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Green and sustainable practices are the future of fashion. It aims to nurture the environment through effective use of resources in order to minimize the cruel impact for both producer and customer. It employs techniques of environmental friendly ways of growing, extracting, producing and processing fabrics. Fashion industry as such involves highly unsustainable practices as there is always an urgent need to get faster and uniform results. It has a high carbon footprint as each stage of clothing lifecycle generates environmental and occupational hazards. Socially committed fashion takes into account the place of production, producers well-being and conditions under which …

“Meshed With A Million Veins”: Seafaring Networks & The Norfolk Sampler, Joanne Martin Lukacher

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The title of this article is taken from a line of a poem by the 19th-century Georgia poet Sidney Lanier and is presented as an homage to the location of the 2016 TSA conference. “And the marsh is meshed with a million veins” is Lanier’s description of “The Marshes of Glynn” in his poem of the same name, Glynn being one of the Atlantic coastal counties south of Savannah. I have taken this alliterative evocation of the sinuous verge of land and sea as a metaphorical point of embarkation for a discussion of the distinctive needlework of another, more distant, …

The Power Of Color: Anatolian Kilims, Sumru Belger Krody

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The kilims of Anatolia are great contemplative and minimalist works of art as stated by a kilim enthusiast.1 Created by women who had a magnificent eye for design and an awesome sense of color, these textiles are prized for the purity and harmony of their color, the integrity of their powerful overall design, their masterfully controlled weave structure, and their fine texture. The kilims are large tapestry-woven textiles. The visually stunning and colorful Anatolian kilims communicate the aesthetic choices of the village and nomadic women who created them. Yet, while invested with such artistry, Anatolian kilims first and foremost were …

For What It’S Worth: The French Knot As A Basic Trade Commodity, Jeana Eve Klein

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

For nearly twenty years, my primary studio production has been in the form of mixed media quilts. These quilts draw—both visually and conceptually—on the abandoned houses that color the landscape of my North Carolina mountain home. They are constructed using traditional quilting techniques married with digital processes and acrylic paint—a hybrid product that lands at the intersection of fibers, photography, painting and digital media. Although their conceptual purpose is to investigate the narrative past, present and future of these homes and their values, the questions with which I am most often quizzed at exhibitions focus purely on time and technique: …

Here And There, Now, Sandra Heffernan

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A textile installation shaped by traditional embroidery, geographical differences, technology and novel natural dye is the focus of this paper. ‘Through the globe’ [Através do globo] is the result of a six week artist in residency at Contextile 2016 in Guimarães, Portugal.1 It builds upon environmental pest invasive weed dye research, interprets ‘traditional’ embroidery illustrating the poetics of place.2 The essence of Guimarães embroidery provides the narrative along the fourteen metre length and is the physical embodiment of the antipodal link between and Wellington, New Zealand. The challenge offered by Contextile 2016 was to collaborate with Oficina embroiderers to learn, …

Some National Goods In 1871: The Rebozo, Marta Turok

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The history of rebozos and jaspe (ikat) in Mexico still presents many enigmas and fertile field for research. Public and private collections in Mexican and foreign museums preserve a variety of rebozos from the mid-18th through the 20th centuries. However, it has been complicated to correlate these extant pieces with exact places of production and dates. Other sources such as written accounts and images focus mostly on their social uses, sometimes places of production or sale are merely mentioned yet techniques and designs are the information least dealt with. Virginia Davis mentions this problem while analyzing the Frederick Church collection …

The Merchants And The Dyers: The Rise Of A Dyeing Service Industry In Massachusetts And New York 1800-1850, Linda Jean Thorsen

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Histories of dyeing in the United States have tended to emphasize home craft processes, early textile manufacturing, or the growth of synthetic dyes. But in the first decades of the nineteenth century, a vibrant independent dyeing service industry emerged in U.S. port cities. Using natural dyes, working with a variety of fibers, colors, and finishing processes, and developing sophisticated skills and equipment, these dyers served import merchants, retailers, elite households, and businesses such as hotels. They received cloth, garments, or home furnishings, cleaned, bleached, and/or dyed them, and then returned them “like new.” To satisfy customers, these businesses had to …

Artist At Sea: Codes And Cargo, Kelly Thompson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The themes of land, labor and the port resonate for me and particularly in recent voyage experiences and digital weaving research, which I will attempt to bring together in this talk. These activities converge in new and evolving artwork, generating more questions than answers on the relationships between digital and analog materiality. Trades routes, and the movement of people and goods through ports, notions of networks, flow, circulation, has parallels and resonance with our contemporary digital systems and also, correlations with political issues, namely power and control. The Container Shipping world is fascinating to drop in on, a world so …

A Morenada Dance Costume: An Example Of The Interconnection Of The Americas, Spain And Africa, Nancy B. Rosoff

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will explore the interconnection of the Americas, Spain and Africa as exemplified by a 19th century festival costume in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, worn for the Moreno or Morenada, a dance developed after Spain’s conquest and colonization of the Inca Empire in the 16th century. Two other costumes were also examined, one in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and the other in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore in La Paz, Bolivia. Today, the Moreno or Morenada is one of the most popular dances …

Velvet And Patronage: The Origin And Historical Background Of Ottoman And Italian Velvets, Sumiyo Okumura Dr.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Velvets are one of the most luxurious textile materials and were frequently used in furnishings and costumes in the Middle East, Europe and Asia in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. Owing to many valuable studies on Ottoman and Italian velvets as well as Chinese and Byzantine velvets, we have learned the techniques and designs of velvet weaves, and how they were consumed. However, it is not well-known where and when velvets were started to be woven. The study will shed light on this question and focus on the origin, the historical background and development of velvet weaving, examining historical sources …

Non-Specific: Ubiquity, Invisible Labor And The Moving Blanket, Callen Zimmerman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

“A textile is not simply a binary system of spun, twisted or spliced fibres, but first and foremost a result of complex interactions between resources, technology and society.” Eva Anderson Strand The crash of metal on asphalt as the back of a truck lowers its lift, a grunt of exertion, a buoyant step on the platform, the shuffling of work boots in calculated motion, the crumbled sigh of fabric folding falling on itself. This observed situation is typical to the daily ins and outs of the moving blanket, a complicated dance to aid objects of importance in transit. Even if …

From Function To Fashion To A Contemporary Art Process, Journey’S Within A Fisherman’S Rib Jumper, Christine Wiltshier

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper investigates a number of journeys discovered within a fisherman’s rib jumper. The thread of each journey was unravelled whilst considering the notion, Could a process of unmaking become a form of making. This question framed a process lead studio research that centred on haptic experimentation. The vehicle chosen to investigate this question was that of the unravelling of a knitted garment. Along side a studio investigation, a number of threads were followed that connect a 1980’s fashion garment with historic coastal fishing economies in the United Kingdom. Connections were also unravelled between the machine construction of the garment …

Sumptuary Synergy: British Imperialism Through The Tartan And Slave Trades, David Loranger, Eulanda A. Sanders

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Sumptuary laws have been a useful tool for various national powers in regulating subjects and to promote class differentiation and business interests. The genesis of this study was one such law, entitled the South Carolina Negro Act of 1735, stipulating that slave garments could only be made of low-quality textiles. These fabrics were reflective of slaves living in chattel environments, thus also representing a slave’s status in society. This law forbade slaves from wearing “any sort of garment or apparel whatsoever, finer, other or of greater value than Negro cloth, duffels, coarse kerseys, osnabrigs, blue linen, check linen, or coarse …

Veiled In Ignorance And Clothed In Reason: Jimmie Durham’S 2014 Exhibition Traces And Shiny Evidence, Andrea Feeser

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the 2014 London exhibition “Traces and Shiny Evidence,” Jimmie Durham showed on one floor brightly colored oil barrels, car parts, pcv pipes, and reproduction animal skeletons covered with or leaking ooze that shimmered with rainbow hues. On a floor one level up, Durham exhibited wall size drawing-prints he made by throwing stuffed animals coated with charcoal at very large pieces of paper. In the video that recorded Durham making the drawing-prints, the artist wears a workman’s vest labeled “Steiner. Maison de la Paix.” A video that is featured in the exhibition itself shows Durham in a business suit seated …

Review Of Woven Luxuries: Indian, Persian, Turkish Velvets From The Indictor Collection, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

LUXURIANT AND extravagant are words that come to mind to describe the sheen of brightly coloured velvets on display in this small but stellar exhibition at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, on view to 1 November. The exhibition presents an exceptional private collection of exquisitely designed velvets woven in lands of the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman empires during the 15th through 17th centuries. Robust blossoms, sinuous vines, and stylised flowers are among the many designs that characterise Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman textiles, including sumptuous velvets with raised pile and metallic threads that shimmer in changing light. Together the products of …

Review Of Eric Broug, Islamic Geometric Design, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

From the eleventh century C.E., Islamic geometric patterns have continued to evolve in complexity, contributing a distinct aspect of Islamic art and architecture that covers a broad geographic range and temporal spectrum. The underlying principles of these patterns are brilliantly explained in narrative and visual formats by Eric Broug, a Dutch design professional, self-trained and with an M.A. in the history of Islamic architecture from SOAS in London. Offering both an analytical and practical understanding of the construction of Islamic geometric patterns, this book is an unusual hybrid of scholarship and art, combining the qualities of a coffeetable bibelot and …

Geometry: Drawing From The Islamic Tradition, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Getting students involved in careful observation and analysis and encouraging their exploration of cultural forms of expression is an excellent means of introducing mathematical ideas. Geometric patterns abound in Islamic art and architecture. Exhibiting great ingenuity over the centuries, Muslim artists and craftsmen created beautiful patterns to adorn architectural monuments and exquisite objects. The Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in India offer the most famous examples of extraordinary patterns using brick and glazed tile, or carved and inlaid marble. Other examples of patterns are made using metal, wood, and fiber. Students may gain conceptual and theoretical understanding of …

National Institutions Of Visual Culture, Niamh Ann Kelly

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Fragmented Treasure On Display: The Turfan Textile Collection And The Humboldt Forum, Mariachiara Gasparini

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the summer 2012, thanks to the Department of Central Asian Art of the museum and the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) at the British Library in London, UK, the so-called Turfan textile collection--gathered during the last century Prussian Turfan Royal Expeditions in the Tarim Basin--held in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, Germany, was finally microscopically analyzed and digitized. Except for a couple of pieces taken into account in previous studies as examples of comparison, the collection as a whole (ca. 350 pieces) has not enjoyed particular attention from scholars in the fields of Chinese or Central Asian art …

Inscribed Cotton Ikat From Yemen In The Tenth Century Ce, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

More than a thousand years ago, Baghdad was capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbasid caliphs, and Yemen was a flourishing center of agriculture and trade. Among its famous products were dyestuffs, and cotton cloth with warp stripes, patterned using techniques of compression resist. As the strength of the Abbasid caliphate declined and claims to power gained hold in the provinces, regional artistic styles began to emerge. The rulers of Yemen adopted one of the prerogatives of the Abbasid caliphs, bestowing honor by rewarding their subjects with inscribed textiles called tiraz. From burial sites in Egypt, many such textiles …

Sinan’S Screens: Networks Of Intersecting Polygons In Ottoman Architecture, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

An often overlooked characteristic of Sinan’s architectural production of the 16th century is the use of low screening walls and windows carved of marble with pierced openwork or tracery to let in light and allow for air circulation. Typically these screens display polygonal networks often with intersecting polygons. This paper explores aspects of these carved patterns, which have antecedents in earlier Islamic architecture, attributing particular significance to this architectural feature in the works of Sinan and three successors whom he had trained. These slabs (and their counterparts in forged iron) may be considered études, serving as opportunities for the training …

Review Of Michel & Nosch, Eds., Textile Terminologies In The Ancient Near East And Mediterranean From The Third To The First Millennia Bc., Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Textile production comprised the major manufacturing industry of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean, yet it has received relatively little scholarly attention. As garments and furnishings, textiles may provide warmth and utility, but they are also indicators of status, objects of trade and tribute, products of technology, and economic generators. The role of textiles is both pervasive and complex, yielding rich and specific vocabularies that do not easily transcend time and space for contemporary understanding. This brilliant volume offers a compilation of twenty-two papers that result from an exciting collaboration between the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Textile …

The Kanga, A Cloth That Reveals- Co-Production Of Culture In Africa And The Indian Ocean Region, Phyllis A. Ressler

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Kanga is one of Africa's least understood textiles. As a simple cotton, colorful, hand and machine printed cloth it embodies dynamic historical co-production of culture throughout African and Indian Ocean trade networks. Exploring African mercantile trade history, the coproduction and exchange of iconography, the diverse use and meanings of the Kanga, suggests a valuable discursive role for this textile. Despite its longevity of more than 150 years, its significant role in creation of identities, and its contribution to communication through design and social meaning, the Kanga, receives limited attention in textile research. Though seen by many as a simple …

The Parenthetical Notation Method For Recording Yarn Structure, Jeffrey C. Splitstoser

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Until now, describing yarn structure has been more art than science, especially for complex yarns and cordage like those encountered at Cerrillos, a Paracas (ca. 900-100 B.C.E.) site in the Ica Valley of Peru, where yarns and cordage frequently involve multiple colors, sub-structures, and materials (e.g., Image 1). My early attempts at describing yarn structures using notation were essentially undecipherable to others. Likewise, narrative methods proved too wordy and no less confusing. (For instance, a narrative description of the structure of specimen 2001-L185-B1654- S001, a rope-like yarn pictured in Images 2 and 3, would be: Twelve Z-spun-singly-ply yarns Ztwisted with …

Samplers, Sewing And Star Quilts: Changing Federal Policies Impact Native American Education And Assimilation, Lynne Anderson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Illustrating the U.S. federal government's changing policies on the assimilation of Native American children is the role of needlework instruction in the schooling of Indian girls. Described and discussed are three examples of 19th and 20th century policy, with emphasis on the textiles resulting from those policies. Early 19th century policy supported mission schools for Indians. Learning to sew was a valued domestic skill in 19th century female education, culminating in the making of a needlework sampler. This focus was adopted in mission schools, illustrated by Christeen Baker's 1830 sampler stitched at the Choctaw Mission School in Mayhew, Mississippi. Shortly …

The Decagonal Tomb Tower At Maragha And Its Architectural Context: Lines Of Mathematical Thought, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Of several brick tomb towers constructed at Maragha in western Iran before the Mongol conquests, one in particular, Gonbad-e Qabud (593 H. / 1196-97 C.E.), has generated significant recent attention for its unique patterns with pentagons and decagons. Gonbad-e Qabud is also unusual in having a decagonal plan. While both plan and decoration distinguish it from earlier and later towers at Maragha and elsewhere on the Iranian plateau, the ornamental patterns follow a long line of experimentation with geometric expressions that grace many pre-Mongol buildings in Iran. This article examines in particular the overlapping polygons and radial symmetries of the …

12 Museum Theorists At Play, Marian Howard, Lauren Appel, Nicole Ferrin, David Vining, Katherine Hillman, Marissa Corwin, Berry Stein, Nicole Keller, William Elliston, David Bowles, Tiffany Reedy, Kathryn Eliza Harris, Liat Olenick

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Introduction by Lauren Appel
1. Learning by Do-weyan, by Marian Howard, with Nicole Ferrin
2: Dewey Defines Himself and Education, by David Vining
3. Benjamin Ives Gilman: Arts in People’s Lives, by Katherine Hillman
4. John Cotton Dana: The Social Construction of Museums, by Marissa Corwin
5. Piaget in the Art Museum: Constructing Knowledge Through Active Engagement, by Berry Stein
6. Lev Vygotsky: The Social Aspects of Learning, by Nicole Keller
7. Paulo Freire: Literacy, Democracy, and Context, by Nicole Keller
8. Maxine Greene: Aesthetic Education, by Lauren Appel
9. Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligence Theory: A Practical Application of …

Drawing A Line In The Sand: Copyright Law And New Museums, Megan M. Carpenter

Law Faculty Scholarship

Over the last twenty years, audience attendance at museums, galleries, and performing arts institutions in the United States has decreased dramatically. Major museums and galleries are considering ways to add engaging and meaningful value to the user experience with technology, from incorporating user-generated content to creating multimedia installations billed as “collaborative” works.

In 2010, the Dallas Museum of Art’s Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea exhibition featured landscapes from 1850 to the present, as well as a sound installation composed by students and faculty in the Arts and Technology program at the University of Texas at Dallas, which played on …

Taking Sides, But Who’S Counting? The Decagonal Tomb Tower At Maragha

Textile Research Works

Lu and Steinhardt introduced the term “girih tiles” to describe the set of equilateral polygons that structures a colorful two-dimensional decagonal tiling on the Darb-e Imam in Isfahan, Iran (1453 CE) with distant roots in the five-fold symmetries articulated in brick on the Gonbad-e Qabud, a tomb tower dated to the late 12th century CE located at Maragha in western Iran. Their work seeks to establish the early existence of quasi-crystalline tilings long before such means of covering the plane were understood mathematically in the West. Questions remained unanswered as to whether those who constructed these monuments were aware of …