Art Practice Commons^™

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 …

Threads Of Feeling: Embroidering Craftivism To Protest The Disappearances And Deaths In The “War On Drugs” In Mexico, Maureen Daly Goggin

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Since 2006, at least 130,000 men, women, and children have been killed and another 27,000 have disappeared in the “War on Drugs” in Mexico. This violence affects all “socio-economic levels [who are being] plagued by kidnapping, extortion and murder.” Many connected to those who have gone missing or died have been demanding that authorities locate their loved ones. Frustrated with the lack of action, a Mexican activist group of artists called Fuentes Rojas Red Fountains came together in January 2011 to “raise the visibility for the victims of the US-Mexico Drug War” by, among other things, dying fountains red. Later …

Rematerializing: Interviews With Emerging Artists About Physicality, Pattern And Textile Techniques, Caroline Hayes Charuk

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will be a presentation of emerging Bay Area artists who draw upon textile materials, forms, and processes, but who refuse the label of ‘textile artist’ in favor of a more ambiguous relationship. References to textiles may be foundational for the work, or brought in as a means to an end. The conceptual basis of their work is contained within its physicality, and they acknowledge (or knowingly set aside) histories of handwork. Each artist has a practice that necessarily slides on a line between the dematerialization of conceptual art and a rematerialization that recognizes haptic experience as indispensable and …

Maguey Hammock: A Weaving Of Resistance And Persistence In Puerto Rico, Soraya Serra Collazo

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Textiles are primary technology to almost all societies. Puerto Rico and the Caribbean are no exceptions. There is an object that has been weaved in the region since pre-Columbian times and it is still passing through the fingers of local artisans. Hamaca, an invention of the American inhabitants,² is an indigenous voice incorporated into many languages. It was in the Caribbean, where Europeans saw its utility, and it was quickly incorporated as the best way of sleeping in their transatlantic voyages. Its production has spread throughout the world and today it is made in many countries. In Puerto Rico …

The Mamluk Kaaba Curtain In The Bursa Grand Mosque, Sumiyo Okumura

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A Kaaba curtain is a door curtain which covers the door of the holy Kaaba, the most sacred site of Islam in Mecca. Upon the occasion of the conquest of Egypt and Hejaz by Sultan Selim I in 1517, Selim I donated a Kaaba door curtain to the Bursa Grand Mosque, one of the five most important mosques in the Islamic World. This Mamluk curtain is very different from Ottoman Kaaba curtains in both its shape and design motifs. It is noticeable that five fragments, including a piece of inscription, hang down from the upper border. We see a similar …

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 …

The Twenty-First Century Voices Of The Ashanti Adinkra And Kente Cloths Of Ghana, Carol Ventura

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Craft production and use are continually adapting to meet the needs of consumers and the market in order to survive. The Adinkra and Kente cloths of Ghana are no exception, having maintained their visibility and viability by addressing changing and challenging economic and political realities. Fabric strips are sewn together to produce rectangular Adinkra and Kente cloths that are wrapped around human bodies in styles determined by gender and rank. These cloths are not only beautiful, but communicate as well. Old and new symbols representing proverbs, beliefs, and politics are woven into Kente and printed onto Adinkra cloths. Commemorative fabrics …

Queen Alexandra’S 1902 Coronation Gown, Donald Clay Johnson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Queen Victoria's wearing black mourning clothes for 40 of the 63 years of her reign prompted much discussion between fashion-setting Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra about what should the new queen wear for her coronation, the first state occasion in which they, as king and queen, could define taste and fashion for what was to become the Edwardian era. With such a long interval of time since the last coronation there were no strong expressions of traditional attire for such a ritual occasion which prompted the new king and queen to think expansively about the roles and functions the coronation …

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 …

Figured Velvets From Simple Looms: Velvet Pick-Up And Related Techniques For Handweavers, Wendy Landry

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Much historical velvet was designed to be figural, often in elaborate curvilinear floral motifs, and multiple colours. These complex patterns could be efficiently designed for and executed on the available drawlooms and their successors, the jacquard looms. Faced with such complexity, and the unavailability of jacquard looms and drawlooms, few handweavers have attempted to add velvet technique to their repertoire. However, the basic principles and weave structures of velvet are relatively simple and can be executed on simpler handlooms. Pick-up techniques and simple loom modifications make figured velvet accessible for weavers without access to complex jacquard velvet looms, allowing them …

Documentary Film Presentation Local Colors: Natural Dyeing In A Milas Carpet Weaving Village, Ulara Tamura, John Wells

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This documentary, filmed in 2006, examines the process of naturally dyed carpet production in a village in the Milas region of Muğla Prefecture in southwest Turkey, a region well known as a traditional Turkish carpet production area. In large numbers of villages of this region, carpet weaving is the household based work of every woman who lives there.

In this paper, I aim to add more detailed information and discussion specifically on the colors and dyes of the carpets shown in this film. First I will introduce the varieties of the natural dye materials the villagers use one by one. …

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 …

Embodying Embroidery: Researching Women's Folk Art In Western India, Michele Hardy

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

South Asia is home to an incredibly rich variety of embroideries that include folk, courtly, ritual, and commercial traditions. The scholarly literature on South Asian embroidery has been meagre however and historically emphasized professional embroideries at the expense of the folk^l. With few recent exceptions² folk embroidery in the Sub-Continent has most often been described and classified without reference to the women who make it or the specific cultural traditions that support and give meaning to it³. These 'characterising' accounts of folk embroidery are likely the result of historic circumstance and ancient bias⁴ but …

The Meaning Of Yoruba Aso Olona Is Far From Water Tight, Lisa Aronson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

While researching the ritual meaning of cloth among the Eastern Ijo of the Niger Delta, I examined the contents of a number of family owned trunks in which were stored old and much valued cloths traded from elsewhere in Africa, Europe, and India. One type of cloth which I frequently found in these collections was one made up of three, or sometimes four, woven strips that are sewn along the salvage and decorated with supplemental weft-float design. The Eastern Ijo regard this cloth as a valuable heirloom for its trade value and for the fact that its designs evoke spiritual …

Textiles Of Sacrifice: Aztec Ritual Capes, Patricia Rieff Anawalt

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This presentation analyzes three long-gone prehispanic textiles, a feat made possible due to the peculiarities of the Aztec language, Nahuatl, and the sixteenth-century Spaniards' dedication to detailed recordkeeping. From Columbus' first voyage in 1492 to Spain's final expulsion from the Americas in the nineteenth century, the Spaniards were exemplary recorders. Fortunately, this trait was particularly evident in the decades following the 1519–1521 conquest of Mexico, a period that yielded invaluable conquistador eye-witness accounts, administrative records and missionary chronicles. It is to the latter genre that we owe the data presented in this paper.

Of all the newly-discovered peoples in the …

Preface - Contact, Crossover, Continuity - 1994, Louise W. Mackie, Patricia R. Anawalt

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Fourth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, Inc., was hosted by the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, California, September 22–24, 1994. The papers addressed a broad theme which was chosen in order to accommodate the diverse interests of members. The proceedings contains the thirty papers and two abstracts of papers presented at the symposium, plus a video script, and a list of the two hundred and forty participants.

Contact, Crossover, Continuity highlights the causes and effects of change on textiles around the world. The proceedings provides an opportunity to identify and evaluate …

Table Of Contents - Contact, Crossover, Continuity - 1994

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Table of contents from Contact, Crossover, Continuity: Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, September 22–24, 1994

What’S In A Name: The Domestication Of Factory Produced Wax Textiles In Cote D’Ivoire, Kathleen E. Bickford

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In a frequently evoked passage from Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare asks "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Yet, as Romeo and Juliet tragically come to learn, human beings make much of names. Indeed, one's name is a significant part of one's social persona; it can describe who we are, it can join us and separate us from others, and it can link us to the past. In a sense, when we are named we are given an identity. Describing the complexities of naming for the Wamakua …

Continuity Of Culture: A Reenactor’S Goal, Elizabeth Mcclure

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper examines the maintenance of cultural continuity through historical reenactment. It is the reenactor's goal, in this case, to portray and maintain the culture of Ireland and Scotland. They are holding on to this culture and presenting it to others by maintaining the dress, crafts, and lifestyles of sixteenth-century Scotland and Ireland.

The methods of data collection for this study were ethnographic in nature. Interviews with key informants were conducted. In addition, there was a questionnaire distributed to members of the group This method of data collection provided the insight to see how a member of this group achieved …

Green Labels With Golden Elephants: Western European Printed Cottons For Malaysia And Indonesia, Frieda Sorber

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the second half of the 19th century, several Belgian cotton printing firms were involved in the production of imitations of African and Southeast Asian textiles for markets in West-Africa, the Dutch East Indies, and Malaysia. Extensive records of one firm, the Societe Anonyme Texas, owned by the Voortman family in Ghent, have been preserved in the Ghent public records office and the Vrieselhof Textile Museum (Oelegem, near Antwerp). Frans de Vos and Abraham Voortman started a cotton printing establishment in Ghent in 1790. At that time cotton printing was a relatively new type of enterprise in Flanders. The first …

Bolong-Bolong And Tirtanadi: An Unknown Group Of Balinese Textiles, Marie-Louise Nabholz-Kartaschoff, Monika Palm-Nadolny

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

On late 19th- and early 20th-century photographs, South and East Balinese people clad in traditional adat wardrobe for rituals, temple ceremonies, and dances often wear transparent, netlike open-work textiles as breastcloth (anteng), shouldercloth (cerik) girdle (selendang), or headcloth (destar, lelunakan). Information given by elderly Balinese concerning the situation before World War II confirm their use as part of their ceremonial wardrobe but also as important items in offerings and rituals. Such textiles could be laid over several fabrics, covering the body of a toothfiling candidate, or serve as curtains (langse …

Micronesian Textiles In Transition: The Woven Tol Of Kosrae, Ann Deegan, Ross Cordy

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper presents findings on the major steps in the transition of the Kosraen tol from traditional clothing, to tourist souvenir, to the end of tol manufacture. An extensive study of the German, French, and English literature of the 19th and 20th centuries was done to piece together the history of the Kosraen tol.

The island of Kosrae, located in the Pacific (4–10°N latitude, 140–163°E longitude), is part of the Federated States of Micronesia. Since earliest European contact it has seen numerous changes in its traditional culture. One of its most beautiful and complex traditional crafts is the woven …

The "Severed Shroud": Local And Imported Textiles In The Mortuary Rites Of An Indonesian People, Penelope Graham

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper explores the significance of local and imported textiles as these interact forming complex categories in the mortuary rites of the Lamaholot-speaking people of the traditional district Lewolema in eastern Flores, Indonesia. Within this regional framework, my account draws primarily on field work in the village of Lewotala. There a person's physical demise elicits diverse social and ritual practices, depending on the deceased's achievements during his or her lifetime and the circumstances surrounding the death. As regards the mortuary sequence that commonly occurs, I will argue that various uses of cloth for exchange purposes mark both the severence—consequent on …

Supplementary Weft On An "Ikat" Isle: The Weaving Communities Of Northwestern Flores, Roy W. Hamilton

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Among textile enthusiasts, the island of Flores is known primarily for its beautiful warp-ikat cloths. Most of the island's numerous ethno-linguistic groups, including the Ngadha, Nage, Endenese, Lio, Palu'e, Sikkanese, and Lamaholot, produce related yet distinctive textiles within this tradition. It is therefore surprising to find a series of weaving districts, stretching along the northwest coast of the island, where the ikat technique is not used. Instead, weavers in this region produce indigo-dyed textiles decorated with colorful supplementary-weft motifs.

In the ikat districts, sarongs for men and women differ in their patterning and in the names applied to them. In …

The Influence Of Computer Technologies On Contemporary Woven Fiber Art, Cynthia Schira

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

It is generally agreed upon, by both the participants in the field and those few who have chronicled it, that the fiber art movement as we know it today began with Jean Lurcat in France in the late 1950s. He was among the first, if not the first, to make designs or cartoons specifically for the medium of tapestry. Previously, paintings were translated into the medium of tapestry. As well as creating the design or cartoon, he personally oversaw the actual weaving process. This direct connection between the process and the concept or image, the manual and the mind, laid …

Byzantine Influences Along The Silk Route: Central Asian Silks Transformed, Anna Maria Muthesius

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Silks traded along the ancient Silk Route were precious, light, and easily transportable commodities that served as ideal vehicles for cross-cultural exchange. The survival of several hundred Central Asian silks, variously datable between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, presents an opportunity to trace patterns of trade, diplomacy and cross-cultural developments at the heart of the Silk Road. These silks perfectly mirror contact, cross over, and change fostered under the auspices of Mediterranean/Near Eastern economic and diplomatic exchange.

This paper will ask three questions:

1. What lay behind Byzantine influence in Central Asia along the ancient Silk Route?

2. What …

Cloth As Marriage Gifts: Change In Exchange Among The Lio Of Flores, Willemijn De Jong

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The exchange of gifts at life cycle ceremonies is one of the most important institutions in Lio society, as in many other societies in Oceania. The life cycle event of marriage and its exchange of gifts is often significant, because important sociopolitical alliances between kin groups are initiated or renewed. In these exchanges, cloth wealth may play a crucial role, especially in ranked societies. Weiner contends that in Samoa "each distribution [of fine mats] is an example of the negotiation and validation of rank and power." Gittinger has pointed out the economic and symbolic value of cloth gifts at marriage …

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 …