Museum Studies Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Warps & Wefts 2009, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The interlacing of warp and weft defines a woven fabric. The weaver strings warp yarns onto a loom, a frame designed to hold the warps parallel and taut, and then introduces the wefts sequentially. The process is weaving; the result is a textile.

When we think of textiles, we most often think of garments to clothe our bodies and furnishings to supply our domestic needs. But throughout history, textiles have also played a primary role in fashion, drawing on not only color and pattern but also draping qualities and the effects of tailoring to cover (or show off) the body. …

Exhibition Review Of "Cosmophilia: Islamic Art From The David Collection, Copenhagen", Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

THIS EXHIBITION WAS organized by the Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College. It is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title published in 2006 by Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, who also seived as curators, selecting objects in collaboration with the David Collection. The exhibition contains more than I 00 outstanding objects of Islamic art and includes more than 20 significant textiles, which represent diverse geographic origins (Yemen, Spain, India, Egypt, Central Asia, Turkey and Iran); with dates ranging from the 7th through the 19th centuries. Linen, cotton, wool and silk, traditional textile materials, …

Vanishing Points, Deformed Planes, Negative Spaces, Empty Solids And Topological Genius – Or, How I Got Lost In Bilbao, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Midsummer’s green along the flanks of the Pyrenees in Basque country welcomed us as we drove from Donostia (San Sebastian) west to Gernika and Bilbao. The mountains to the south physically separate this area of northern Spain from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula. To the north lies the Atlantic with its vast expanse of water, gentle waves lapping at the shore. The mountain slopes here are profoundly uplifted and folded – nature’s deformations of the plane – and the steep valleys and rushing rivers exhibit visible geometric perspectives of geological forms. To be here in summer makes one especially …

From Folding And Cutting To Geometry And Algorithms: Integrating Islamic Art Into The Mathematics Curriculum, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Drawing upon visual forms of expression prevalent in Islamic arts and architecture, this workshop offers handson experience for understanding basic concepts in geometry, with reference to algorithms in processes of patternmaking. Art teachers and math educators may learn a variety of strategies for classroom teaching, adaptable for K-12, to acquaint students with principles underlying patterns in Islamic art. Such patterns relate to the history of mathematics at a time when Baghdad was an intellectually vibrant center of patronage, and al-Khwarezmi was engaged in the development of what we now call algebra and algorithms. Students may explore these ideas through their …

Islamic Art: An Exploration Of Pattern, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

As an historian of Islamic art in the Department of Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I am continually learning as I endeavor to teach my students about pattern. Teaching about pattern in Islamic art has facilitated my own exploration of geometry in ways that also benefits my students. This visual presentation explores the results of a single assignment that pertains to coloring a linear plate reproduced in Bourgoin’s classic work [6], Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design.

Symmetry And Symmetry-Breaking: An Approach To Understanding Beauty, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Considering the relationship of symmetry and beauty, the author examines three textiles from the collection of Doris Duke at Shangri La in Honolulu. Referring to abstract expressionism of the 20th century as antithetical to symmetry, and the Arts & Crafts Movement of the 19th century as countering the insistency of industrial mass production, Bier explores the relative roles of symmetry and symmetry-breaking in the construction of three embroideries (called suzani, after the Persian and Tajik word for “needlework”), using as her point of departure a recent research initiative, the Shangri La Suzani Project. The study of colors, motifs, stitches, designs …

Patterns In Time And Space: Technologies Of Transfer And The Cultural Transmission Of Mathematical Knowledge Across The Indian Ocean, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

This article explores the potential role of textiles in the transfer of mathematical knowledge from the Indian subcontinent to the central Islamic lands and west- ward to an emerging modern Europe through an inquiry into prospective tech- nologies of textile manufacture and pattern-making. Ikat textiles of the ninth and tenth centuries, found in Egypt but presumed to be from Yemen, serve as a means to explore possibilities of numeration and treatment of the spatial dimension. An initial attempt is made to separate patterning from the technology of textile pro- duction in an effort to treat the mathematical possibilities that patterning …

Mathematical Aspects Of Oriental Carpets, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

When one looks at an Oriental carpet in the context of Western art, one usually perceives a richness of colors and patterns, and perhaps the contrast between central field and surrounding borders. A careful observer might notice the appearance of superimposed plane patterns in the central field and multiple linear patterns in the surrounding borders. Each of patterns, whether in the field or the borders, is composed of various design elements, which in combination are repeated according to the principles of symmetry, often with the addition of symmetry-breaking (Bier 1992, 1997, 1998, 2000a). The mathematical principles of pattern making according …

Islamic Art At Doris Duke's Shangri La: Playing With Form And Pattern, Carol Bier, David K. Masunaga

Textile Research Works

Shangri La is the historic home of Doris Duke in Honolulu. It is filled with installations of Islamic tilework and other arts. Open to the public in late 2002, by reservation for tours arranged through the Honolulu Academy of Arts, today this home serves as a museum in which a walking tour can provide extraordinary visual opportunities for the study of geometry and pattern both in the arts that are installed and exhibited, and in the surrounding plantings and landscape. The house offers a plethora of educational opportunities, for which its full potential has not yet been tapped. A new …

Spanish And Mamluk Carpets: Comparisons Of Decoration And Structure, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Two recent exhibitions, Carpets of Andalusia and Mamluk Rugs from Egypt, at The Textile Museum afforded a rare opportunity to compare two radically different rug-weaving traditions from the perspectives of design and weave structure. While not often evident to the casual viewer, there is a significant relationship between design, pattern, and weave structure in all Oriental carpets. The opportunity to explore such differences warrants careful examination and critical viewing.

The Mamluk rugs all probably date from the last quarter of the 15th century. They comprise a cohesive group defined by color, a geometric style, and similarity of weave characteristics. The …

"Indigo" From Encyclopædia Iranica, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

INDIGO (Pers. nil), the common name of a broad genus, Indigofera, with numerous species, widely distributed throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A member of the leguminous pea family, indigo is variously classified as an herb or small shrub; its stalks are long, bearing raceme flowers. It is usually perennial, but in some areas annual. Native species are known from Arabia, including the Yemen, and around the Indian Ocean. In some sources Persia is not listed among those regions in which indigo occurs in a natural form (e.g., the website mentioned below). Hans Wulff (p. 192) mentions two local species …

Mamluk Rugs From Egypt: Jewels Of The Textile Museum's Collection (Exhibition), Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Mamluk rugs are considered by many to be among the most beautiful of any rugs ever created. The brilliant reds, greens, and blues (figs. 1 and 2) are reminiscent of rubies, emeralds and sapphires; whether this was an intentional evocation is not known. But The Textile Museum's holdings of Mamluk rugs, unparalleled in the world, are truly the "jewels" of the collection. Simply by virtue of the fact that they date from the late 15th century, Mamluk rugs comprise one of the most significant groups of classical carpets. Their lustrous wool and wondrous color, as well as their geometric designs …

Carpets Of Andalusia (Exhibition), Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The fall of Granada in 1492 reestablished Christian dominion in Spain after centuries of Islamic rule. The rapid expansion of Islam from Arabia in the 7th century encompassed the rich cultural legacy of the Late Antique world, forging a unified empire throughout the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean lands and across North Africa to Spain within a short span of several decades. Arab and Berber armies had crossed into Spain in 711, generating at once an effort that lasted for many generations to restore Christian rule. In Islamic times, the Iberian peninsula was called al-Andalus, or Andalusia. Although we have …

Geometric Patterns And The Interpretation Of Meaning: Two Monuments In Iran, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

The Alhambra has often served in the West as the paradigm for understanding geometric pattern in Islamic art. Constructed in Spain in the 13th century as a highly defended palace, it is a relatively late manifestation of an Islamic fascination with geometric pattern. Numerous earlier Islamic buildings, from Spain to India, exhibit extensive geometric patterning, which substantiate a mathematical interest in the spatial dimension and its manifold potential for meaning. This paper examines two monuments on the Iranian plateau, dating from the 11 th century of our era, in which more than one hundred exterior surface areas have received patterns …

Introduction To Doris Duke's Shangri La By Sharon Littlefield, Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

SHANGRI LA, the most intimate of Doris Duke's residences, is the one that today offers the best view into the private domain of a public celebrity. What it reveals about Doris Duke presents a strong contrast to her well-publicized persona as a tobacco heiress, born to wealth, who liked to frolic. Observe the house, spilling down terraces of Ka'alawai toward the sea; contemplate its well-considered vistas and its polished black lava, white marble, and coral limestone surfaces. Admire the architectural features shipped from abroad and installed on site; experience the gardens with their towering trees, sparkling water chutes, and placid …

Review Of Stillman, Arab Dress: A Short History, From The Dawn Of Islam To Modem Times., Carol Bier

Textile Research Works

Arab Dress: A Short History, From the Dawn of Islam to Modem Times. By YADIDA KALFON STILLMAN. Edited by NORMAN A. STILLMAN. Themes in Islamic Studies, vol. 2. Leiden: BRILL, 2000. Pp. xxxii + 240, plates, figs.

Billowing folds, exquisite pleats, tightly wound turbans, flowing burqas, short square kerchiefs-the dramatic drapery of Islamic fashion fills the quiet spaces of our daily news coverage; yet the garments illustrated and their significance often pass without verbal notice. Little would Yedida Stillman ever have anticipated the widespread presence of the Islamic vestimentary system in Western media a short three years after her death …

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 …

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 …

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 …