Museum Studies Commons^™

Weaving Authenticity: Artesanías Or The Art Of The Textile In Chiapas, Mexico [Poster], Addison Nace

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In Chiapas, Mexico textiles live in different institutions from the market to the museum. In these spaces tourists, art professionals, and weavers manifest their varying perspectives of the authenticity of textiles. I examine the construction of authenticity through these spaces. In the museum, textiles become authentic because they represent a vision of an idyllic past. The authenticity created by the market is entangled in the acts of production by weaving cooperatives and consumption by tourists. Weavers see their work in intertwined thread with identity, culture, art, and economic necessity. Tourists often fetishize the handmade and cultural ties of the objects, …

Embroidering Paradise: Suzanis As A Place Of Creative Agency And Acculturation For Uzbek Women In 19th Century Bukhara, Shannon Ludington

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Central Asian women have long been a point of fascination, written and sung about by others. Exoticized as an oriental “other,” there are many legends but only few historic details known, and then recorded not by themselves but by foreign men. A number of excellent books on women in Uzbekistan under the Soviet Union, and on Uzbek craft and culture in general have been published but most authors conclude there simply is not enough evidence to say anything more about Uzbek women from their own perspective before Soviet times. In Embroidering Paradise: Suzanis as a Place of Creative Agency and …

Occam’S Razor: Origins Of A Classical Turkish Carpet Design?, Sumru Belger Krody

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This case study will explore the origins of a Turkish carpet design by discussing a thirteenth century Mamluk textile cover in The Textile Museum’s collection. Seemingly little connected textile types help us understand how textile motifs and designs moved from one to another, from one to another type, from one culture to another, from one part of the world to another, and from one period to another through the old trade routes. Examining these factors and looking beyond a single type of textile are of paramount importance for understanding and evaluating textile design traditions. The first section of the paper …

Ties That Bind: Finding Meaning In The Making Of Sacred Textiles, Janet Pollock

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I was a novice weaver when I began constructing a Rakusua-Buddhist ceremonial garment-as an initiation into a spiritual community in my hometown. Years later, in the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, I was drawn to an early 19^th century Tallit Katan, a ritual silk undergarment that had been made for a Jewish poet who later converted to Christianity. I had just inherited my father-in-law’s prized collection of silk neckties. He was a troubled man who had embraced his faith late in life. Those ties became the weft for three works-a handwoven tallit, a woven timeline, and a small keepsake for …

The Untold Story Of Inuit Printed Fabrics From Kinngait Studios, Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, Canada, Roxane Shaughnessy, Anna Richard

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Textile Museum of Canada holds a collection of close to 200 printed fabrics designed by Inuit artists at Kinngait Studios in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut, Canada in the 1950s and 1960s. The pieces are owned by the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative (WBEC) and are on longterm loan to the Museum. Building on centuries-old Inuit graphic traditions, printmaking was introduced in Kinngait in 1957 as part of a larger initiative to encourage handicraft production for sale in the Canadian south. By the 1960s, the studio had a number of Inuit artists who contributed to the Kinngait Studios’ print program which …

The Rayed Head And Stepped Platform: A Core Symbol Of The Southern Andean Iconographic Series, Nancy B. Rosoff

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will explore various manifestations of the Rayed Head motif that is found on textiles produced by the Nasca, Sihuas, and Pucara cultures during the Early Intermediate Period (200 BCE – 600 CE), in the southern Andean region of South America. The Brooklyn Museum’s famous Nasca mangle, also known as “The Paracas Textile,” features repeating images of the Rayed Head motif on its interior cotton panel. Sihuas mantles also display distinctive manifestations of the motif in the form of a large rectangular head with highly stylized features and surrounded by radiating appendages. The late textile scholar and archaeologist Joerg …

Living Organisms For Living Spaces: Shifting The Function Of Material, Juliana Silva Diaz

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This document explains the creative and analytical processes behind the project Living Organisms for Living Spaces. This art project examines the conceptual considerations around material by analyzing ‘objects’ – specifically fabric and textile ornaments – from Colombia’s material culture. The project explores the symbolic meaning of these objects that have both a Catholic and colonial legacy in society.

Other People’S Clothes: The Second-Hand Clothes Dealer And The Western Art Collector In Early Twentieth-Century China, Rachel Silberstein

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In Chinese culture, as in many other cultures, new clothes were a powerful symbol of prosperity and beginnings. Yet, with the development of the Qing economy, the second-hand clothes seller (guyi) thrived alongside the pawnshop business to occupy a vital role in the wider system of clothing provisioning: enabling the poor a means of covering their bodies, the privileged an opportunity to liquidate value in clothing possessions, and pretenders a chance to dress their way into different social roles. At the end of the nineteenth century, this established clothing system encountered seismic change, as Western dress systems were introduced, imperial …

Local Wear: A Chat About Textiles & The Body, Emily J. Pascoe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In this presentation, I propose that worn-in garments are a shared aspect of the relationship between humans and textiles, while also being unique to the user. The relationship between natural, cultural, and material forms, resulting in wear on textiles, begins with the human body. The human body is the most universal local. It is the essential qualifier to be a part of the human species. Although it is a biological form, how the body behaves, and the shapes it is molded into, are influenced by culture. The textiles that enclose the body accrue signs of the interactions. Even if the …

Silk Velvets Identified As Byzantine: Were Warp-Looped Silk Pile Velvets Woven Under The Byzantine Empire?, Sumiyo Okumura

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will examine the possibility of whether warp-looped pile velvets, made of silk, were woven during the Byzantine Empire. This study is a continuation of my research for “Velvet and Patronage: the Origin and Historical Background of Ottoman and Italian Velvets.” Research has been conducted under these five themes: 1. Byzantine silk industry; 2. The terminology of velvet in Greek; 3. Velvets in Byzantine written sources; 4. Historical background: the relation between Byzantines and Latin powers, Turks and the Middle East; 5. Latin trade in the Black Sea and 6. Velvet production in Anatolia in the Byzantine period.

Warp And Weft Twining, And Tablet Weaving Around The Pacific, Tomoko Torimaru, Kathryn Rousso, Laura Filloy Nadal, Alejandro De Ávila B

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Warp and weft twining predates loom-woven textiles in the archaeological record. Although it was displaced by other techniques to produce fabric in areas where it is recorded from early times, such as Egypt, this particular approach to building woven structures is still maintained in scattered areas around the world as part of local traditions with deep significance in ritual and festive life, as well in the heavy subsistence work of agricultural and hunting/fishing communities.

In this roundtable, we propose to describe, illustrate and compare warp and weft twined, and tablet woven textiles from Central America, Mexico, Canada, Alaska, China, Myanmar …

Sanquhar Gloves: An Exemplification Of Deep Local To Pan Global?, Angharad Thomas

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Hand knitted gloves with unique patterning have been produced in the small Scottish town of Sanquhar for probably 200 years. They continue to be produced there today, demonstrating a “deep local” presence spanning many generations. Meanwhile, knowledge of the gloves has spread globally, including the English-speaking world as well as Europe and Scandinavia. Aided by modern social media they have become “pan global” as exemplified in the author’s blog documenting “The Glove Project” (https:knittinggloves.wordpress.com/), the Ravelry group dedicated to Sanquhar knitting (http://www.ravelry.com/groups/sanquhar-knitting-group) and an ongoing online exhibition for the Center for Knit and Crochet USA (http://sanquhargloves.centerforknitandcrochet.org). …

Symposium 2018 -- Program & Information: The Social Fabric: Deep Local To Pan Global Textile Society Of America’S 16th Biennial Symposium

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The theme of TSA’s 16th Biennial Symposium is The Social Fabric: Deep Local to Pan Global. Located on the Pacific Rim, Vancouver offers a pertinent setting to probe the impact and influence of settlers and immigration on an already long-inhabited land, and how textile traditions have been influenced, changed, and/or adapted through and by cultural contact. In 2014 Vancouver city council unanimously voted to acknowledge that the city is on un-ceded Aboriginal territory, creating fertile ground for this conversation. We invite participants to examine textiles within the context of the “Deep Local,” defined as knowledge, beliefs, resources, and practices that …

Getting Located: Queer Semiotics In Dress, C. Zimmerman

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

From the effeminate Macarconis of the 18^th century to the “future is female” shirts of 2017, the fashioned body has conveyed desire, signaled safety, and helped build affinity for queer people. This project will take the shape of a deep excavation and careful consideration of the historical precedence of queers encoding the nuances of dress with a multitude of identity affirming and identity challenging practices. Predominant research on unearthing how queer culture was (and is) expressed through dress had focused on the discernible gestures of normative gay male bodies; from ‘flagging’ (i.e. adorning the body with objects such as …

Italian Bedfellows: Tristan, Solomon & “Bestes”, Kathryn Berenson

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Two surviving late fourteenth-century quilted furnishings, the Coperta Guicciardini in the Museo Nazinale del Bargello, Florence, and the Tristan Quilt in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, depict scenes from the legend of Tristan, one of King Arthur’s knights. Both museums attribute the furnishings to a southern Italian atelier. Research to-date essentially treats these works as if, like Athena from the head of Zeus, they burst complete. Yet by the twelfth century Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Norman occupation and active trade with the Levant, all had contributed to the culture of southern Italy. Prime evidence is the mosaic floor, dated …

Whitework: The Cloth And Call To Action, Sonja Dahl

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the newly independent colonies of the American Northeast, styles of white-on-white quilting and embroidery became popular among women coming of age. Considered the epitome of their needleworking skills, whitework required patience, time, focus, precision, and a steady hand. Such detailed stitchwork on pure white cotton-then a booming industry in the American South-prepared these young women to make homes that were meaningful, full of symbolism and care. Drawing analogy between these historic textiles and current movements for decolonization and anti-racism, this talk expands the term Whitework to function as a call to action, for both myself and other white-identified scholars …

The Techniques Of Samitum. Based On A Reconstruction Of A Silk From The Oseberg Burial, Åse Eriksen

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A collection of samitum was found in the Norwegian Viking burial Osebert (834 CE) in 2014. I got the opportunity to study some of the fragments and could reconstruct a nearly full pattern unit from six narrow bands, once cut from the same fabric. I wove a small piece of this fabric in my ordinary flatloom, using both modern dyestuff and fabric spun silk material. Fragments found in Egypt from 400 AD show that both tapestry and taquete were woven in the same fabric. When searching for the loom used for the original samitum fabric, I made a vertical warp …

Indian Basketry In Yosemite Valley, 19th-20th Century: Gertrude “Cosie” Hutchings Mills, Tourists And The National Park Service, Catherine K. Hunter

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Basketry is the highest art form of Native Americans in California. I will focus on Yosemite Valley starting in the 1850s when Native Americans adapted progressively to contact with miners, settlers, and tourists. As a Research Associate at the Peabody Museum, Andover, Massachusetts, I inventoried the Native American Basket Collection. The unpublished Hutchings Mills Collection, acquired by Gertrude ‘Cosie’ Hutchings in Yosemite prior to 1900, caught my attention. In 1986, the Department of the Interior requested the collection be loaned, exchanged, or purchased as “the single most important assemblage from that period.” The collection did not leave Andover; however, one …

Shepherds And Shawls: Making Place In The Western Himalayas, Jennifer Hoover

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Cars weave through the flocks of the Gaddi shepherds as they travel from the plains to high altitude deserts, winding along roads lined with shops selling Kullu shawls. In these ways and more, textiles are the face of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Yet dominant discourses position both the shepherds and weavers of the region as the last hold-outs of endangered traditions. These discourses continue colonial-era assumptions of rural artisans as “primitives” in need of either protection from encroaching industrialization or motivation to modernize. Academic writings, popular visual representations, and government policies also reinforce monolithic identities of herders …

Threads, Twist And Fibre: Looking At Coast Salish Textiles, Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Coast Salish textiles are: remarkable for their quality; unusual in the fibres used; notable in their designs; singular in the innovative processes used to manufacture them. Salish textiles were determined by geography, shaped by trade, and influenced by colonization. That the textile tradition has survived is a reflection of the prestige they hold and the importance of the textiles in the Coast Salish culture. Relatively unknown and underappreciated, the older textiles deserve to be looked at with fresh eyes and modern methods that bring to light the outstanding abilities of the Coast Salish women in the creation of these important …

Ancient, Indigenous And Iconic Textile Motifs In Contemporary Fashion Case Study: Defining Concepts Through Textile Designs: Appropriation, Collaboration, Provenance And Identity, Kristin Scheel Lunde

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper investigates the material and visual characteristics of certain ancient and historical textile motifs with roots in Chinese and African culture, and their sudden appearance in new geographical and cultural context. Appropriated into western contemporary textile and fashion trends, this paper examines the new roles of these designs in context of foreigness, identity, and hybridity. Their consumption and reception both within and beyond their original cultures is a central theme, and it is evident that their reception in both locations, although different, exhibits some similarities. Exploring the transcultural consumption and reception that occurs in various cultural locations this paper …

Nd’Awakananawal Babijigwezijik Wd’Elasawawôganôl: “We Wear The Clothing Of Our Ancestors”, Vera Longtoe Sheehan

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When thinking of Native American people, a typical image is of tanned people with long dark hair wearing leather and furs in the distant past, but that is not an accurate depiction of the Abenaki people or their textiles. As an Abenaki scholar, artist, and educator, my research into the textile traditions of the Abenaki people includes archaeological evidence, primary resources, and oral history interviews. Abenakis themselves have different ideas of what it traditional because textile and fiber arts evolved over many millennia throughout N’dakinna, the Abenaki homeland which once encompassed Vermont, New Hampshire, northern Massachusetts, and parts of New …

Manipulating The Threads Of Culture: Contemporary Shibori Artist Yvonne Wakabayashi, Eileen Wheeler

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Deeply anchored in her practice of shaping and manipulating fibre are both the aesthetic integral to Yvonne Wakabayashi’s Japanese heritage and the inspiration of the natural environment she finds along the shores of her own birth place, Canada’s west coast. Wakabayashi’s journey to find her authentic voice in her varied textile works, engaged both historical craft practices of Japan and printmaking processes of the West. Most importantly, it led to the discovery of shibori with its ancestral links and innovative contemporary possibilities. This paper explores how an individual artist embraces her artistic cultural identity that also negotiates the upheaval wrought …

Precolumbian Textile Conference Vii / Jornadas De Textiles Precolombinos Vii, Lena Bjerregaard, Ann H. Peters

Zea E-Books Collection

Contents:

Introduction — Lena Bjerregaard and Ann Peters

Mexico

1. Mesoamerican Archaeological Textiles: An Overview of Materials, Techniques, and Contexts — Laura Filloy Nadal

2. Urdimbres enlazadas de Mesoamérica. Textil de la Cueva del Gallo, Morelos, México — Patricia Ochoa Castillo & Rosa Lorena Román Torres •

3. Los textiles procedentes del actual estado de Guerrero, México: una revisión a su estudio desde la perspectiva arqueológica y etnohistórica — Elizabeth Jiménez García

4. Classic Textiles from Cueva del Lazo (Chiapas, Mexico). Archaeological context and conservation issues — Davide Domenici & Gloria Martha Sánchez Valenzuela

5. Textiles y otros materiales arqueológicos …

Classic Textiles From Cueva Del Lazo (Chiapas, Mexico): Archaeological Context And Conservation Issues, Davide Domenici, Gloria Martha Sánchez Valenzuela

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

The excavation of Cueva del Lazo, a cave on the cliffs of the Río La Venta River canyon in the Zoque region of Western Chiapas (Mexico), led to the discovery of a complex Late Classic post-sacrificial context where eleven children were buried wrapped in textile bundles. The environmental conditions of the dry cave allowed an extraordinary preservation of perishable materials including textiles, cordages, botanical remains, etc. In the first part of the paper we provide a brief introduction to the archaeology of the Selva El Ocote, as well as a description and interpretation of the Cueva del Lazo archaeological context. …

Urdimbres Enlazadas De Mesoamérica. Textil De La Cueva Del Gallo, Morelos, México, Patricia Ochoa Castillo, Rosa Lorena Román Torres

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

Los ejemplos de textiles arqueológicos que se encuentran en la República mexicana son muy escasos debido entre otras cosas al suelo húmedo. Los hallazgos de textiles arqueológicos son considerados casi milagros de la arqueología y de la conservación, tal es el caso de la colección de textiles de la Cueva del Gallo, en Ticumán Morelos, México. El objeto de este trabajo es la contextualización y análisis textil de un lienzo completo encontrado en esta cueva en 1991 elaborado con urdimbres enlazadas, teñido con azul índigo o añil y grana cochinilla, que dio inicio al Proyecto Arqueológico de Ticumán (PAT) en …

Mesoamerican Archaeological Textiles: An Overview Of Materials, Techniques, And Contexts, Laura Filloy Nadal

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

In Mesoamerica, unlike the Andean area, there are few instances when climatic conditions allow the preservation of the organic raw materials constituting ancient fabrics. Examples of such textiles conserved in Mexican museums are quite limited, thus even the tiniest fragments recovered in archaeological contexts greatly augment our understanding of ancient weaving technologies and their use in Mesoamerican societies. Most of the surviving fabrics come from dry caves in northern Mexico, but in recent days the exploration of relatively inaccessible rock shelters in southern Mexico has led to the recovery of additional textiles from early times that are associated with funerary …

Archaeological Textiles Of Sechín Bajo – A Formative Site Of The North Coast Of Peru: Preliminarily Results, Katalin Nagy

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

In spring 2014, I took part in an archaeological project carried out by a German-Peruvian team of archeologists in the Sechín Valley, next to the Valley of Casma, on the North Coast of Peru. The project started more than ten years ago and has been taking place parallel to some other important archaeological projects on the North Coast. Its aim was to unearth the temple mounds and to reconstruct the parts of the various phases. The earliest layers date back to the Pre-Ceramic Period. During the wall construction of the temple, many textile fabrics such as nets and ropes were …

Andean Textile Traditions: Material Knowledge And Culture, Part 1, Elena Phipps

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

The development of rich and complex Andean textile traditions spanned millennia, in concert with the development of cultures that utilized textiles as a primary form of expression and communication. Understanding the importance of textiles in the Andean world, we can examine elements of their genesis and look at the trajectory from the earliest developments of fiber- made items to the extraordinarily complex and specific processes of textile making, such as warp-wrapping and discontinuous warp and weft weaving. These processes are examined in the context of the relationship between textiles and the sacred, highlighting the significance and agency of cloth in …

Textiles Y Otros Materiales Arqueológicos Del Valle De Tehuacán, México, En Los Museos Reales De Arte E Historia (Mrah), Bruselas, Julia Montoya

PreColumbian Textile Conference VII / Jornadas de Textiles PreColombinos VII (2016)

En este trabajo se presenta una colección de materiales arqueológicos que provienen de dos cuevas no localizadas del Valle de Tehuacán, estado de Puebla, México. Los materiales datan del período posclásico (1250-1521) y pertenecen a las culturas mixteca y azteca. La colección se conserva en los Museos Reales de Arte e Historia, MRAH, de Bruselas, Bélgica. Incluye entre otros, objetos de madera con mosaico, cerámica, restos humanos, esteras, plantas, textiles de algodón, sandalias y ofrendas de papel amate, entre las cuales, tres fueron teñidas con la técnica de reserva conocida como plangi. Hasta la fecha la colección no ha sido …