Museum Studies Commons^™

Prejudiced Commodities: Understanding Knowledge Transfer From India To Britain Through Printed And Painted Calicoes, 1720-1780, Aditi Khare

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The eighteenth-century trade in calico between Europe and India was a function of global textile manufacture, exchange, and consumption on multiple levels. This trade had several political, cultural, and economic consequences— the most important of which, I suggest, was the transfer of useful knowledge from artisanal oral textile traditions in India to the receptive, commercial, and nascent cotton printing industry in Europe.

This paper explores the contribution of Indian cotton printing knowledge towards the development of Europe’s cotton industry and, consequently, its dissemination through European knowledge networks. In particular, the largely overlooked chemical knowledge pertaining to dyes and mordants responsible …

Schoolgirl Embroideries & Black Girlhood In Antebellum Philadelphia, Kelli Racine Coles

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Embroideries stitched by girls at schools for Black children in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are rare finds in the antiques world. The few embroideries likely stitched by Black schoolgirls that do survive often offer historical evidence in the form of the names of their makers’ schools stitched onto their embroideries. Yet there is little scholarship on these embroideries or the education these schoolgirls were pursuing while creating their samplers. In scholarship using material culture as primary evidence, these embroideries provide valuable clues about the lives of Black girls in northern cities during the antebellum period. My work examines the …

Arpilleras The Vessels Of Chile’S Resistance, Soledad Fátima Muñoz

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Most historians locate the beginning of the Chilean military government after the coup d’etat, which overthrew democratically elected President Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973. However, I would like to focus on the ideological background that preceded this era through the investigation of arpilleras and their relationship to Western academic institutions in the making and writing of history—more specifically, to the University of Chicago as the “Ideological State Apparatus” responsible for the implementation of neoliberalism in Chile.

Arpilleras are patchwork-based textiles of narrative imagery, made with a technique of applique and embroidery on a burlap background. They are produced in …

Plants In The Tapestry (Literally), Ann H. Peters, Adriana Soldi S.

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Among our studies of ancient Peruvian textiles created in tapestry technique, we have come across some surprising elements, both in the warp and the weft. Andean textiles created over the past 10,000 years have been preserved in certain locations along the Pacific desert coast. They are usually preserved in the cloth bundles that protect and adorn the dead, and composed of fibers from native cotton varieties of Amazonian ancestry, the hair of highland ancestors of today’s llama and alpaca, maguey leaves from the mid-valley canyons, and reeds from coastal marshes. Garment forms, techniques and imagery can indicate textiles produced in …

Kenyan Basketry (Ciondo) By Women From Central And Eastern Kenya, Mercy Wanduara

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Kenyan baskets commonly known as kiondo/kyondo (s)/ciondo (p) are made by women in different parts of Kenya mainly as utilitarian items for carrying goods around. The baskets are made using traditional/indigenous fibers that are readily available near where people live. The fibers may be from plant stems of shrubs, barks of trees, or banana fibers. The fibers are manually harvested, processed (spun), dyed, and woven into baskets. Dye stuffs are produced locally from natural sources such as mud (brown), leaves from specific plants (green), tree barks (red and brown), and charcoal (black), among other sources. Even though basketry is …

A Compared Study Of Miao Embroidery And Ancient Chinese Embroidery: The Cultural And Historical Significances, Tomoko Torimaru

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The Miao people of Guizhou province, China, use two different types of chain stitch. One is a standard chain stitch similar to the Western style. The other one, which I termed “ancient” chain stitch, is distinctly different in execution and appearance, and it is a technique that only Miao practice currently.

Numerous examples of fine chain stitch embroidery have been excavated from archeological sites in China, including the Jiangling Mashan No.1 Chu Tomb, Jingzhou, Hubei, Warring States period (770–221 BC) and the Mawangdui No.1 Tomb, Changsha, Hunan, Western Han period (206 BC–AD 8). These extant embroideries clearly illustrate a unique …

Alnôbakskwak: Native American Women Making Ceremonial Regalia, Vera Longtoe Sheehan

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the borderland between the United States and Canada stand communities of Native American people whose resilience enabled them to survive the ravages of hundreds of years of wars, eugenics, and racism that persists into the present day. These factors contributed to the decline of traditions and a subsequent period of cultural renewal and pride that has led up to several Abenaki tribes petitioning the State of Vermont for tribal Recognition. When the Recognition applications were compared, it became apparent that they had retained many of their agricultural traditions and that their cultural revitalization efforts could be extended not only …

Of Prophets, Caterpillars, And Silver: Job And The Origin-Story Of Sericulture In The Early Modern Islamic World, Nader Sayadi

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Similar to most pre-modern guilds and crafts around the world, the silk craft had origin-stories and patron saints to provide its practitioners with “historical” background and institutional heredity. In the early modern Safavid era— as discussed in a rare silk-weaving treatise in Persian titled The Treatise of Silk-Weaving and Grasping the Grip of the Shuttle (Resāleh-e yeh Shaʿrbāfi va Gereftan-e Qabzeh-e yeh Māku) dated October 18, 1606—the origin-story of sericulture and silk-weaving has been woven into the Biblical/Qur’anic narrative of Job (Ayyoub). The contemporary Ottoman futuwwatnama literature gives similar narratives; however, the story of Job in the Bible and Qur’an, …

Tameji Ueno: A Living National Treasure Of Kyoto Textiles, Keiko Okamoto

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When the Japanese word yūzen is translated into English, it is hard to find an exact expression, as yūzen is used to describe both “hand-painted dyeing on textiles” and a “look-alike style of prints.” Yūzen is the unique aspect of Japanese “motif dyeing” in which the pre-modern hand-painted method survives when printing methods are used for mass production.

The Ueno family from Kyoto devoted themselves to design and manufacture of high-end hand-painted yūzen dyeing since the early twentieth century.

This paper will follow the Ueno family’s one hundred years of contributions to kimono textile development along with its applications and …

An Uncommon Ammunition Case: Interpreting “Transitional” Textiles And Social Worlds In Nineteenth-Century Tlingit Alaska, Laura J. Allen

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Overlooked objects in museum collections can reveal complex social relationships behind well-known textile forms. A tattered woven case for ammunition cartridges, collected in southern Alaska in the late nineteenth century, presents such an opportunity. Part of the vast Tlingit collection at the American Museum of Natural History, the ammunition bag has been little documented and displayed compared to other highly esteemed indigenous naaxein or Chilkat weavings of the region. The piece is unusual in that the maker combined two weaving styles—not only figural motifs characteristic of Chilkat weaving, but also geometric patterns reminiscent of its stylistic and technical precursor called …

Signed In Silk And Silver: Examining An Eighteenth-Century Torah Ark Curtain And Its Maker, Genevieve Cortinovis, Miriam Murphy

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Around 1755, Simhah Viterbo (c. 1739-1779) completed a luxurious Torah ark curtain, or parokhet, in Ancona, an important port city on Italy’s Adriatic coast. The base fabric, a bright blue silk satin, is appliqued with gold and silver guipure embroidery, vellum sections covered with metal-wrapped threads, spiral wound wires, and flattened strips of metal. Paillettes punctuate the Hebrew inscription, which runs across the curtain’s lower edge. The central grotesque composition, a series of stacked, diapered cartouches in the vein of Daniel Marot (1661-1752), fans out towards the enclosed borders. Florist flowers—blousy carnations, roses, and campanula—delicately embroidered in blush-colored silk threads, …

Glitched Metaphors: Dysfunction In Hand-Woven Digital Jacquard, Gabe Duggan

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This presentation demonstrates various ways in which the TC1 has supported my work’s exploration of tension, balance, and precarity. By embracing and pushing expectations of traditional fiber work, these weavings question inequalities within contemporary performances of gender and exhibitions of power. My work on the TC1/TC2 digital jacquard loom has been primarily tethered to one specific machine with which I have shared a personal past and future for just over a decade. Through this technology I have built and negated tension, challenging a broad range of power dynamics. My work with this TC1 seeks to exploit and balance this technology …

A Tale Of Two Sisters: Invisibility, Marginalization And Renown In A 20th Century Textile Arts Revitalization Movement In New Mexico, Suzanne P. Macaulay

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

While this presentation does not address oppression in the global textile industry and injustices to leagues of anonymous enslaved women workers, it does raise questions about the vicissitudes of fame and obscurity of two women relative to artistic creation and textile arts revitalization efforts. This is the story of two Varos sisters, who married two Graves brothers, and lived in Carson, New Mexico. In the early 1930s Frances and Sophie Graves with their extended families repaired Spanish colonial textiles for the Santa Fe market. At some point they began to recreate traditional Spanish colonial-type colcha embroideries from recycled materials salvaged …

Between Craft And Design: Lucienne Day And Eszter Haraszty, Kevin Kosbab

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Lucienne Day and Eszter Haraszty were leaders in both the design and business of mid-century textiles, Day through prominent commissions with Heal Fabrics and other firms in Britain, and Haraszty as director of Knoll’s textile division in the United States. Later, each designer turned from design for commercial production toward needlework-derived textile art, but their attitudes and methods were strikingly different. Both designers’ commercial work is well documented in scholarly design literature (Day’s especially), but their needlework is relatively neglected. This paper will shed deserved light on their textile art at a time when the studio craft movement was solidifying, …

Shared Provenance: Investigating Safavid-Mughal Cultural Exchange Through Luxury Silks In The Sixteenth And Seventeenth Centuries, Nazanin Hedayat Munroe

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When examining silk textiles attributed to the early modern Persianate world, there is always some uncertainty as to whether they were produced in Safavid Iran or Mughal India. The confusion is warranted: the two courts share many of the same ideas, images, and even family connections, creating a broad cultural overlap. This becomes apparent in the arts from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, as politics and patronage prompted the migration of key Safavid artists, including weavers, from Iran to Mughal India. As Persian painting was developed in the royal atelier, luxury silks were also produced with Safavid techniques.

Examining these imported …

Colcha Circle: A Stitch In Northern New Mexico Culture, Olimpia Newman, Rebecca Abrams

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Colcha embroidery is folk art, characteristic of northern New Mexico history, traditions, and a form of cultural expression that has not been researched and documented sufficiently. It has been practiced in private homes and small circles as a result of commissions or economic development programs, as has also been the case in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. Despite the exposure offered by local markets and demonstrations during events in New Mexico, the embroidery is in many ways an unknown technique, even to the next generation.

This video captures a candid discussion among eleven colcha artists, some of whom are entering …

Scandal And Imprisonment: Gold Spinners Of 17th Century England, Tricia Wilson Nguyen

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

When looking at seventeenth-century silk- and gold-embroidered jackets or heavily wrought cabinets, most people focus on the embroiderer’s skill. Instead, my interest rests with the makers of the thread used to create such luxuries—silk thread, gold thread, and silver thread. Perhaps surprisingly, many early thread makers were women, owners, and managers of home-based industries in which spinning gold and silver was their business and livelihood.

Unfortunately, the history of gold spinning in seventeenth-century England is one of “scandal and imprisonment,” with women’s prominent role neglected by history. Beginning in the 1620s, women gold spinners were thrown in jail for refusing …

Hidden Stories/Human Lives: Proceedings Of The Textile Society Of America 17th Biennial Symposium, October 15-17, 2020--Full Program With Abstracts & Bios

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

The theme Hidden Stories/Human Lives presents opportunities to reveal complex and hidden stories of global textile making and coincides with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Yet, just as the voices of women of color, marginalized by the suffrage movement, are only now being recognized, the stories of the many human lives that have contributed—directly and indirectly—to textile making, including enslaved people, immigrant entrepreneurs, and industrial laborers, remain untold. With this symposium, we hope to get “behind the curtain” to explore the wider human network engaged in textile production, bringing to light hidden stories …

Inscription, Iconography, And The Individual: A Late Antique Textile From The Harvard Art Museums In Context, Katherine M. Taronas

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A small but distinct group of early Byzantine textiles from Egypt (dating between the fourth and sixth centuries) uses woven words and textual symbols for their primary decoration. Ornamented with bold letterforms created in brilliant colors, these objects are all inscribed with personal names—the names of individual men and women for whose lives we possess no other certain evidence. Far from simple labels indicating ownership, these names are integral parts of the textiles’ design and function both as text and as image. Investigating the epigraphic nuances, iconography, styles, and formats of these textiles will allow us to make some inferences …

New Media Art: Curating Social Justice In Contemporary Art Museums And Arts Organizations, Kyung Eun Lee

Masters Theses

My research project includes case studies in which I interviewed nine new media art curators and directors whose curatorial practices offer historical analyses and theoretical perspectives that address the dynamics of social justice by using new media art. I investigate the ways in which social justice is presented in museums and arts organizations. Central to this project is an examination of museum practices where the use of new media art becomes a central platform to showcase issues of social justice.

Northwest Coast Native Art Beyond Revival, 1962–1992, Christopher T. Green

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Histories of “primitivism” in the avant-garde show that Euro-American modernism was always engaged in the appropriation of nonwestern and Indigenous art, with particular interest in Northwest Coast Native art forms by the Surrealists, Abstract Expressionists, and Indian Space Painters. However, there has been little consideration for how Northwest Coast Native artists chose to engage with the styles and tenets of Western modern art. To date, the history of post-war Northwest Coast Native art has been dominated by what is known as the Renaissance, a narrative in which artists pursued a neo-traditional style in modern times through the recovered and revival …

Congreso Internacional Sobre Iconografía Precolombina, Barcelona 2019. Actas., Victòria Solanilla Demestre Editora

Zea E-Books Collection

Victòria Solanilla Demestre, Introducción Actas Congreso • Melissa Mattioli, The Ramey Incised Pottery of Cahokia (IL) USA: Diffusion and Reinterpretation of its Iconographic Message • Luís Abejez y Cristina Corona Jamaica, Iconografía en el paisaje. Vida cotidiana y prácticas sociales en el arte rupestre en el noreste de México • Patricia Ochoa Castillo, Figurillas masculinas con atributos de rango, del Centro de México, durante el Formativo • Anabel Villalonga Gordaliza, Ancestros, nahuales y hombres (I). Las host figurines teotihuacanas: hacia una definición, caracterización tipológica y acercamiento iconográfico • Marina Valls i García, Vida y Sacrificio: Los nueve rituales para la …

De La Atlántida Clásica A La Atlántida Precolombina: Un Viaje Del Corto Maltese, Isabel Bargalló Sánchez, Montserrat Bargalló Sánchez

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

Hugo Pratt fue un virtuoso de la plasmación de símbolos e ideas a través de unas viñetas inigualables y de unos guiones insuperables y perfectamente documentados. Su última novela gràfica, Mû, el misterio del continente perdido, es el viaje de Corto Maltese a tierras mesoamericanas, de su encuentro con Mû, con las colonias que quedaron después de su destrucción, con unas referencias al mundo de los antiguos mayas, pero también a otros pueblos de Mesoamérica, muy bien construidas. Con una simbología muy cuidada, eligiendo rigurosamente los referentes, nos acerca a una historia de Mû, de la Atlántida, de las teorías …

Xipe Tótec Y El Binomio Vida-Muerte En La Cosmovisión Mesoamericana, María Montserrat Camacho Ángeles

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

El principio básico de la cosmovisión de los pueblos mesoamericanos fue sin duda la observación de su entorno natural, para ellos las deidades o fuerzas sagradas habitan en el cielo, la tierra y el inframundo, lugares que en sí mismos contienen los opuestos complementarios: vida-muerte, entre muchos otros. Este artículo explica los elementos del binomio vida-muerte que caracterizan a Xipec Tótec, deidad mesoamericana de gran relevancia.

The Mesoamerican Cosmovision’s basic principle was, to be sure, the observation of the natural environment for those cultures, the gods or goddesses or sacred forces which live on the sky, earth and the underworld; …

Vida Y Sacrificio: Los Nueve Rituales Para La Luz La Vida Y El Maíz, Marina Valls I García

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

El Códice Borgia presenta uno de los rituales más complejos de toda la liturgia mesoamericana; el conocido como “los nueve rituales para la luz, la vida y el maíz”. El presente estudio es la primera entrega de una serie de artículos en los que se realiza una revisión crítica e interpretativa del ceremonial litúrgico, representado entre las páginas 29 y 42 del documento. Con el objetivo de una mejor comprensión de todo el imaginario reflejado, se plantea una aproximación interdisciplinar que permita apreciar la gran cantidad de figuras poéticas visuales y sutilezas que conforman el discurso religioso y artístico mesoamericano, …

Ancestros, Nahuales Y Hombres (I). Las Host Figurines Teotihuacanas: Hacia Una Definición, Caracterización Tipológica Y Acercamiento Iconográfico, Annabel Villalonga Gordaliza

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

En 1934 George Vaillant adquirió en Ahuizotla una inédita escultura de barro cuyo cuerpo contenía pequeñas figurillas hechas a molde. No sería hasta 1976 cuando por primera vez Warren Barbour, designó como host figurines o figurillas tipo huésped, a un conjunto de figurillas huecas de cerámica, en posición sedente, que contenían en su interior a otras figurillas hechas a molde que procedían de Teotihuacán. Aunque generalmente habían aparecido en entierros y depósitos de ofrendas en la antigua urbe, también existen ejemplares que proceden de lugares más distantes de Mesoamérica. El propósito de este estudio preliminar consiste en revisar las host …

The Ramey Incised Pottery Of Cahokia (Il) Usa: Diffusion And Reinterpretation Of Its Iconographic Message, Melissa Mattioli

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

Una interpretación iconográfica adaptada y adoptada por toda la zona Mississippiana. Cahokia es el asentamiento más antiguo y más grande en la América del Norte precolombina. Situado a pocos kilómetros de la actual ciudad de St. Louis, MO (USA), este sitio arqueológico se convirtió en el mayor asentamiento Mississippiano desde la mitad del siglo XI hasta su abandono, al final del siglo XIV. El modelo cosmológico Mississippiano, trasmitido a través de la iconografía de la cerámica Ramey Incised, generalmente está relacionado con los mundos superior e inferior. Tradicionalmente, se reconoce que la presencia de la cosmógrafia de estilo Cahokiano fuera …

Pars Pro Toto: “La Parte Por El Todo”. Una Aproximación Al Estudio Del Significado En La Iconografía Del Perú Precolombino, Marisa Sánchez David

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

La comprensión de la imagen en las antiguas sociedades precolombinas nos acerca a comprender las mentalidades de los pueblos del pasado. Nos ilustran sobre cómo se vivieron los cambios y la evolución en estas sociedades y que trascendencia tuvieron para los miembros de cada comunidad. Partiendo de la tipología de objetos encontrados en las sociedades precolombinas, y acotando este hecho a algunas culturas de la geografía peruana, podemos observar la ofrenda de cerámicas en forma de alguna parte concreta del cuerpo (como en el caso de las culturas Moche, Wari, entre otras). La representación de un brazo, un pie, una …

Elementos Chavinoides En Textiles De Paracas Y Cerámicas De Nasca, Uwe Carlson

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

La cultura Chavin, luego de la creación de su imagen, tuvo una influencia duradera en todas las culturas subsiguientes del antiguo Perú. Los fundamentos de esta imagen y sus variaciones fueron particularmente visibles en la significativa influencia de la cultura Paracas, que surgió al mismo tiempo, produciendo de esta manera la evidencia más notable del arte textil peruano antiguo. Esto no sólo desde el punto de vista técnico textil, sino sobre todo desde el punto de vista iconográfico. Si la creación de una imagen llamativa divina es sorprendente, es aún más notable que en Paracas se repita en todos sus …

Contextualizando Una Colección Maya Olvidada Proveniente De Chich’En, Cobán, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, Julia Montoya

Congreso internacional sobre iconografía precolombina, Barcelona, 2019. Actas.

La colección maya de la Universidad de Gante, Bélgica, cuenta con 130 piezas de cerámica y 84 piezas de lítica, entre ellas, jadeíta, piedra serpentina, obsidiana, sílex y cuarzo. El estudio se inició en 2016 con la identificación y localización del sitio de proveniencia, el cual se visitó en 2017. Las fases de documentación y registro fotográfico de las piezas han sido realizadas. En este artículo se hace una breve descripción del sitio arqueológico Chich’en y se analizan aspectos del contexto geográfico, histórico y religioso que determinaron su relevancia desde el período Clásico hasta el Posclásico Tardío. El estudio está …