Textile Society of America- Abstracts and Biographies

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The Changing Politics of Textiles as Portrayed on Somali Postage Stamps

Heather Akou

When Somalia became an independent nation in 1960, the change in power was celebrated with

new postage stamps. Departing from the royal portraits and vague images of "natives" favored

by their colonizers, Somalis chose to circulate detailed images of local plants, animals, artisanal

products, and beautiful young women in wrapped fabrics. In the early 1960s, these images were

fairly accurate representations of contemporary fashions. Over the next twenty years, with a few

notable exceptions, these images became more romanticized focusing on the folk dress worn by

nomads in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Confronting drought, corruption, and

economic interference from the West, dictator Siad Barre (who came to power in a military coup

in 1969) longed openly for the "good old days" of nomadic life. As the country became

increasingly unstable in the 1980s, leading to the collapse of the national government in 1991,

postal depictions of textiles and wrapped clothing became even more divorced from reality:

surface patterns unrelated to the drape of the cloth, fabrics that were too thin or wrapped in

impossible ways, and styles of dress that were nothing but fantasy. This paper is based on an

analysis of postage stamps collected by the author dating from the 1920s to 2000. As a form of

material culture closely tied to national governments, postage stamps provide a fascinating

window into the changing political landscape of Somalia.

Dr. Heather Marie Akou is an associate professor of Dress Studies and Fashion Design at Indiana

University (Bloomington) in the department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design. She

is also a member of the African Studies, Islamic Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies programs

as well as an adjunct faculty member in Anthropology. Her book, the Politics of Dress in Somali

Culture was released by Indiana University Press in June 2011. She is currently gathering new

data on contemporary Islamic fashion along with how native-born converts to Islam in North

America decide to change or not change their appearance over time.

Weaving to Decontaminate History: A Response to Bosnia’s Ethnic Cleansing

Azra Aksamija

This paper investigates the potency of textile art as a medium of documenting, analyzing and

interviewing in crisis and political conflict. It explores the modalities though which textile art -

and more specifically, the tradition of kilim weaving - can offer a critical response to

nationalism, while facilitating social healing of communities damaged by war and genocide. I

aim to address these issues though my art project "Monument in Waiting," a wool kilim hand-

woven by female victims of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Inspired by "Afghan war

rugs," the pattern of this seemingly traditional Bosnian kilim represents abstracted facts and

personal memories about the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, depicting the story of nine destroyed

and recently rebuilt mosques. The systematic destruction of religious architecture showed that

nationalist extremists recognized them as evidence of coexistence, and targeted it specifically to

recreate Bosnian territories ethnically and religiously pure. This story depicted on this kilim

focuses on mosque architecture with regard to the way in which the wanton destruction created a

rupture in the cultural continuity of Bosnian Muslims, and made its witnesses, and the next

generation much more aware of the function of the mosque as a marker of cultural, spiritual and

national identity. The argument posed in my paper views kilim weaving as a medium for

countering the nationalists' premise of cultural purification through the act of reweaving those

memories of existence and coexistence erase in the war. The project "Monument in Waiting" was

exhibited at the 54th Venice Biennale.

Azra Aksamija is an artist and architectural historian, currently Assistant Professor in the Visual

Arts at MIT's Art, Culture and Technology Program. She holds M.Arch. degree from Princeton

University (2004) and Ph.D. from MIT (Architecture, 2011). In her interdisciplinary practice,

Aksamija investigates the potency of art and architecture to facilitate transformative mediation of

conflicts though cultural pedagogy. Her artwork takes shape though different types of media,

including textile, video, performance, sculpture and/or new media. Recent exhibitions include

the Royal Academy of Arts London (2010), Jewish Museum Berlin (2011), and the 54th Art

Biennale in Venice (2011).

The Impact of Dividing One Ethnical Community to Two or More Subgroups by a Political

Act

Yaser Al Saghrji

The impact of dividing one ethnical community to two or more subgroups by a political act has

always showed its outcomes on that group's weavings. The Beluchies are a classical example.

However nowhere have I seen the outcome results of such a case as clear as we did in the

Kurdish area divided between north western Syria (Afreen) and south eastern Turkey. On the

Syrian side of the border weavings for home use only unlike their cousins across the border in

Turkey a country that became a destination for kilim-buyers from all over the world. I went to

the area rented a home met the last few living weavers collected more than 150 pieces and

studied them well. We have also showed those to dealers and experts and asked their opinions. I

saw how the arbitrary drawing of the middle east map by the end of 19th century and the

beginning of the 20th worked unconsciously well in keeping the textiles of that area from

corruption that altered those made by the same group across the border. Very few types of

textiles came to a halt being affected by commercializing. political act in this case kept those

pieces in a "pure" form.

1980 started to work in textile retail business in Damascus Syria 1992 graduated from Damascus

University B A in English literature 1993-1996 freelance textiles buyer in Turkey, Iran some

central Asia and north Africa 1996 established Yanakilims kilim business 1996 current first

Syrian published in hali exhibited in historic sites in Damascus and dubai lectured on tribal

weavings and had talk tour in usa 2002-2005 partnered in Arabesque textiles business in London

UK 2003 with my wife co-started Alwan Afreen weaving 1968 born project Current I work on

my website my book about Kurdish rugs from north western Syria and live with my wife and

two boys in MD USA

Embroidered Politics

Miriam Ali-De-Unzaga

A magnificent embroidered tunic was found in 1968 at the Monastery of OÒa in Burgos, Spain

(one of the richest and most influential monasteries during the Iberian Medieval period). The

significance and great value of this embroidery, produced in al-Andalus, is threefold: 1) Its high

material value: made of silk and gold of extremely high quality. 2) Its visual value, which

includes Arabic inscriptions (eulogies and qur'anic verses) and the iconography of a royal figure

and sixty-six animals. 3) Its historical value: used and reused by Andalusi and Castilian rulers,

the embroidery is an unexpected witness of the political relationships between these two

contexts. However, despite its historical and artistic value, this piece remains unknown and has

not been given its rightful prominent place in the history and culture of the Iberian Peninsula. My

contribution: 1) Presents new data based on iconographic analysis and documentary sources,

which determine with high certainty the identity of the figure of the embroidery and its

production and use under the Andalusi Umayad Caliphate as a prestigious robe of honour. 2)

Explores the embroidery's various biographies within Muslim and Christian courts revealing a

complex framework of relationships between Andalusi and Castilian political elites (10th- 11th

centuries); and focus on how the materiality of the embroidery illustrates political and cultural

aspects of Islamic civilization within al-Andalus, which in turn helps to understand the aspects

which brought cross-cultural-dressing to the Castilian milieu.

Miriam Ali-de Unzaga' has carried out pioneering research on textile culture for more than a

decade. She holds a Master's degree in Islamic Humanities from the Institute of Ismaili Studies,

in London; M.Phil & D.Phil from the Institute of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography,

University of Oxford. Doctoral thesis: Weaving Social Life. She has been awarded postdoctoral

fellowships by the ROM, Toronto, the University of Oxford, and Harvard University. Her

publications focus on Andalusi and Fatimid textiles and those social actors involved with them.

Currently Visiting Scholar at the Papyrus Museum-Austrian National Library carrying out

research on Egyptian medieval textiles.

Samplers, Sewing, and Star Quilts: Changing Federal Policies Impact Native American

Education and Assimilation

Lynne Anderson

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 after its completion the Choctaw were forcibly removed to "Indian

Territory", with nearly half dying on the way. Late 19th century policies embraced the building

of military style boarding schools and forcing Indian children to attend, purposefully removing

them away from tribal influences. Female students were compelled to spend half their time

sewing items essential for sustaining the school - an example of enforced labor, not education.

Shared are the written memories of students and a list of more than 7600 items sewn at one

school in one year. Twentieth century policies embraced more local control of education and a

reduced effort to eliminate native language and culture. Teachers were often Native American

and a blending of cultures resulted. Illustrative is the important role Star Quilts now play in the

culture of the Lakota Sioux, often sewn for "giveaway" events such as memorial feasts,

celebrations, naming ceremonies, and marriages.

Dr. Lynne Anderson is professor of education at the University of Oregon and Director of the

Sampler Archive Project, an NEH funded project awarded to the University of Delaware to

create an online searchable database for information and images of all known American samplers

and related girlhood embroideries (17th to 19th centuries). Dr. Anderson is an internationally

recognized scholar in the field of technology in education, and an emerging scholar of historic

needlework. Her most recent publication is Samplers International: A World of Needlework

(2011). She is also editor of Columbia's Daughters: Girlhood Embroidery from the District of

Columbia (2012).

Textiles, Political Propaganda, and The Economic Implications In Southwestern Nigeria

Adebowale Areo and Margaret Areo

The indigenous political structure among the Yoruba is pyramidal with the traditional, divine,

paramount ruler at the peak. Though the attainment of this apogee is monarchical and hereditary

among this tribe, textile is used as a distinguishing factor for those on different rungs of this

political ladder, with the overall ruler traditionally expected to be the wealthiest and most

elaborately dressed. The success of any ruler's reign is not only measured by how peaceful his

reign was, but also by how comfortable his subjects were under his rule. Next to food, their

comfortability is gauged by the number and quality of cloths they could afford. For instance,

historical accounts of royal pomp and pageantry among the Yoruba are replete with accounts of

how some notable rulers used textiles in asserting their political influence and economic

affluence. Textile therefore has always been a veritable tool in manifesting the unique status of

Yoruba rulers. With exposure to foreign political cultures, particularly from the West,

democratic form of politics, which requires political campaign and propaganda to win the

electorates votes, has been adopted by Nigerians. And textiles have become the strongest tool of

campaign propaganda used in convincing the electorates of the leadership capabilities of

candidates. This paper looks at the significance of textile as an indispensable, ubiquitous tool of

Nigerian political campaigns. It traces the origin of its usage, the party symbols and their

meaning in the people's world view, and the economic impact of these textiles on the producers

and the larger society

Dr. Adebowale Areo was born in December 1955 in Keffi, Nasarawa State Nigearia. He attended

Baptist Day Primary School Keffi, after which he proceeded to Baptist High School Ejigbo for

his secondary school. He was admitted into the University of Lagos where he read botany with

second class upper division in 1979.He did his compulsory National Youth Service Corps

(NYSC) in 1979/80.He was employed the National Museum as a botanist in 1980. He has since

been working there and rose to the post of a deputy director in the Department of Monument,

Heritage and Sites.

Margret Olugbemisola Areo was born in August 1960 in Ile-Ife, Osun State Nigeria. She

attended St. Peter and Paul, and Bernard Catholic Primary Schools. She was in Our Lady (Girls)

Secondary School also in Ile-Ife. She graduated with second class in Fine Arts from Obafemi

Awolowo University, Ile-Ife in Osun State. She did her compulsory National Youth Service

corps (NYSC) in 1984/85. She works in the Fine and Applied Arts department of Ladoke

Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Ogbomoso, Oyo State as a Lecturer of Textiles.

She has risen to the post of a Senior Lecturer.

The Foremothers Revisited: The Continuing Story of Icelandic National Identity Creation

with Textiles and Women's Dress

Karl Aspelund

In Iceland, textiles and politics are entwined in a 250-year-long development of national identity

by small-group networks of culture creators. A deliberate and continuous manipulation of

textiles and women's apparel created a structured and class-based system of national self-

identification. Throughout the long 19th century, textile crafts and apparel were ever-more

strongly emphasized as representations of an ancient "national" culture in a movement for

independence from Denmark. Culture-creators, mostly male (themselves in continental fashions,)

focused on the female image in establishing a national identity. These efforts culminated in a

successful 1870's counter-culture of vernacular dress and embroidered patterns, in deliberate

opposition to the "Danish" (European) fashions. However, soon after, the radical nationalist

imagery was co-opted by a new "half-Danish" ruling class into an official state nationalism.

Furthermore, the establishment of schools for young women linked textile crafts to the emerging

bourgeoisie's continental mores, rather than the vernacular "non-Danish" culture. By the 1920's

the symbolism and patterns of dress and embroidery were set into a national iconography that

remained static until the 1990's. Then, searching for authenticity, a new generation of female

culture-bearers appeared. A new small-group culture of traditional textiles and dress seems to

have begun yet a new phase of identity creation in this otherwise modernized nation of

globalized fashions. They have turned away from 19th-century invented traditions, in a revival of

eighteenth-century modes. This re-positioning of the female image outside the frame of official

national symbolism may foretell a reconfigured national identity in opposition to modern global

culture.

Karl Aspelund teaches design and related courses in the Department of Textiles, Fashion

Merchandising and Design at URI. He recently completed a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Material

Culture from Boston University, where he examined the state and nature of Icelandic national

dress. The role of apparel in the ethnic and national identity-creation is central to his research

interests. He is currently involved in a cross-disciplinary research project with scholars at the

University of Iceland on 19th century culture creation. Karl has over 20 years of design

experience and is the author of two textbooks: "The Design Process" and "Fashioning Society."

Fabric, Folk Tales and Politics

Jacqueline Atkins

Tradition figures largely in Japan. Strongly binding social beliefs and practices trade on an

implied continuity with the past to promote certain values or behaviors, and heroes from legend

and history offer useful identification patterns and images for the propagation of state ideals that

can then be spread through visual propaganda. During the wartime years (1937-1945), traditional

Japanese folk tales featuring instantly recognizable hero-figures proved especially useful in this

regard. One such figure was Momotar (Peach Boy), a boy warrior who was viewed as a symbol

of filial piety and virtue. As Japan moved closer to total war in the 1930s, he was gradually

revamped by the government into a more aggressive persona and incorporated into the national

propaganda to promote the militaristic ideology of the time. In a new soldier/warrior guise,

Momotarō appeared in animated films, schoolbooks, and trendy magazines as well as a featured

motif in a number of bright and lively textile designs (see examples attached) that appealed to

adults and children alike. Textile manufacturers quickly recognized the value of including

Momotarō's image in their products. Not only did it show them aligned with national polity but

also provided a way to exploit a creative and potentially lucrative outlet for sales. Adults might

find the designs amusing as well as patriotic, and for young boys they served as an effective

visual indoctrination into the prevailing military ideology. This presentation will review

Momotarō's evolution from benign to aggressive and how this was presented in textile design.

Dr. Jacqueline M. Atkins is a textile historian and consulting textile curator. She lectures and

writes on American and Japanese textile and costume history, contemporary fiber art, and folk

and decorative arts. Her most recent publication is "Novelty Textiles," in The Brittle Decade:

Visualizing Showa Culture in 1930s Japan, published by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts

(2012). Atkins holds MA and BS degrees from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Bard

Graduate Center. She was awarded a Fulbright Senior Research Grant for research in Japan and

is on the Board of Directors for Studio Art Quilt Associates.

What’s Your Status?: A Q’ing Vest

Hilary Baker

The Q'ing dynasty of China held its position of power from 1644-1911. Towards the end of their

reign, the practice of selling ranks to citizens became commonplace in order to help fund the

failing dynasty. The University of Rhode Island acquired a Q'ing dynasty vest (accession number

90.01.11), which is presumably a female's piece of dress dating from the late nineteenth century.

This vest is missing the rank badge that would normally be positioned on the front and back of

the vest. Because the rank badge is missing, this paper will focus on the embroidery surrounding

the empty space to determine the civil status of the wearer, the location of the vest's production,

and what different symbols in the embroidery represent. These different avenues of discovery

will lend themselves to examining the politics of the era by concentrating on the social practices

that surround this female Q'ing vest.

Hilary Baker is a graduate student in the Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design program at

the University of Rhode Island. Her undergraduate degree is in Fashion Merchandising from

Texas State University, but she is currently focusing on the historic aspects of the field of textiles

and clothing. Recently her review of the exhibition Grace and Glamour: 1930's Fashion was

published in the Costume Society of America Northeastern Region Newsletter, and she co-

curated Top Hats and Trimmings: Fine Fashion Accessories of the Eighteenth to Early

Nineteenth Century for the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, Kingston, Rhode Island. This is

her first conference presentation.

Iberian Carpets and the Making of Modern Spain

Carol Bier

Carpets of the Iberian Peninsula, woven in the 15th and 16th centuries, represent diverse cultural

traditions at a time of great political transformation. With the fall of Granada in 1492, Christian

dominion was firmly reestablished. Despite radical shifts in patronage from Muslim to Christian

in previous centuries, the weaving of carpets with wool pile seems to have flourished in

established production centers. Following the Arab and Berber conquests of Andalusia in the

early 8th century, there is scant evidence for rug-weaving but a significant group of carpets

survives from the 15th century, which stylistically reflects earlier traditions of carpet-weaving

from Turkey, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Iberian carpets of the 16th century herald styles of

the Renaissance, reflecting the cultural reorientation of the Iberian Peninsula from the Islamic

east to an emerging Europe. Carpets, today preserved in museum collections, exhibit design

elements that draw from local Iberian sources and patterns of Roman pavements, as well as from

motifs associated with Christian art and Islamic geometric interlace. Despite the diversity of

sources and the blending of cultural traditions, Iberian carpets bear a unique weave structure

based upon a single-warp knot and multiple wefts, which distinguishes this weaving tradition

from all others. Based on analysis of weave structure and design in Iberian carpets at The Textile

Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Hispanic Society of America, this paper seeks to

document the ways in which carpets mark the complexities of cultural and political

transformations that led to the making of modern Spain.

Carol Bier is Visiting Scholar at the Center for Islamic Studies, Graduate Theological Union in

Berkeley, CA (2010-12) and Research Associate at The Textile Museum in Washington, DC

(2001-12), where she served as Curator for Eastern Hemisphere Collections (1984-2001). She

was President of the Textile Society of America (2006-08). Her publications include Science,

Crafts, and the Production of Knowledge in Iran and Eastern Islamic Lands (co-edited special

issue of Iranian Studies, 41/4 [2008], The Persian Velvets at Rosenborg (Copenhagen, 1995),

and Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran

(Washington 1987).

The Politics of Cloth in the Colonial West Indies: The Bower Textile Sample Book, 1771

Amy Bogansky

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the trade in textiles from England to her colonies

expanded considerably, particularly from 1750 to 1775. It was during this period that London's

competitors in Northern manufacturing towns such as Manchester eventually usurped the

capital's position as the primary supplier of textiles to the British colonies and pattern books

played a key role in this process. The Bower sample book contains hundreds of swatches from a

Manchester textile firm that represent the kinds of fabrics colonists used every day including

brightly colored checked and striped cottons. The sheer number of samples reveals the value of

variety to British producers and consumers. However unintended, this expansion of choice also

affected the millions of enslaved and free persons of color who worked within the British

plantation system. In the Caribbean, where all cloth was imported, most Anglo visitors

unfailingly comment on the "showy" clothing worn by both slaves and free persons of color.

Using the extant fabrics in the Bowers book as well as contemporary accounts and depictions of

the clothing worn, purchased, and traded by non-whites, this paper will explore the intersection

between fashion, sexuality, and commodification in the West Indies and will argue that fashion

and the participation of non-whites in the textile market served as signifiers of both liberty and

repression in a world marked by distinct yet unstable racial and social stratifications.

Amy Bogansky, a Doctoral Candidate at the Bard Graduate Center, is the Research Assistant for

The Interwoven Globe exhibition. Ms. Bogansky worked as an Associate Curator of Exhibitions

with the American History Workshop where she helped produce several exhibits including New

York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War and French Founding Father: Lafayette's Return to

Washington's America at the New-York Historical Society. In addition to her work with The

Interwoven Globe, she is also conducting research on her dissertation, which focuses on the

material culture of the early-modern Caribbean and its relationship to the Atlantic World.

The Soviet “Invasion” of Central Asian Applied Arts: How Artisans Incorporated

Communist Political Messages and Symbols

Irina Bogoslovskaya

The physical imposition of Communist rule in Central Asia was accompanied by parallel

attempts to expand the Soviet footprint in the realms of ideology and aesthetics. This paper

discusses the Sovietization of Central Asian applied art: specifically, the way that Soviet political

messages and symbols were actively promoted and incorporated in traditional art production -

such as ikat silk and other textiles, carpets, skull caps and pottery - in the period 1920-1960. In

this way, decorative and applied art became a platform to communicate Soviet ideas and

ideology. Yet it would be incorrect to assume that hammers and sickles, tractors and Kremlin

towers, were used by Central Asian artisans only under compulsion to decorate their works.

These symbols and ornaments also became part of the artisans' repertoire, absorbed into their

sensibilities and modified according to their traditional canons of taste (as had been happening

for centuries in a region at the crossroads of many political, cultural and aesthetic influences).

Furthermore, the process of incorporating messages about Soviet aspirations and ideals in their

art works could reflect artisans' genuine pride of country - as, for example, in the spontaneous

appearance of space symbols on hats and dresses in honor of the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

This paper explores the different semantic, aesthetic and psychological currents at work in the

reaction and commentary of Central Asian artisans as Soviet power and ideology gripped their

region.

Dr Irina Bogoslovskaya is an ethnographer and art historian from Uzbekistan. Her doctoral work

focused on the symbolism, genesis, and ethno-cultural parallels of ornament design in the

applied art of the semi-nomadic Karakalpaks. Earlier she was chief of Central Asian ethnography

at the State History Museum in Tashkent, and chief curator of the Jewelry Museum. She is the

co-author of Skullcaps of Uzbekistan, 19th-20th Centuries and of many scholarly and popular

articles on Central Asian art and textiles. Most recently she has been a speaker at the

Volkmanntreffen in Berlin and ICOC XII in Stockholm.

Thomas Jefferson's Blue Coat: Style, Substance and Circumstance

Joshua Bond

Thomas Jefferson is arguably the most highly regarded and studied revolutionary and post-

revolutionary politician after Washington himself. And as with politicians today, Jefferson had

both a private persona and a well-crafted public image. This public image is encapsulated in his

writings and the many portraits for which he sat: dressed and posed in a manner intended to

impress for both his contemporary audience and for posterity. However, in the absence of

modern audio, photographic, and video recording technologies, we have much less insight into

the life of Jefferson the private citizen, particularly after his time serving as President. In this

context, we present a detailed examination and analysis of a blue coat (see attached photo) that

dates from his retirement period. The fabric details and construction elements of this garment

provide a window into textile and tailoring practices of the early 19th century. But more

interestingly, the garment's series of stylistic and functional alterations and repairs - it's

repurposing if you like - are consistent with a man with a more frugal attitude to private attire

rather than public image.

Joshua Bond is Assistant Professor of Costume Technology, The College of Charleston, SC. He

has a BFA in costume technology from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a MFA in

costume technology from Ohio University. His research interests are in menswear, with

emphasis on historical dress of the 18th and 19th century. For almost a decade before joining the

College of Charleston faculty, Bond held a staff position in the theater department at the

University of Virginia. He has extensive hands-on experience in several repertory and seasonal

theaters as well as in numerous feature films, modern dance, ballet and opera productions.

Knitting a New World

Carrie Brezine

Although pre-historic Andean textile artists explored almost every textile structure ever invented,

knitting was unknown in the Pre-Columbian Andes. Recent excavations at the colonial town of

Magdalena de Cao Viejo on the north coast of Peru have uncovered what may be the earliest

surviving examples of knitting in the Americas (see image). Along with disease, bureaucracy,

Catholicism, violence, and other effects of colonization, the technique of knitting was imported

to South America after the Spanish Conquest in 1532 and was adopted and adapted by

indigenous Andeans. The discovery of early New World knitting, exciting enough in itself,

inspires further questions about colonial Andean textile production and knowledge transfer in a

rapidly shifting and potentially dangerous political climate. Who brought knowledge of knitting

to the Andes? Were indigenous people intentionally taught to knit? Where did they get knitting

needles? What kinds of knitted items were created? And what was the political significance of

people making and wearing knitted garments? As a brand-new textile technique in a world

overwhelmed by enforced social and political changes, knitting could have been used to express

assimilation, resistance, or a hybrid of the two. Probably the use of knitting had a complex

variety of meanings as both Andeans and Spanish re-negotiated their roles and identities in

colonial Peru. This talk examines the known colonial knitted artifacts, and investigates their

implications for textile production practices and the creation of political identity in the colonial

Andes.

Carrie Brezine completed her PhD in Archaeology / Anthropology at Harvard University in

2011.† Her doctoral research focused on clothing and textiles in colonial Peru; she has also

carried out ethnographic research in the Andean highlands and has studied ancient Andean

textiles of all periods.† For the past 10 years Dr. Brezine has been deeply involved in the study

of khipu, Inka knotted-string record-keeping devices.† She is currently working on a history of

Andean mathematics as expressed in textiles.† A weaver, knitter, and seamstress, Dr. Brezine

enjoys recreating ancient techniques and exploring the potential of varied textile structures.

Buttons, Breeches, and Bows: Weaving Colonial Identity in Peru

Carrie Brezine

The Spanish Conquest of the Andes in 1532 paved the way for the imposition of a new political

order on what was previously the Inka Empire. Along with bureaucracy, violence, and forced

labor, the Spanish introduced unfamiliar weaving technology, European methods of tailoring,

and new expectations about how a Christian citizen should be clothed. When the Spanish arrived

Andean people had never seen a floor loom or spinning wheel, had never touched sheep's wool,

and had never used buttons. Nevertheless, the millennia of outstanding textile production in the

Andes suggest that indigenous Andeans would have been able to "read" new textiles as they were

introduced. They would have easily comprehended woven structures and the technologies behind

them, and would have understood how dress was deployed by the Spanish to negotiate and

maintain personal power. Using archaeological textile artifacts from the colonial town of

Magdalena de Cao Viejo on the north coast of Peru, this presentation explores how Andean

textile creators reacted to the influences of floor looms, imported fabrics, and European

conventions of appropriate dress. Archaeological evidence shows that there were indeed

immense changes in colonial cloth technology and garment construction. Indigenous political

identities were negotiated and maintained in part through imitation and emulation of Spanish

fashions, but also through new hybrid techniques of textile production. These changes in the

practice of dress illuminate one way in which indigenous Andeans positioned themselves in a

rapidly changing political environment.

Carrie Brezine completed her PhD in Archaeology / Anthropology at Harvard University in

2011. Her doctoral research focused on clothing and textiles in colonial Peru; she has also carried

out ethnographic research in the Andean highlands and has studied ancient Andean textiles of all

periods. For the past 10 years Dr. Brezine has been deeply involved in the study of khipu, Inka

knotted-string record-keeping devices. She is currently working on a history of Andean

mathematics as expressed in textiles. A weaver, knitter, and seamstress, Dr. Brezine enjoys

recreating ancient techniques and exploring the potential of varied textile structures.

Invisible Tapestry: An Assyriologist’s Perspective

Stanley Bulbach

Upon earning my doctorate from New York University in Assyriology (the study of the earliest

literate Mesopotamian cultures) I began drawing upon ancient Near Eastern traditions and

techniques for a medium with which to create expressive original contemporary art. My "canvas"

is flatwoven prayer carpets, carpet beds, and flying carpets, all made from lustrous natural

handspun colored wools and vegetal dyes. The traditional uses and understandings of these

carpets allude to our various states of consciousness, and to life's key events: sleeping and

dreaming, conceiving and giving birth, convalescing or dying, and prayer and meditation. In

addition to my work in this ancient art form, my presentation will explore questions about how

curatorial and academic art research practice are executed on the field of contemporary tapestry

and fiber art, and will suggest ways to correct the problems of the field's invisibility.

Stanley Bulbach has a Ph.D. from New York University's Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Using historically prized materials and techniques of the timeless Near Eastern carpet weaving

arts as the vehicle for his abstract contemporary art, his flatwoven prayer carpets, flying carpets

and carpet beds of handspun Lincoln longwools and natural dyes aesthetically explore surfaces,

states of consciousness, New York City, and our Western culture's little examined ancient Near

Eastern roots. He is widely known for his probing writing about research practice on

contemporary fiber art and his community advocacy in Manhattan. More at www.bulbach.com.

Drawing on the Past, Making the Future: Domestic Textile Practices as a Force for Change

in Kyrgyzstan

Stephanie Bunn

Kyrgyzstan has experienced extreme political and economic disruption since independence, most

notably economic collapse and two subsequent revolutions. In the Soviet era, women's domestic

textile practices, especially felt-making, continued, albeit less frequently than prior to the

Russian conquest. During my first fieldwork in the early 1990's, felt was largely made at home.

Most often it was found in the homes of people's grandmothers, although younger women did

still make felt shyrdaks to give to daughters for weddings. Great experts were feted by Soviet

officials, given medals, and work was sold in tourist shops, but in general, all textile arts were a

domestic affair. Twenty years later, there has been a textile renaissance. Seen as a means of

transcending political and economic circumstances, felt shyrdak making has been seized upon by

rural groups to make goods for export, while for the younger generation, fashion, design and the

possibility of global success has led them to draw on their ancestors' skills in felt, weaving,

leatherwork and embroidery, synthesizing the textiles of the old 'felt-road' with new materials

and technologies as new global 'silk road links' are re-established. This paper explores how

domestic textile practices among Kyrgyz women over the past 20 years, while drawing from a

dynamic tradition of great historical depth, have engaged with and challenged political and

economic developments during the transition to the global market. Particular attention is given to

the period (March-April 2011) of the anniversary of the second Kyrgyz revolution.

Stephanie Bunn is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. She has

been conducting research in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan for the past twenty years.

Her research themes include pastoral nomadism; art and material culture, especially textiles and

clothing; perception, skill and creativity; relationships with the environment; and inhabitation

and space. Her recent publications include Nomadic Felts, (British Museum Press 2010) and

Kyrgyzstan - Antipina, Paiva and Musakeev (ed). Her current research project is about women's

fashion in Kyrgyzstan in the context of changing craft practices and global trade initiatives.

The Year That Craft Broke: Performing Political Identities and the Co-option of the

Crafted Aesthetic

Nicole Burisch and Anthea Black

The most recent "craft revolution" has included many lofty claims about the inherent politics of

craft. This paper argues that such claims, along with the dialectics of slow craft/fast culture and

DIY/mass production are also leading to the "movement's" undoing. We will examine a selection

of textile-based artworks including: Cindy Baker's "Personal Appearance" in which she

constructs and wears a full-sized mascot costume of herself; Carole Lung's "KO Enterprises" in

which she remakes a Columbia Sportswear rain jacket from plastic bags sewn on a bicycle

powered sewing machine; and Kelly Cobb's "100 Mile Suit," an outfit constructed using only

local materials. These works will be examined alongside similar projects and experiments such

as the 100-Mile Diet, "No Impact Man," and Natalie Purschwitz's "Makeshift" project that see

artists or authors following exaggerated or impractical year-long projects to attempt sustainable

lifestyles. By looking at these popularized forms of slowness, DIY and craft, we will trace their

political efficacy, corresponding rise in popularity, and ultimate co-opting of particular forms of

"alternative" fashion or subcultural identification into the market. We will investigate how a

handcrafted aesthetic is frequently used to identify these practices as authentic, sustainable or

alternative. We ask: to what extent are these projects within the capitalist structures that they

seek to critique? Alternately, we examine how practices such as Baker, Lung and Cobb's might

actively resist commodification.

Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch are Canadian artists and cultural workers. Their collaborative

research on curatorial strategies for politically engaged craft is included in The Craft Reader and

Extra/ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art, and presented at numerous conferences, galleries,

and institutions. Together they founded the online arts publication Shotgun-Review.ca. Black has

exhibited as part of QIY - Queer It Yourself: Tools for Survival and Gestures of Resistance at the

Museum of Contemporary Craft. Burisch holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University

and is curating an exhibition of craft-based materials at Artexte (Montreal) in fall 2012.

The Chilean Arpilleristas: Changing National Politics through Tapestry Work

Dayna Caldwell

At present, a popular opinion maintains that the education of women in developing countries

benefits a society's economic and social development and improves individuals' well-being.

Economic studies and statistics have proven this idea to be true, however there are other

processes by which women attain a higher quality of living without becoming educated. It can

even be said that uneducated women have the ability to change a nation's political system.

Although this scenario is unlikely, it is not altogether hypothetical and its occurrence is well-

documented in history. During the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1989), the Chilean arpilleristas

combined their collective memories of brutality with their traditional gender roles to at first

privately share grievances of their "disappeared" loved ones and eventually to protest the regime

in place. These poverty-stricken women of shanty towns met in clandestine workshops and

formed a grassroots organization to create tapestries woven from their own garments and hair to

sell to foreign markets. The arpilleristas soon realized the power held by their collective memory

and tapestry work. Politically mobilized, the women began to outwardly protest the government's

attempts to conceal and ignore their memories. National and international attention to their cause

resulted in democracy's defeat of Pinochet's regime. This essay will show how a collective

memory framework of persecution led to a political awakening for these women. An exploration

such as this will uncover that perhaps the most enduring political movements begin with the

uneducated whose blood, sweat, and tears are found within its basis.

Dayna L. Caldwell is curator of the Mildred Huie Museum on St. Simons Island, Georgia, an

institution showcasing the life works of a local impressionist artist. Currently, Dayna, a native of

Flint, Michigan and a graduate of Michigan State University, is a Master of Arts candidate in Art

History at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. Completion of this degree

is expected in Spring 2012 with a thesis project focused on Native North American Art. Dayna

also writes a professional blog exploring current issues in the museum and art gallery worlds

through the perspective of art history.

Peruvian Textile Traditions: Stability and Transition

Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez

The Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco was founded in 1996 at a time when textile

traditions in the Cusco region of the Andes were in danger of disappearing. Younger generations

were not learning to weave nor were they familiar with the cultural history underlying weaving

and dyeing. Today the center serves over 350 adults and 250 children in nine Andean

communities. The story of this transition reflects the center's goals of revival and preservation

and their focused growth over 15 years. Topics to be discussed in this paper include the center's

dedication to: producing high quality textiles, establishing community-based weaving

associations, formation of mentoring partnerships for teaching weaving between older women

and children, establishing a study collection of textiles for weavers and an exhibition gallery for

visitors, and contributing to tourism through weaving demonstrations and classes for guests. As

the center has grown, new challenges have emerged. The need for product innovation and change

in the increasingly competitive market must be balanced with fostering continuity with the past,

one of the Center's major objectives. Maintaining a fair trade approach to paying fair wages for

the intensive labor involved in weaving is tested at a time when customers are experiencing an

economic downturn. Finding ways to create a democratic organization among individuals who

vary widely in age, education, and experience, given cultural norms of respect for elders and

their leadership, presents another area for exploration. The paper will address both how the

center is addressing these issues and how the artisans are responding.

Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez is founder and Director of the Center for Traditional Textiles in

Cusco, Peru. The nonprofit organization has worked to revive and preserve the extraordinary

tradition of finely woven Andean textiles and to promote economic development. As a master

weaver, spinner, and knitter, she has traveled widely, giving lectures workshops, and

demonstrations at institutions such as Harvard University, Cornell University, the University of

Colorado, the Peabody Museum of Fine Arts, the M.H. de Young Museum, and the International

Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe. Ms. CallaÒaupa has authored Weaving in the Peruvian

Highlands: Dreaming Patterns, Weaving Memories.

Democratizing Designs? The 1951 Festival Pattern Group's Surface Designs for Textiles

Emily Candela

For the post-war British government, design and science were political issues. At the dawn of the

Atomic Age, bringing together science, the arts, and industry was thought to be "essential 'if

Western Civilisation [was] to survive'".[1] Science had to be embedded safely within the public

realm, and the post-war government's drive to domesticate and democratize science was key to

its 1951 national exhibition, the Festival of Britain. This paper explores how the textile patterns

of the Festival Pattern Group (FPG), a project for this exhibition, were deployed toward the

government's goals of uniting science with design and democratizing both scientific knowledge

and 'sophisticated' taste amidst the emergence of a new mass culture. The FPG brought together

manufacturers and scientists to produce surface designs based on diagrams of the atomic

structures of matter. The project was to educate the public on a new complex science, promoting

the friendly 'atomic' of atomic structures over the destructive connotations of nuclear science.

The effort to pursue government aims through pedagogical patterns also extended to the FPG's

remit within the larger legislation of public taste associated with officially-sanctioned 'good

design' in post-war Britain. My original archival research, focusing on the visual materials of the

FPG, examines the group's struggle and ultimate failure to design patterns that achieved these

goals. I analyze their inability to educate and communicate with the public through the language

of pattern, and draw out points of resonance with efforts to communicate the increasingly

political realm of science through textile design today. [1]. Official Festival of Britain planning

document quoted in Becky E. Conekin, 'The autobiography of a nation': The 1951 Festival of

Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 58.

Emily Candela is a PhD student undertaking an Arts & Humanities Research Council funded

Collaborative Doctoral Award across the Royal College of Art and the Science Museum. Her

research focuses on the interface of the science of X-ray crystallography and material culture in

post-war Britain.

When Dyes Were Weapons

Dominique Cardon

This paper will discuss the crucial role of the quality of the dyes and beauty of the colours in the

commercial war between France and England in the 18th century to dominate the markets for

broadcloth in the Levant and other parts of the world. The discussion will be illustrated with

dyers' notebooks with samples and sample cards of new trend shades that were distributed to the

local correspondants of the clothiers. Parallels will be made with the present situation of world

economy.

Dominique Cardon is a world-renowned textile historian, specialising in cloth of the Middle

Ages and also an authority on the subject of dyes and their history. Her books include "Le

Monde des Teintures Naturelles" and "Natural Dyes: Sources, Tradition, Technology and

Science" (Archetype Books). She is the recipient of numerous honours and awards, including a

UNESCO award for 'Thinking and Building Peace' through her coordination of an international

workshop on Natural Dyes in November 2006 in Hyderabad, India.

Sustainable Collaborations: Color Collective

Sarah Gotowka, Carissa Carman, Johanna Autin

How do you re-establish a conscious intimate relationship to material in a culture where material

sources are so disconnected and removed from the hands? What aesthetics and qualities are lost

in each degree of removal from handmade to technologically made fabric? The session will

investigate the relationship between organically grown natural dyes and video, and question the

contemporary appropriation of ancient traditions where materials and skill sharing function as a

common language. Where does the artwork exist in a multi-disciplinary, collaborative exchange

in new media and agriculture? Since 2009 The Color Collective project has sustainably grown

and harvested plants for natural dying processes, cultivating by hand with the absence of

machinery, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers. This invested research and appropriation of

ancient knowledge resulted in Color Rhythm, an immersive video and sound installation that

captured the repetitive rhythm surrounding the labor of these actions. This collaboration speaks

to the emotional distance between people and cloth, people and food, people and earth, while it

also bridges the distance through a literal merging of the two mediums; the handmade and

technology.

THE COLOR COLLECTIVE (Johanna Autin, Carissa Carman, and Sarah Gotowka) is a

collaboration of color as a sustainable medium, a physical experience and a spiritual practice that

investigates the ritual surrounding the cultivation of color. This is a two year project that began

with the support from Concordia University Greenhouse to evolve into a partnership with La

Ferme LÈgumes Aux d'Hiverts in St-FÈlix-de-Valois, Quebec.

"We, the undersigned, employees of the Salem Linen Mills, want to work:" The Role of

Politics in the Decline of Oregon's Linen Industry, the 1940s,"

Vanessa Casad and Susan Torntore

Oregon's Willamette Valley was home to a relatively unknown US commercial linen industry

from late 19th through mid-20th century. The dream was to create an industry to compete

internationally with Ireland and Belgium, and through the 1920s it appeared this dream would be

realized. For example, in 1915, a major flax processing plant was established at the Oregon State

Penitentiary, allowing farmers to increase flax acreage, get flax processed with low labor costs,

and provide private mills with high quality fiber tow. The early industry produced rope and twine

and, by late 1920s, such woven products as draperies and toweling. In the 1930s, although

Oregon joined the Works Progress Administration to construct three new processing plants, their

linen industry struggled through federal protectionist economic policies and high tariffs of the

depression. The 1940 plea of mill workers in the paper's title was made not by workers without

jobs, but employees without fiber to spin or weave. A further appeal in their petition to the state

Board of Control, "Please do not ship the fiber away," illustrates a complex set of state and

federal political factors, including public vs. private production, anti-prison labor sentiment,

gender issues, and a lack of appropriate logistics control systems. This paper focuses on the role

state politics played in production for these workers in the 1940s and how political ambiguities

and inadequacies hastened the demise of Oregon's linen industry. It is a compellingly relevant

story in the history of US textile production.

Vanessa A. Casad is a graduate student at the University of Idaho, School of Family and

Consumer Sciences. For her master's thesis, she is researching Oregon's historical linen industry,

examining the products of the industry and causes of its demise from 1920 to 1960. Vanessa has

been a graduate teaching assistant for University of Idaho's undergraduate apparel design and

construction studio courses and the senior capstone course. She holds a bachelor's degree (2009)

in Clothing, Textiles & Design from University of Idaho and expects to graduate with her

master's of science degree in spring 2012.

Susan J. Torntore, PhD, is faculty at University of Idaho; she teaches textiles, research methods,

dress history and cultural perspectives, and material culture studies. She has 30 years experience

as a collections curator, has designed museum facilities, and curated major exhibitions. Current

research focuses on understanding issues of sustainability related to production and use of coral

as a natural resource. Her second book, "Guide to the Identification of Precious and Semi-

Precious Corals in Commercial Trade" (2011), was published by World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

She holds a master's (1999) and PhD (2002) from University of Minnesota.

The Politics of Purple

Karen Diadick Casselman and Takako Terada

Dyes from shellfish ('murex') and lichens ('orchil') originated before 1000 BCE. Murex and

orchil became symbolic of Roman privilege. Purple also attained iconic value as an emblem of

wealth and power. Politics played a role in dye manufacture, as witness the male-dominated

purple dye works which were later 'invaded' by female workers. This present study investigates

these political issues by replicating the actual murex and orchil method. As we are a female

team, our work here confronts references to so-called secret methods which women were

(according to earlier historians) unlikely to grasp. Experiments undertaken by our Japanese-

Canadian team have revealed features of puple which shed light on political issues. For example,

murex and orchil were often used TOGETHER, a strategy that may have developed as a

response to depletion of one organism or the other at times of ecological stress. Ancient texts

hint at murex/orchil combinations as subterfuge, interpreted by some present historians as

fraudulent dyes. By contrast, our work shows that together, murex and orchil produce an

IMPROVED dye, one with enhanced fastness and great beauty. There was also a concomitant

economic bonus with murex/orchil dyes. Murex was more labour-intensive, and so adding orchil

saved time and money. Our replication of murex and orchil purples provides a lens through

which to view political and cultural aspects of ancient purple manufacture.

Karen Diadick Casselman, author of CRAFT OF THE DYER and LICHEN DYES: THE

SOURCE BOOK has worked as a dye practitioner and dye instructor in more than 20 countries.

She holds a doctorate in History and is also a lichenologist. Currently Karen collarobates on dye

research with colleagues in the USA and Japan. Her particular interests include purple, and the

role of gender in dyeing.

Takako Terada is a professor at Kwassui Womens University, Department of Design and Science

for Human Life, in Nagasaki, Japan, and a vice president of the International Workshop on

Shellfish Purple Dyeing. She holds a doctorate in Engineering Science and a master's degree of

Home Economics. Her current areas of research interest are include shellfish purple and Japanese

embroidery. Her field research has been done in 22 countries.

Political Love-Hate as Embodied in Meifu Li Women's Head Cloths

Lee Chinalai

While textiles and clothing have obvious political importance among tribal cultures in terms of

identity, status, age and gender, TSA's 2012 topic inspired me to look more deeply: how, for

instance, do the various tribal groups- who are almost unvaryingly minority peoples within their

countries - view, interact with, adapt to, depend on, conflict with, confront or become absorbed

by the dominant culture and government, and how might all of this be illustrated through their

textiles? By focusing on one group of textiles from one tribal group to exemplify others, I intend

to formulate a possible response. Several years ago, doing research on the Meifu Li, a sub-tribe

of the Li of Hainan, China, I engaged a translator to read the Chinese characters that Meifu

women often embroidered in silk on their cotton head cloths. The resulting article described the

head cloths but it did not analyze them from a political standpoint. Yet these particular textiles

are a paradigm of the hierarchical relationship between men and women and between the sub-

culture and the prevailing culture and government, in this case the Han Chinese. Even unreadable

characters convey meaning: the majority culture is ascendant, its symbols are exotic and potent;

the government holds political, military and economic sway over the minority. Is the outcome for

tribal people admiration or resentment, a desire to emulate or distance themselves, none of this or

all, and how is this reflected and represented through the Meifu Li head cloths?

Lee Chinalai and her husband Vichai have lived and worked in Thailand and Bahrain and

traveled in Southeast Asia and China for their business, Chinalai Tribal Antiques. They've

curated several textiles exhibits; and in 2005 received a Rockefeller Foundation residency. Lee

attended graduate school in Asian Studies at UC, Berkeley, and has authored and co-authored a

number of articles, including "Written in Silk, Meifu Li Head Cloths with Writing" and

"Ceremonial Dragon Covers of the Li" for HALI Magazine. Lee has spoken about textiles for the

Textile Arts Council at the De Young Museum and at previous TSA symposiums.

Politics and Economics of Cotton in India: Organic by Default

Mani Chinnaswamy

India has the distinction of being the world's largest planter of cotton with 12 million hectares

under cultivation. Of this, a fraction produce organic cotton and account for 51 per cent of the

world's organic cotton production. On the flip side, India has the largest numbers of farmer-

suicides every season. In the last 10 years, more than 200,000 farmers have taken their own lives,

desperate about not being able to pay their debts and purchase seeds and other inputs. Since

independence, cotton farming in India has undergone a sea change, from centuries-old traditional

organic farming, through input-heavy 'green revolution' monoculture and development of

hundreds of hybrids, to current GMO technology. It is time for the cycle to return to India's

heritage of traditional organic cultivation. Today 90 percent of Indian cotton is GMO. Many

cotton farmers are small-holders, owning less than a hectare of land that is fast losing its fertility.

These resource-poor farmers are automatic victims of dirty politics, unfair policies, corrupt

administration and an exploitation by input suppliers and middlemen. Now climate change also

contributes to their misery. The Indian economy is vibrant and growing, which in turn puts

tremendous pressure on farming communities to produce more. Chemical input-based farming,

can never revive the depleted soils. This is the right time to encourage the conversion of

conventional cotton farming to organic. Sustained empowerment and policy intervention could

come to the rescue of thousands of small-holder cotton farmers and support them in converting

to organic cultivation.

Mani Chinnaswamy, born on 10th Febrary 1968, hails from a 3rd generation cotton family, in

Tamil Nadu, India. He is an M.B.A, from Philadelphia College of Textiles &Science

(Philadelphia University), Philadelphia, U.S.A. He pioneered the Cotton Contract Farmig Model

in India and partnered with his wife Vijayalakshmi Nachiar to launch India’s first “Ethical

Fashion Label – “ETHICUS”, an inclusive growth project involving resource poor organic

farmers of Western Ghats and the traditional handloom weavers of Pollachi. He is a member of

Organic Cotton Advisory Board & Working Group on National Fibre Policy, Ministry of

Textiles, Govt. of India.

Sisters and Others: The Power and Politics of Weaving Supplementary Weft Textiles in a

Sa'dan Toraja village

Maria Christou

The weaving of textiles in Sa'dan Toraja, a district on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, is

layered with many social and cultural influences. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in three

Sa'dan Toraja villages, I suggest the matriarchial social organization of the village life is the

most significant factor influencing the production and sales of textiles. The status and hiearchy

of the matriarchies is controlled by the local belief system adhered to by the Sa'dan Toraja

known as adat. Several government proposals for weaving cooperatives have been assigned and

distributed throughout the Sa'dan Toraja area, however only two have been accepted by the local

population due to the social and political organization of the local hierarchial matriarchies. The

weaving co-operative projects are supported by local government legislation, but when it is time

for distribution of the funding only the weavers belonging to the hight status matriarchies will

come forward and receive the funds. Weavers from lower status matriarchies will not come

forward because by doing so they would be going against the religious and socio-cultural

customs governing their society. The high status matriarchies also control the weaving of textiles

by not sharing their knowledge of the supplementary weft techniques and most importantly, the

knowledge of warping. Without this technical skill no weaving can take place. Traditional

weaving knowledge is passed from one group of sisters to their daughters and shared only within

this social group; thereby, preserving their knowledge and maintaining their exclusive status.

Maria Christou received her B.A. degree in cultural anthropology from the University of British

Columbia. As a student curator at the UBC Museum of Anthropology, she became interested in

woven structures, and continued her studies at Capilano College, receiving a Diploma in Clay

and Textiles. She received her M.A. degree from the University of Alberta, her thesis is titled

"An ethnographic study of the loom and weaving of the Sa'dan Toraja of To'Barana'." She was

granted a World University Service of Canada participants's award that enabled her to locate the

Sa'dan Toraja field area.

Uncut

Hazel Clark

Uncut: The materiality of textiles and the politics of sustainment in fashionable clothing In the

contemporary world, where visual communication gains greater authority, human beings are

becoming more detached from the materiality of their clothing. Fashionable garemnts in

particular are promoted, sold and bought on how they look, not what they are made of. Arguably

this encourages the excessive waste that surrounds fashion, where clothes become relegated to

the status of mere perishables. In production, similarly, an estimated 15% of the fabric used to

create a piece of clothing ends up in a landfill. This paper examines this situation conceptually

and practically, and in doing so proposes that the politics of sustainment in fashionable clothing

must acknowledge further the materiality and wholeness of the textiles from which clothes are

produced. Conceptually, the paper draws upon 'thing theory' and in particular the recent work of

political theorist Jane Bennett on 'vital materiality'. This provides a framework to analyze the

work of designers who are well known for their respect of the integrity of cloth, such as Issey

Miyake in Japan, alongside designers who have reused fabrics, or who have engaged with 'zero

waste' methods of pattern cutting, such as Natalie Chanin, Yeohlee Teng, Timo Rissanen in the

United States, or Julian Roberts in the U.K., all of whom are know internationally. Through these

examples, it will be argued that consideration of the material condition of textiles is a crucial

factor, both theoretically and practically, in the politics of more sustainable clothing.

Hazel Clark is Research Chair of Fashion at Parsons the New School for Design, New York,

where she recently initiated the MA in Fashion Studies, and MA in Design Studies. She is a

design historian and theorist with a specialist interest in fashion, textiles, and design and cultural

identity. Her publications include The Cheongsam (2000), the co-edited Old Clothes, New

Looks: Second Hand Fashion (2005), The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity, and

Globalization (2009), Design Studies: A Reader (2009), and the forthcoming, co-authored,

Fashion and Everyday Life: Britain and America, 1890-2010.

Politics and Production in China's Silk Industry during the Korean War (1950-3)

Robert Cliver

The Chinese Communist Party's seizure of power in 1949 brought tremendous changes to

China's society, economy and political system. But the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950,

especially China's entry into that war again the U.S., South Korea and U.N. troops in October of

that year, proved to be a powerful impetus for revolutionary change in the People's Republic of

China. During the Korean War the CCP implemented campaigns to eliminate counter-

revolutionaries from Chinese society, to implement a far-reaching program of land reform, to

discipline government officials and errant capitalists, and to promote patriotic production

competitions and donations for the war effort among urban manufacturing businesses. While

none of these developments was as widespread or successful as claimed by either the Chinese

Communists or foreign observers, the changes in society, politics, patriotism, and factory life

were often quite profound. In the case of the two branches of the silk industry, developments in

industrial production during the Korean War help to highlight the stark differences in the

experiences of revolution among different groups of workers. Shanghai's silk weavers, who were

mostly men and among the best-paid and most privileged textile workers, gained a great deal

from the revolution and the increase in silk exports to the Soviet Union during China's war in

Korea. In contrast, silk thread mill or filature workers, who were mostly young women who

reeled thread from cocoons under miserable working conditions, found that little or nothing

changed following the Communist seizure of power. Male supervisors continued to exploit and

oppress female workers through a brutal and patriarchal managerial regime that, when combined

with the political mobilization for the war effort produced hardship, injustice and inevitably

resistance.

Dr. Cliver received his Ph.D. in modern Chinese history from Harvard University in 2007. His

forthcoming book "Red Silk: Class, Gender and Revolution in China's Yangtse Delta Silk

Industry" is a study of Yangtse Delta silk workers in the 1950s, comparing the experiences of

female filature workers and male silk weavers in China's Communist-led revolution. He

currently teaches history at Humboldt State University in California.

Local Politics of a Senegalese Textile Cooperative, and a Global Textile Market

Laura Cochrane

Woven textiles, with a 1,000 year history in West Africa, are today tools for sustainable

development in many communities. Central Senegal shares in this weaving history, yet it also

has a recent history of drought that has destroyed local economies. The village of Ndem, in

central Senegal, has drawn on its past as a weaving village to create an artisanal cooperative, to

revive its local economy. This cooperative has grown to attract European clients for its woven

and tailored clothing and household goods. Ndem's cooperative, though, continues to struggle to

bridge cultural and political gaps between its local weavers and tailors, and its clients in a global

textile market. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with leaders of the Ndem cooperative, this

paper will address these struggles. While Ndem's tailors may not understand European

expectations for tailored clothes, their European clients do not understand the conditions in

which the weavers and tailors work, including a lack of water and electricity. Ndem's

administrators are mediators between the local political structures of the cooperative, and the

global markets in which there is no room for product error. Ndem's experiences highlight the

complex relationships between rural textile producers and global markets, particularly in the

midst of international economic crises. How do local efforts at sustainable development work

within such a difficult environment?

Laura L. Cochrane is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Central Michigan University. She

received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2007. Her book

Weaving through Islam in Senegal analyzing everyday practices of Sufism in two weaving

communities is forthcoming with Carolina Academic Press. Her ongoing research concerns

religious identities, visual arts, and environmental and economic concerns within Senegal.

From Silk Road to Cotton Field: Weaving Uzbek Identity

Mary Elizabeth Corrigan

Beginning any research project necessitates casting a large net. The language used by an object's

creators, scholars, collectors and critics must be analyzed with an eye to Bourdieu's observation

that classifications can be used to study the classifiers and the classified. Through the analysis of

an early twentieth-century men's silk and cotton ikat robe from the present-day Republic of

Uzbekistan, this research draws together seemingly unrelated threads. Threads backward through

time situate the robe as part of the Silk Road; other threads connect current media attention to the

Uzbek cotton industry and labor practices. Ikat fabrics are currently mass-produced in

Uzbekistan, while at the same time master weavers are depicted as reviving a lost tradition out of

the ashes of post-Soviet Central Asia. Ikat weavers' collaboration with fashion designers lend

credibility to Uzbek ikat techniques and aesthetics, while the Uzbek President's daughter had her

2011 New York Fashion Week show canceled after protests over Uzbekistan's human rights

record. Uzbekistan was once a region of independent Silk Road cities. During the nineteenth

century, it was conquered by the Russian Empire because of their cotton production, then

became part of the Soviet Union. Uzbekistan's President is forging a strong national identity

rooted in the region's history, but faces problems of post-colonial nation-building with

overlapping borders of culture, religion, language and ethnicity. Using the ikat coat as a focal

point for this study, the political and historical factors that influenced its creation and

interpretation will situate this coat in its cultural context.

Mary Elizabeth Corrigan is a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island, studying

Textile Conservation within the Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design department. Her

interest in textiles was fostered by her mother's collection of costume books and fabrics. Her

professional experience includes volunteering and interning at costume collections, living history

sites, co-curating and installing exhibitions in URI's Textile Gallery and managing the Textile

Conservation Lab at URI. She relishes figuring out tricky period construction methods and

identifying mysterious objects. Someday Mary Elizabeth will finish the reproduction eighteenth-

century quilted petticoat that is collecting dust while she writes her thesis.

Clothing as Interface: Cross Cultural Muslim Identity

Annet Couwenberg

Clothing as Interface: Cross Cultural Muslim Identity. The headscarf as a signifier of

demarcation as it is relevant to religion, politics, identity and belonging come together with the

concept of clothing as interface to create a clear statement to the observer. Clothing as interface,

clothing for the body is a non-verbal way to communicate of whom we are, to create a link, to

connect, to fuse or divide us. This presentation is mining the headdress focusing on political

intercultural relations, cultural displacement and integration of Muslim immigrant women. With

the polarization of the veiling issue in the media and in politics, there has been very little space

for acknowledgement of the diversity of Muslim women's perspective on the headdress. By

establishing Sewing Sessions and participating in Turkish Oya lace making workshops in a

community center back in my home country, The Netherlands it was my specific interest to

mediate a conversation about cultural displacement/ integration with immigrant women like

myself. In this collaborative participatory project I reached out to non-Dutch born Muslim

women to address issues surrounding the headdress, learn from each other, have open dialogue

and an exchange of beliefs and viewpoints about the clothes they wear and how it shapes their

identity. Cultural heritage offers a way of understanding and bridging cultural differences.

Textile is a richly coded site for addressing issues of cultural heritage and diversity. Sewing and

handicrafts become powerful conduits of communicating heritage, values and norms and can

create safe environments to exchange ideas.

Born in The Netherlands, received a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI and one from

Syracuse University, NY. Telos Art Publishing published a Monograph in 2003. Has exhibited

nationally and internationally, including HOMA Museum in Seoul, Korea, Museum of Arts &

Design in NYC; Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts; 28th Street Studio, NYC;

Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; City Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Decorative Arts Museum,

Little Rock, AK; Textiel Museum, Tilburg, NL. Reviewed in Le Monde, Los Angeles Times,

Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta

Constitution, Philadelphia Inquirer, Fiberarts. Surface Design and Sculpture Magazine.

Neeg tawg rog*: Linguistic consciousness in the Hmong Diaspora

Geraldine Craig

This paper examines how new Hmong textile forms that started in Ban Vinai refugee camp have

served as dialogical performance, spiritual and political agency, and transnational commodity in

the diasporas. These textiles create a hybrid social language that draws from a diversity of

linguistic consciousnesses in a culture where there was not a universally understood writing

system until the mid 20th century. Traditional paj ntaub (flower cloth) garments in Laos were a

primary indicator of Hmong identity and can be seen as an alternate text. The complex, layered

geometric patterns in paj ntaub established ethnic group identification and offered passive

resistance to state-making projects. Hmong women helped impede appropriation into national

majority culture with an active but informal strategic dimension. However, politics of the

Vietnam War brought radical change to Hmong textile production and aesthetics as the Hmong

fled into Thai refugee camps and immigrated to the United States or other countries involved in

the war. New textile forms developed in the refugee camps traveled back to villages in Laos:

story cloths with escape narratives embroidered in pictorial representation, messianic scripts that

were transcribed into reverse appliquÈ and embroidery, re-purposed paj ntaub into Western

garments. Mediators of the refugee experience hybridized Hmong textiles serve as a liminal site

for staging identity as a displaced people. Simultaneously, they maintain a specific textile

tradition upholding a compelling linguistic or narrative capacity, Bakhtin's "single utterance" that

is global and transnational for Hmong in Southeast Asian villages or Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Geraldine Craig is Associate Professor/ Department Head of Art at Kansas State University

(since 2007), was Assistant Director for Academic Programs, Cranbrook Academy of Art (2001-

07) and the James Renwick Senior Fellow in American Craft, Smithsonian Institution (1994-95).

She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1989). Her textile work has been

exhibited around the United States and in England, Japan, Canada, and Mexico. She has

published a monograph on sculptor Joan Livingstone (Telos: London) and ninety-five articles,

reviews and chapters in numerous books and periodicals. Her writing has been translated into

Korean and Mandarin for publications in Asia.

* war-torn people

Textiles of War

Deborah Deacon

Textiles of War: Women's Commentaries on Conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan Shortly after the

events of September 11, 2001, patriotic imagery in the form of American flags began appearing

in traditionally patterned rugs woven by Navajo women and beadwork sold on the reservation.

This was not the first time women's textiles provided a political commentary on the destruction

resulting from warfare. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, rugs

featuring Soviet weaponry and vehicles appeared in the markets of Peshawar. Created by

nomadic Beluch women who experienced the impact of war first-hand, the war rugs helped the

women cope with the violence surrounding their everyday lives and served as a source of income

for families devastated by warfare. War rugs, whose production had ceased with the Soviet

withdrawl, again appeared in Peshawar and the United States after September 11 - this time

made by individual women and in factories by men, women and children. The iconography and

color palette also differ from the originals, as these rugs serve as a means of showing solidarity

with Americans as well as providing sources of income for families once again surrounded by

violence. In the U.S., war imagery became a subject for American textile artists as well. Imagery

on quilts displayed at shows across the country reflected the artists' support for or protest against

American military involvement in the region. These same sentiments appear in the works of

embroiderers, knitters and beaders as they reflect on the impact of the war on American society,

those fighting overseas, and their own lives.

Deborah Deacon grew up in Pennsylvania. She earned a BA in French from Albright College,

then joined the U.S. Navy. As a naval officer, she earned a Master of Arts in Humanities from

Old Dominion University and a Master of Science in Transportation Management from the

Naval Postgraduate School. After retiring, she returned to school, earning a BA and a Ph.D. in

the Theory and History of Art. She curated Stitches of War which examined women's

expressions of the impact of war through textiles. Her current research includes anime/manga,

war art, and women's public art.

Abduction of Helen: A Western Theme in a Chinese Embroidery of the Late Sixteenth

Century

Joyce Denney

The theme of the Trojan War has a long history in works of European tapestry, with examples

surviving from the fourteenth century onward. With the rise of European powers in the global

trade of the sixteenth century, the Trojan War went global, too. A large embroidered and painted

hanging on this theme from the late sixteenth century is in the collection of The Metropolitan

Museum of Art. In this paper, The Abduction of Helen, part of a series on the theme of the

Trojan War, will be discussed in detail; comparative works, both Chinese and European, will

also be shown. A multifigural monumental composition on this very Western theme, with

Western architecture and ship in the background, the piece nonetheless affirms its Asian origins:

The cotton twill foundation cloth probably originated in India. A large number of incidental

details - such as stylized waves and clouds, phoenix-like birds in the border, and particular

embroidery techniques - stand out as Chinese interpretations. The interweaving of elements from

Europe, India, and China points forcefully to the multinational trade empire of Portugal as the

most likely suspect in this "abduction" of Helen to Chinese shores and her "ransoming" in the

export trade back to Europe.

Joyce Denney has been an Assistant Curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's department of

Asian Art since 2007, specializing in East Asian textiles. She has curated and co-curated special

gallery installations at the museum including Astonishing Silhouettes: Western Fashion in

Nineteenth-Century Japanese Prints (2009) and Celebration: The Birthday in Chinese Art (2010).

She has also contributed essays and catalogue entries on textiles and dress to exhibition

catalogues such as The World of Khubilai Khan (2010), The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and

Silverwork, 1530-1830 (2004), and Turning Point: Oribe and the Arts of Sixteenth-Century

Japan (2003).

Can We Study Textiles from Other Cultures without Ethnocentrism? The Andes as a Case

Study

Sophie Desrosiers

The Andes as Case Study Textile studies look like a field where the materiality of the objects

cannot allow us a distorted view. Nevertheless, the textile education we received, and some

methods and tools we use, sometimes impede us from seeing and understanding what is under

our eyes. In some ways, we are not fully ready to recognize the originality and achievement of

Andean weavers' thoughts, a question which is as political, as it is scientific. One example is the

importance given in Western culture to the direction of the warp to indicate the orientation of

tapestries. As long as scholars focused on this feature when looking at pre-Hispanic tunics

woven in the highlands - mainly Wari and Inca - with horizontal warp threads and those woven

on the coast with vertical warp threads, it was not possible to understand that distinction as part

of a large set of oppositions. Only when it became clear that pre-Hispanic Andean weavers

attached more importance to the threads visible on the surface, the weft threads for tapestry, did

the full meaning of the horizontal/vertical opposition emerge. In some areas from the Early

Horizon, this opposition reveals a geographical contrast between coastal and highland male

tunics, and, if considering also the direction of the openings for head and arms, a gender contrast

between female and male main garments in both regions and in the Amazonian piedmont.

Considering these and other examples will demontrate how difficult it is for Western eyes to take

off their culturally-colored glasses when looking at Andean textiles.

Sophie Desrosiers, PhD in anthropology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

(1979) is maÓtre de confÈrences since 1990. She was technical secretary, Centre International

d'Etude des Textiles Anciens (CIETA), Lyon for 5 years. Her research deals with Andean

textiles, silks between China and the West, and archeological textiles. Among her publications,

are catalogues of the Andean textiles of the Musei Civici di Modena (Tessuti precolombiani with

Ilaria Pulini, ModËne: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1992) and late antique and medieval Cluny

Museum textile collections (Soieries et autres textiles de l'AntiquitÈ au XVIe siËcle, Paris,

RÈunion des MusÈes Nationaux, 2004 ).

Luxurious Merovingian Textiles Excavated from Burials in the Saint Denis Basilica,

France, 6th/ 7th century

Sophie Desrosiers and Antoinette Rast-Eicher

A new examination of the textile fragments found in the Merovingian burials in the basilica of

Saint Denis, near Paris, has recently underscored the diversity of fabrics used to make garments

in which members of the royal court were buried. Among them, some woolens of fine quality

had been dyed with indigotin. The most astonishing fibre found belongs to a mixed textile (not

skin) with beaver fibers and wool. Silks contained shellfish purple and in one case kermes?two

dyestuffs associated with royalty and privilege. Along with this was large number of gold

threads, probably produced locally and that were used in tablet-woven borders or for

embroideries. In addition, several figured silks, of oriental origin, testify to the importance of this

"foreign" material and the taste for textiles woven with complex techniques and probably what

had originally had beautiful designs. Although none of these designs have been preserved and

many colors have been greatly damaged, the technical characteristics of the remnants indicate

proveniences as far as Byzantium, Sassanid Persia and the Chinese court. Such precious textiles

show the high social status and political power of the Merovingian court, a testament to their

ability to access such luxurious and costly textiles through diplomacy and/or trade with other

powerful empires. The examination of these rare textiles along with other fine silks and luxury

objects from the same period found in France expand our view of the fundamental role of textiles

in the political sphere of this early period of European history.

Sophie Desrosiers, PhD, anthropology (1979), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,

Paris, has been maÓtre de confÈrences there since 1990. For 5 years she was technical secretary

at the Centre International d'Etude des Textiles Anciens (CIETA), Lyon. She considers textiles

as fine identity, social and intellectual indicators. Her research deals with Andean textiles, silks

between China and the West, and archeological textiles from Xinjiang and Europe. Publications

include catalogues of collections in the Musei Civici di Modena (Tessuti precolombiani ,with

Ilaria Pulini, 1992) and the Cluny Museum (Soieries et autres textiles de l'AntiquitÈ au XVIe

siËcle, 2004)

Dr. Antoinette Rast-Eicher, born in Bern, studied archaeology and history in Bern, 1994/95

scholarship from the Swiss National Foundation (UMIST/Manchester). Her Ph.D was on Celtic

textiles in Switzerland. She has been a free-lance archaeologist since 1992, with projects in

Switzerland and European countries on archaeological textiles. Her main subjects are fibres,

early medieval and Celtic textiles.

A Lover of the Beautiful: Harriet Coulter Joor's Textile Designs and the Pursuit of the

American Arts and Crafts Ideal

Margaret Dimock

Although not as consistently well-preserved or heavily studied as furniture, pottery and other

decorative items of their era, American Arts and Crafts textiles from the first decades of the

twentieth century were often less expensive and more readily attainable than other home

furnishings of the same style. These textiles offered middle-class Americans an opportunity to

incorporate the Arts and Crafts aesthetic into their homes. As this paper will show, artist and

designer Harriet Coulter Joor (1875-1965) not only helped to establish the prevailing stylistic

conventions of Arts and Crafts textiles in the United States, she also encouraged American

women to create their own domestic textiles by hand. In doing so Joor introduced and

popularized the ethos of the Arts and Crafts Movement - an outlook that prized objects made by

hand using simple, humble materials. Recently it has come to light that Joor designed many of

the needlework household textiles sold by American Arts and Crafts impresario Gustav Stickley.

She also wrote instructional articles on textile design, published in many popular shelter

publications and women's magazines of the time including House Beautiful, Good

Housekeeping, and Stickley's magazine The Craftsman - the leading mouthpiece of the Arts and

Crafts Movement in the United States. This paper will examine Joor's contribution to the

aesthetic conventions of American Arts and Crafts textiles in the early twentieth century, and

consider how her published design articles advocated for the incorporation of handicraft into the

lives of newly emerging middle-class American women.

Margaret Dimock holds a Masters degree in the History of Decorative Arts from the Corcoran

College of Art and Design in partnership with The Smithsonian Associates. Her thesis, "'A Lover

of the Beautiful:' Harriet Joor and the Pursuit of the American Arts and Crafts Ideal" was

submitted in spring 2012. She studied Art History and Anthropology at St. Mary's College of

Maryland. Margaret currently serves as assistant to the art committee at the Cosmos Club in

Washington D.C. and coordinates the digitizing of historic music periodicals at the Library of

Congress.

Getting Through the Day: Textiles as Memory

Frances Dorsey

The Bayeux Tapestry is among the oldest textile documents about war. Tellingly, its subject

matter deals more with the preamble to the Norman Invasion of Britain; who did what, where

and to whom; than the battle itself or its aftermath. Reference to that can be found at the British

Cemetery entrance, for those who died during D-Day 900 years later. "We who were conquered

have returned to liberate our conquerors". History has a long memory and the past is never

neutral. In Santa Barbara on Sunday at dawn participants gather to unfold rows of wooden

markers that commemorate Americans who died in the current conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Their movements echo weaving, the fabric they lay on the beach a kind of tablecloth. My work

concerns aftermath and memory; an empty place at the dinner table, the nostalgic, precious

memory that is polished, gilded, transformed into a persona, almost palpable, never absent. The

dinner table is the site of earliest learning, whether how to hate, how to forgive or simply how to

get through the day as gracefully as possible. The used cloth associated with eating (stained and

worn tablecloths, napkins) offers its material presence to underline the emotional, sensory

language of loss and transformation. We cherish garments worn by beloved people, smell their

scents, touch the empty contours. No material better communicates corporeal presence or

absence. This presentation explores relationships between these seemingly disparate notations,

forged by textile structure.

Frances Dorsey, Associate Professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Canada, has

exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is in public and private collections. She has

also received grants from Canada Council and other organizations. Trained as a weaver, for

many years her work has engaged dye and print processes. Working with used table linens,

natural dyes and extracts, and dirt, mud and oxides, she explores the metaphoric, symbolic and

physical characteristics of cloth and human experience. Her work frequently addresses issues of

war and dislocation, drawing upon personal and familial memories.

The Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials (1962-1995)

Giselle Eberhard Cotton

For over thirty years the International Tapestry Biennials were held in the city of Lausanne

(Switzerland), making it the world capital of contemporary textile art. The event had come into

being thanks to the encounter of Pierre Pauli (1916-1970), the then director of the Decorative

Arts Museum in Lausanne, with Jean LurÁat, the French painter and tapestry designer, who had

instigated the revival of French tapestry after World War II. The Lausanne exhibition was the

first platform - and for many years the only one - to give textile artists the opportunity to explore

new techniques and materials. As a result, textile art enjoyed thirty years of spectacular

development. Artists began abandoning cartoons in favour of autonomous weaving, transforming

the classic wall tapestry into a form of spatial and environmental art. They investigated the

technical and expressive possibilities of unusual materials, as well as inventing and

implementing new techniques. During the 1960's and 1970's, many artists from Eastern Europe -

at that time behind the Iron Curtain - were invited to participate. Switzerland had remained

neutral during WWII and was thus the perfect venue for international shows, far from the

political tensions of the Cold War. It provided a platform for total freedom of artistic expression.

Some examples of artists from Poland, Bulgaria and Romania will show how a small city such as

Lausanne, with no textile tradition of its own, could help launch them on international careers.

Giselle studied art history at the University of East Anglia (GB) and at the Ecole du Louvre

(Paris) before going back to Switzerland, her home country. She has a long experience both

working as curator of private and public collections in Swiss museums and in the auction world.

She joined the Fondation Toms Pauli in 2002, right after its setting up by the state. She is also

director of the ICOM Museum Studies program in Switzerland. In 2010 she edited the catalogue

of the Toms Collection of Tapestries (16th-18th centuries).

Were the Nasrid Sultans Seated on the Same Carpets as the Kings of Aragón?

Heather Ecker

It has long been established that the demand for fine, woolen carpets in the Spanish lands under

Christian dominion in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century was satisfied by production largely

from the region of Albacete. The mechanisms and economics of production and patronage, from

sheep to household interiors have not been well published to date. Also, not well studied is the

place of this particular craft practice within the tradition of art of carpet-weaving in the

Peninsula. These all-wool carpets are made almost entirely with a distinctive single-warp knot,

and in a predominantly bluish palette. Their knot count is high, their structure fine and even,

their length sometimes considerable though they have no significant distortion due to uneven

warp tensions. Contrasting with their high level of finish, their designs?mainly derived from

imported, early Turkish carpets?are folkloric, containing elements such as confronted and

addorsed stylized birds, country women with outstretched fingers (possibly raised in prayer),

women on horse or mule back, chicken coops etc. While these carpets may have satisfied the

need for household splendor of the Christian Spanish aristocracy (particularly with added

heraldic shields), there is no evidence that they were used at or patronized by the contemporary

Nasrid court. Indeed, the Nasrids looked elsewhere for design ideas for carpets as significant

items of palace furniture that would enhance their prestige, chiefly in the early 15th century to

Mamluk Egypt and to Timurid Iran. This paper will propose a new model of production of

carpets in Spain that distinguishes between those made for the Nasrid court and those made by

MudÈjars chiefly for ‘export’.

Heather Ecker is the Head of Curatorial Affairs at the Aga Khan Museum Project in Toronto.

Previously, she was Curator of Islamic Art and Head of the Department of the Arts of Asia and

the Islamic World at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She received her doctorate in Islamic Art and

Archaeology from the University of Oxford in 2000. In 2004, she was the curator of Caliphs and

Kings. The Art and Influence of Islamic Spain at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian

Institution. With Teresa Fitzherbert, she is the co-author of "The Freer Canteen, Reconsidered,"

forthcoming, Ars Orientalis.

Ribbons and Buttons in the House Collection

Farar Elliott

Many textiles survive from presidential campaigns of the 19th and 20th centuries. Far fewer

from congressional campaigns are extant. This paper will present a survey of campaign ribbons

in the collection of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the use of textiles in 19th century

congressional campaigns. Discussion of the role of ribbons in political campaigns, particularly as

they relate to the more durable campaign buttons and pinbacks, will be pursued. Iconography and

text commonly used in ribbons will also be discussed, as well as proposed reasons for their

greater prevalence in national campaigns.

Farar Elliott is the Curator of the House of Representatives.Her office is the custodian of the over

5,000 works of art and historical artifacts in the House Collection. Farar's academic background

is in art history, beginning at Bryn Mawr College and continuing at the George Washington

University. Her work has taken her to the Smithsonian Institution, the Richmond History Center

in Richmond, Virginia, and the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum in Vermont. She has been at the

House of Representatives since 2002, where in addition to her responsibilities in the House she

has been involved in the development of the Capitol Visitor Center and in the local and national

museum and arts communities.

Charles Grant Ellis

Thomas Farnham

Although important oriental carpet collections existed in the United States by the late nineteenth-

century, Americans of that time showed no interest in the study of carpets. In fact, with the sole

exception of Arthur Upham Pope, they doggedly maintained their indifference to carpet studies

throughout the first half of the twentieth century. But during the post-war years, a second

American, Charles Grant Ellis, joined the ranks of carpet scholars. Unlike Pope who studied only

Persian carpets and who based his attributions on design and local lore, Ellis was fascinated with

Caucasian, Egyptian, Central Asian, and Turkish as well as Persian carpets and based his

attributions not on design or local lore but on carpet structure. Working as a Research Associate

of The Textile Museum, he traveled the world examining and preparing detailed notes on

carpets. His publications appeared regularly in the Textile Museum Journal and culminated in his

most important work, Carpets in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fifteen years after his death,

many of his conclusions regarding the provenance and dating of carpets have been called into

question, and as a result, his publications attract far less attention than they once did. The Ellis

Archive at The Textile Museum, on the other hand, remains a treasure trove of information in

part because his extensive correspondence provides unique insights into the thinking of late

twentieth-century carpet scholars and furthermore because his notebooks contain a record of

carpets in depositories large and small throughout the world.

Dr. Thomas J. Farnham is a historian, archivist, and author. He is Professor Emeritus,

Connecticut State University System. He received his PhD degree from University of North

Carolina. He has taught American history at the University of North Carolina and the

Connecticut State University System. He has multiple affiliations. He is a Trustee and Charles

Grant Ellis Archives Research Associate at The Textile Museum. He also serves as Chair,

Publications Committee and member of the executive committee of the International Conference

on Oriental Carpets.

The Political Dimensions of Consumer Demand for Omani Textiles in East Africa

Sarah Fee

This paper considers the political dimensions of the western Indian Ocean trade in handwoven

"Muscat cloth". Today little-known or remembered, these striped and checked wrappers and

turbans were woven in silk and cotton by pitloom weavers in Oman's port towns for both local

use and export. Especially in the 19th century, a large quantity was shipped to East Africa. While

the volume of this trade may have been small relative to imports of cottons from India, Europe

and America, evidence shows that the qualitative impact of Muscat cloth on East African dress,

arts, ritual and economy was significant and enduring. This paper explores the political

dimensions to this trade, namely the strategies and roles of the Sultan in channeling imports and

exports through Zanzibar; the use of Muscat cloth as political insignia for governors of Swahili

towns; its general association with Muslim elites, and the use of the cloth by local African rulers.

Ultimately, the political, economic and religious meanings of the cloth are difficult to

disentangle and together account for the popularity of the cloth.

Dr. Sarah Fee is Associate Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Textiles and Costume at the Royal

Ontario Museum. She holds degrees in anthropology and African studies from Oxford University

and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. With a primary research interest

in Madagascar, she also studies the handweaving traditions of the western Indian Ocean.

Spoliated Textiles and Power Display in Medieval Iberia

Maria Judith Feliciano

In my proposed talk, I intend to elucidate the issue of medieval textile spolia in the construction

of Medieval Iberian power, both regal and ecclesiastic. While there is no doubt that a market-

driven taste for luxury textiles influenced consumption patterns in the Iberian Peninsula--as in

the rest of the Mediterranean world--two other sources of coveted luxury goods also influenced

the Castilian and Aragonese sartorial vocabulary of power. The appropriation of luxury textiles

as booty of war at the end of successful military campaigns against Andalusi territories and the

frequent use of rich cloth as parias (tribute payment) to Castilian and Aragonese rulers

constituted parallel supply lines that were secured through appropriation and dominance. In

evaluating the role of spoliated textiles, my aim is to develop a nuanced discourse that balances

taste and the force of the markets (local and Mediterranean) with the symbolic weight of

appropriation in medieval Iberian visual displays of power.

Maria J Feliciano studies the material culture of the medieval and early modern Iberian world.

She specializes in the study of the so-called "mudejar" arts from the perspective of luxury objects

and consumption.

Ancient Designs for the Modern Era: Artists Interpret Andean Textiles

Blenda Femenías

Artistic re-interpretation of the works of earlier centuries has become a mainstay of modern

design. Textiles bearing Andean designs that appeared on pre-Columbian objects and the

products of contemporary weavers using motifs from their own cultural traditions are well

represented among cloth items used and marketed in Peru today. Only 150 years ago, however,

pre-Columbian Andean textiles were little known. In the early twentieth century, knowledge of

indigenous American cultures increased rapidly as archaeologists excavated previously

unimagined cultural riches. Simultaneously, the international modernist movement toward

streamlined design pushed artists and designers to seek inspirations for their bold new efforts.

Especially but not only for Peruvian artists, both ancient and contemporary Andean cultures

provided abundant inspiration. This paper explores the politics of representation revealed in

twentieth-century interpretations of Andean textile designs and structures. It focuses on the

production of artists who discovered Peru's ancient heritage and, inspired by the aesthetic and

technical virtuosity shown in textiles, created their own, related art works, whether paying direct

homage to the original creators or freely adapting the designs and structures. Prominent among

these are three women, all born in the late 19th century but closely associated with 20th century

modernism. Each promoted indigenous artistry as she produced her own, Andean-inspired

works: Elena Izcue and Julia Codesido (both Peruvian), and Anni Albers (German). The paper

contextualizes these developments within the realm of creativity writ large, examining how

indigenous artists and artisans placement within contemporary art scenes academic fine" arts

education.

Blenda Femenías (Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison) teaches

anthropology at the Catholic University of America and the University of Maryland-University

College. A specialist in gender, race, ethnicity, and art in Latin America, she has conducted

research in the Andes for almost three decades. Current projects include the history of Peruvian

national museums and the transregional configuration of Andean identity in Argentina. The

author of Gender and the Boundaries of Dress in Contemporary Peru (University of Texas Press,

2005), "In Cloth We Trust" and numerous other articles, she is also the author-editor of Andean

Aesthetics: Textiles of Peru and Bolivia.

Sacred Political Threads: Chinese textiles in Solemn Portuguese Religious Celebrations,

16th-18th Centuries

Maria Ferreira

Among the many goods that offer visible testimony of the transmission of Asian material culture

westwards, as a result of the Portuguese Overseas Expansion, Chinese textiles deserve special

attention. Made entirely of silk and following Chinese designs, or adapted to Portuguese taste,

these textiles began reaching by Portugal by way of Guangzhou and Macau, from at least 1557,

and quickly became part of the decorative displays conceived for extraordinary sacred events

performed in Portugal until the 18th century. Careful analysis of contemporary printed texts

describing these ceremonies reveals how textiles were intensely used in church decoration

programs. Chinese textiles, although different in iconographic, plastic, material, technical and

even cromatic aspects from the European, enjoyed enormous prestige among Portuguese and

were considered valid decorative options in solemn sacred celebratory events. However, this

paper intends to demonstrate how the use of this vivid and exotic items intended to be more than

ornamental; living testimonies of Portuguese experience in China, a nation of paramount

importance in the Portuguese overseas empire in the economic and missionary perspective, these

textile works holded a clear political and symbolic valence that in these occasions were stressed

out to remind and project the responsibles for that enterprise, rather in particular the Portuguese

crown and the Society of Jesus.

She has a bachelor degree in Conservation and another in Decorative Arts from the FundaÁ„o

EspÌrito Santo Silva, where she taught as well as at the Universidade TÈcnica de Lisboa and the

Universidade LusÛfona. She has a Master's degree in History of Art from the Universidade

LusÌada de Lisboa and PhD in Portuguese Art History from the Universidade do Porto where she

studied Chinese textiles for the Portuguese market. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the

Centro de HistÛria de AlÈm-Mar, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, where she is studying the usage

of textiles in Portugal (16th to 18th centuries).

Luisa de Jesus and the Plague of the Retilau: Political Violence and Metaphysical

Retribution in East Timor

Jill Forshee

The retilau can destroy everything, concludes Luisa de Jesus' morality tale of the omnipotent

power of textiles inherited through generations in her family. Imbued with motifs and potency of

snake spirits, Luisa reports massive loss of such fabrics --during decades of political violence

when Indonesia occupied her country (1974-1999). Weavers historically guarded techniques,

materials, and exclusive family designs. But years of war left countless fabrics incinerated or

stolen from rightful owners. As East Timorese resistance groups battled Indonesian soldiers,

ordinary people were trapped in the middle, often vulnerable to both sides. From her burning

home in 1981, Luisa saved only the precious strips of cloth her grandmother had passed onto her.

A UN-sponsored referendum in 1999 enabled East Timorese to vote overwhelmingly for

independence but pro-Indonesian militias ravaged the territory, destroying much of the

Indonesian-built infrastructure. Luisa recalls fears and losses through years of tumult--

emphasizing eventual supernatural retribution. She describes how, during the mayhem of 1999,

the retilau exercised its power with a vengeance. Swarms of snakes laid waste to the land of

wrongdoers. Luisa's folkloristic account symbolically settles some wrongs for her, re-

empowering local, kin-based, animistic forces of "the right ordering of the world." Snakes in her

account virulently inflict harm upon those breaking customary laws, especially the privileged

rights of lineages. Through her story, an ancient ethical system resurges, reinvigorating ancestral

authority and local powers persisting through cloth.

Jill Forshee teaches anthropology at Columbia College Chicago. She received her doctorate in

Social-Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Her publications

include "Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba" (2001) and

"Culture and Customs of Indonesia" (2006). Forshee spent 2009 carrying out field research in

Indonesia, funded by a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Award. Her continuing research in

East Timor under the auspices of the UCLA Fowler Museum has been funded by the Asian

Cultural Council and the University of California Pacific Rim Research Program.

Size Matters: Large Scale Abstract Textiles and 1970s Feminism

Cynthia Fowler

This paper is an examination of large scale abstract textiles made by women artists from the late

1960s into the 1970s as they relate to the emergence of the feminist movement in America.

Specifically, the paper will argue that the large scale of these abstract textiles is fundamental to

our understanding of them: As objects occupying public space, they serve as a metaphor for the

reclamation of space by women traditionally rendered to the invisible domain of the domestic

realm, in which their large size insists upon recognition of the political act of reclamation. The

gendered discourse around the significance of size as it relates to textile production is clearly

reflected in the negative critique of the small scale works of textile artist Sheila Hicks as studies

rather than completed works. Hicks herself tried to address this misunderstanding of her smaller

work by creating larger ones. Further focusing the lens of analysis, the paper will specifically

consider large scale works that expressly evoke women's bodies. Claire Zeisler's Red Preview

(1969) and Barbara Chase-Riboud's Confessions to Myself (1972) provide two examples of

works for consideration in this paper. These works raise important questions about 1970s

feminism as it relates to issues such as women's sexuality and the position of women of color

within the feminist movement. Overall, the paper will reflect upon 1970s textiles by women as

they relate to the mandates of the feminist movement and the position of women in 1970s

American culture.

Cynthia Fowler is an associate professor at Emmanuel College. She received her Ph.D. in art

history from the University of Delaware in 2002. Her dissertation examined the modernist

embroideries of Marguerite Zorach. Her publications related to textiles include "Materiality and

Collective Experience: Sewing as Artistic Practice in Works by Marie Watt, Nadia Myre, and

Bonnie Devine," in American Indian Quarterly; and "Hooking Magic: Transforming Women's

Handicraft into Art," in Threading Women: Gender and the Material Culture of Textiles. Her

book Hooked Rugs and American Modernism is expected in 2012. In 2007, she received the

James Renwick Fellowship in American Craft.

The Mizo Thangchhuah Puan

Barbara Fraser

The Mizo are a large sub-group of the Chin (also known as the Zo, Lai or Kuki), a loosely

related group of two million people living in the hills of western Myanmar (Burma), northeastern

India, and southeastern Bangladesh. The Mizo strive to attain merit through success in hunting,

war, accumulation of wealth, and communal feast giving involving a series of five separate

feasts. A Mizo man who has either hosted two complete series of five communal feasts or killed

an entire series of wild animals attains the greatest merit and is known as Thangchhuahpa. Such

men were held in high esteem. A textile called the Thangchhuah puan announces these

accomplishments. No image of an early Thangchhuah puan has yet been published. This paper

recounts the politics involved in the acquisition of three of these important Mizo cloths made

before 1930: one by the Pitt Rivers Museum through a British administrator (figure 1 [detail]),

one by the British Museum Centre for Anthropology through a British missionary who had

obtained it from the warrior chieftain Savunga and one by The Textile Museum in Washington,

D.C. through US researchers (figure 2 [detail])who had obtained it from the granddaughter of the

maker, Mitinchhingi (figure 3 on left), whose husband completed the feast series. It discusses the

importance and ceremonial use of these cloths in the Mizo culture. It describes the material

makeup, the structure and pattern of the cloths. And it relates the continued use of these cloths in

modern Mizo culture.

Barbara G. Fraser for over a decade has studied the textiles of the Chin focusing on their cultural

use. She has spoken internationally about her research including in Singapore, Bangkok and

Washington, D.C. She has co-curated exhibitions of these textiles at The Textile Museum and

the University of Pennsylvania Ross Gallery. She has co-authored several articles and a book,

Mantles of Merit: Chin Textiles from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh, which was awarded both

the Millia Davenport Publication Award of the Costume Society of America and the R.L. Shep

Book Award of the Textile Society of America.

Asymmetry: Aesthetics and Politics of Ply-Split Braiding

David Fraser

Symmetry has been a dominant feature of ply-split braiding, particularly bilateral symmetry in

traditional camel paraphernalia from Rajasthan (image 1) and radial symmetry in modern fiber

art vessels (image 2). Exceptions exist, most notably in camel straps with representational

figures, but they stand out as such. In recent years, however, artists have begun to experiment

with more radically asymmetric forms worked in ply-split braiding. This paper explores reasons

for and effects of the shift away from symmetry. In traditional work, much stake was put in

technical control of material and tension. In much traditional work and symmetric ply-split fiber

art, emphasis was placed on elaborate surface design, rigorously executed (image 1,2). Both

desiderata were spotlighted by symmetry. The move to asymmetry draws on alternative aesthetic

and political ideas. Aesthetically, asymmetry greatly expands the range of forms that can be

created. Breaking the constraints of symmetry has permitted exploration of complex surfaces,

free-form openwork (image 3), and webs of interconnected stalks (image 4). Politically,

asymmetry challenges prevailing criteria of quality by introducing sculpture. However,

inspection of asymmetric ply-split objects shows that successful efforts generally require mastery

of techniques important for creating high quality symmetric ply-split braiding. These include

making of tightly plied cords, controlling tension, anticipating the shaping effect of added and

removed cords, and ensuring the compatibility of structural and surface design choices. Thus,

criteria for judging success in asymmetric ply-split constructions include but extend beyond

those already in place for symmetric work.

David W. Fraser is a fiber artist, specializing in vessels worked in ply-split braiding, a technique

traditionally used by men in Rajasthan to make straps and other decorative paraphernalia for

camels. His exploration of symmetric vessel forms has been published in Shuttle, Spindle &

Dyepot magazine and in the proceedings of the 2010 biennial symposium of the Textile Society

of America. His recent work emphasizes asymmetric forms with complex surfaces and webs of

stalks. He and Barbara Fraser received the R. L. Shep Award for their book Mantles of Merit:

Chin Textiles of Myanmar, India and Bangladesh.

According to Emery: Finding a Voice in her Archives

Lydia Fraser

Irene Emery is undoubtedly one of the most widely recognized textiles scholars. Her publication,

The Primary Structures of Fabrics, became a definitive text upon first publication in 1966; the

phrase, "according to Emery," has since become a familiar element in many textile presentations,

publications, and conversations. Irene Emery's intent in writing The Primary Structures of

Fabrics was to provide an aid in identifying and unambiguously describing fabrics that was

accessible to the knowledgeable and lay alike. Given the widespread inconsistency at the time in

the treatment of textiles in published works, this was certainly no small feat. It is difficult to

convey the sheer volume of work Emery amassed during the nearly twenty years in it took to

complete her book. She consulted thousands of published works (close to 1250 are listed in the

book's bibliography), traveled across the country examining hundreds of textiles, and had

innumerable structural diagrams constructed that possessed a clarity not seen before. Always an

assiduous researcher, Emery also kept copious notes on materials consulted as well as the

evolution of her work. The Textile Museum is the fortunate steward of these fascinating,

informal documents which hold the story of Emery's journey in creating her classification. This

paper presents an overview these myriad archival materials held in The Textile Museum's

collections and explores multiple ways in which they can offer a fresh view of Emery's work.

Lydia Fraser is Librarian of Arthur D. Jenkins Library at The Textile Museum. She has filled a

number of roles at the Museum since 1997 including Assistant Curator of Eastern Hemisphere

Collections and Curatorial Associate for the Lloyd Cotsen Textile Documentation Project. Born

in Canada, Ms. Fraser earned a B.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Toronto and an

M.L.S from the University of Maryland.

Kala Raksha: From Cultural Identity to Intellectual Property

Judy Frater

Through Kala Raksha we explore the dynamic relationship between fashion and tradition, and

examine how mutual influence shaped and reflected changing identity among traditional

embroidery artisans of Kutch, India. In India, ethnic affiliation has predominated over

individuality. Traditional embroidery eloquently expressed this cultural identity. Styles evolved,

but visual expression of group affiliation remained clear. Commercialization of embroidery

indirectly influenced the development of fashion. Women had less time for hand work, but now

had purchasing power. Fashion in turn impacted embroidery. Commercialization eroded the

artisans' aesthetics. Cultural identity was devalued and traditions were diluted. Kala Raksha used

cultural heritage as a key resource. This valuation of traditional styles activated creativity and

revived pride in cultural identity. For a decade, Kala Raksha successfully promoted

contemporary crafts with cultural integrity. In the New Millennium, fashion and increased choice

encouraged the concept of the individual. Kala Raksha began to think away from the industrial

model, and to consider intellectual property. The Trust returned to maintaining and valuing

cultural identity realizing that the artist is the steward of tradition. In 2005, the Trust founded

Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya, the first design school for artisans, as a sustainable solution for the

survival of traditions, and in 2010, it launched Artisan Design, a trademark to certify that a

product is an artisan's own creative innovation. The cultural evolution of a stronger individual

identity created a space for the concept of intellectual property. Artisan Design accesses

intellectual property for development and greater value.

Judy Frater is Co-founder and Project Coordinator for the Kala Raksha Trust, a 1,000 person

artisan group in Bhuj, India. She has guided the enterprise through their 17 years, culminating in

the first design school in India specifically for traditional artisans. Ms. Frater has been awarded

an Asoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship and the 2009 Sir Misha Black Medal for

Distinguished Services to Design Education. She is author of Threads of Identity: Embroidery

and Adornment of the Nomadic Rabaris. Ms. Frater has also served as Associate Curator of the

Eastern Hemisphere Collections at the Textile Museum, in Washington, DC.

Body of Evidence: Slave Clothing Descriptions as Evidence of Political Attitudes Towards

Slavery in Brazil, 1815-1840

Kelly Gage and Sarah Olson

Shock, dismay and revulsion are expressed in diaries written by European travelers confronted

with the culture of slavery in Brazil in the early decades of the nineteenth century. These

travelers were often experiencing slavery for the first time and recorded detailed impressions of

the living conditions of slaves, including their clothing, from the vantage point of their anti-

slavery countries of origin. Countering these written interpretations of slave dress are runaway

slave advertisements, written for Brazilian slave owners in effort to obtain the return of their

slave. These advertisements provide detailed descriptions of clothing and body descriptors with a

very different representation of slave treatment in terms of textile and clothing wear. Focusing on

twelve traveler diaries and 75 runaway slave advertisements produced between 1815 and 1840,

this paper presents contrasting views and opinions on clothing, culture, and political attitudes

held by the writers and surrounding nineteenth-century slavery in Brazil. In light of the fact that

extant AfroBrazilian slave garments and dress artifacts are very limited, evidence found in

alternative text and archival-based sources is all the more important in assessing the true nature

of slave dress and political factors that affected individual's reactions to that dress. Comparative

analysis of runaway slave advertisements and diary descriptions balanced with visual images

provides examples of clothing, culture and ritual of AfroBrazilians. Through interpretation of

this evidence, obvious distinctions between clothing of social classes in Brazil emerge that are

highly charged with political and ideological leanings of pro- versus anti-slavery systems of

government.

Kelly Gage received her doctorate from the Department of Design, Housing and Apparel at the

University of Minnesota in 2008. With a background in art history and interest in material

culture studies, Kelly approaches dress with an interest in clothing as a means of communication,

tied to cultural and contextual influences. Her research focus centers on socio-cultural aspects of

clothing with particular attention to the dress of the African slave population in nineteenth-

century Brazil using runaway slave advertisement, travel diaries and photographs as bases for

analysis. She is currently an Assistant Professor at St. Catherine University.

Sarah Olson graduated from the University of St. Thomas in May 2010 with a B.A. in Art

History. She interned in the Decorative Arts and Textiles department at the Minneapolis Institute

of Arts for a year. Sarah is currently in the Second Major Certificate program at St. Catherine

University focusing on fashion. Sarah works with Dr. Kelly Gage researching travel diaries and

assisting with the historic costume collection. Sarah is exploring graduate programs to reach her

career goals of a research-based job with historic clothing and accessories.

Textile's Expression and Implication in Contemporary Chinese Art

Xia Gao

This paper will look into depiction and expression of textiles in contemporary Chinese art in

reflecting and questioning social happenings and changes. Textile, both in its dimensional forms

and surface embellishments, has been regarded as significant indicators to signify political and

social status and social norms in traditional Chinese culture, in which there were specific

regulations on color, decorative motif, and material use of textile to differentiate social castes.

This textile's social political dimension had been expressed in Chinese traditional art forms- in

figurative painting and sculpture. In addition to textiles' political implication, textile, with its

common use in people's daily life, readily embodies social happenings and changes.

Contemporary Chinese art has widely responded to China's fast socioeconomic and cultural

changes and transformations. Even though textile has not been majorly employed as a focus in

concept expression, its appearance is widely noticeable in contemporary Chinese art. Textile has

been employed to express individuality, sexuality, gender and social issues and carried new

meanings to reflect changing social norms of current China. This article will highlight textile's

expression and implication in selected artworks from contemporary Chinese arts including

painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance. Instead of an avoidance of

reference to tradition, a strong link between past and present have clearly presented in

contemporary Chinese art. While in referencing to textile traditions and meanings in Chinese

culture, Chinese contemporary artists have interpreted their themes with distortion, manipulation,

and juxtaposition to reflect contemporary China.

Xia Gao is a visual artist who primarily works with textile/fiber, printing, and installation. Her

work often addresses personal and cultural adaptation and transformation. Gao, received her

MFA from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, is currently an Assistant Professor in the

Department of Art and Art History at Michigan State University. Before joined MSU, she was a

faculty member at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Donghua University in Shanghai,

China. Gao has shown her work in juried exhibitions and presented at conferences nationally and

internationally. Her creative work has been supported through funds and fellowships.

Permaculture for Dyers: Why Plants Give Us What We Need

Michel Garcia

Society at large has become increasingly aware of the importance of natural dye when it comes

to sustainability. For practitioners of textile making and other industries, developing dyed

products such as cosmetics and food, knowledge of sustainable natural dye processes is

absolutely crucial. No one has embraced this area of study with as much acuity and

understanding as this panelist, who commands a great depth and breadth of insight into nature's

dyes and colors and their varied applications. A proclaimed dyer, chemist, botanist, historian,

naturalist, and humanist, his approach is akin to permaculture - of working with rather than

against nature, of protracted and thoughtful observation, of looking at plants in all their

functions. From his perspective, the overarching aim should be to create stable and productive

systems that provide for human needs, to design a system where each element supports and feeds

the other, and if designed well enough to be self-sustaining, will have a place where humans play

an integral role. But can large-scale consumption of goods still fit into this system? The panelist

presents a series of ingenious solutions to this question, offering insight into a variety of

elements available to us on this planet and explaining unforeseen ways in which one affects the

other.

Michel Garcia is a botanist, chemist, dyer, and naturalist. He is the founder of Couleur Garance

(1998) in Lauris, France, and established Le Jardin Conservatoire de Plantes Tinctoriales

(Botanical Garden of Dye Plants) in 2000 as a horticultural resource for chemists, natural dye

researchers, and botanists. He has been instrumental in revitalizing the natural dye scene in

France and abroad. Garcia’s efforts have been pivotal to cultivating a greater understanding of

natural dye history and teaching more sustainable adaptations for current practice. For many

years, he has been fascinated by the resources provided by plants and by the diversity of colors

that can be obtained from a single bath dyeing of cotton fabric, varying the proportions of

mordants. In the past, this diversity of tones obtained was also sought, and was the origin of

traditional styles in different parts of the world. In Europe, the polychrome effects from this

practice are designated under the name harmonie naturelle. Thus, through a patient review of old

methods, he tries to adapt a variety of techniques to a modern and colorful practice. He does not

strive simply to mix "primary colors,” but instead uses the greatest variety of shades from the

same plant to uncover this natural harmony.

The Effects of War on Textile Production Contrasting with the Effects of the End of

Communism on that of Uzbekistan

John Gillow

Afghanistan before 1979 was a treasure trove of textiles produced domestically by peasant and

nomad alike and by artisans working on a small scale all over the country. The diversity of the

items produced reflected the diversity of the inhabitants; Uzbek and Turcoman in the north, The

Hazara in the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Pushtun in the centre and south. 30 years of war

have wiped out nomadism with the irreparable loss of many types of textiles though some

professional weaving has survived in an attenuated form. In contrast the end of communism in

Uzbekistan in 1990 has stimulated textile production particularly of embroidery and ikat. Free

market capitalism in the form of the merchants of the Istanbul bazaar has provided both the

capital and a market for the revival of traditional textile production. This paper will look at the

effects of the war on Afghani textiles and look to a possible future perhaps based on the

Uzbekistan model.

Author, lecturer and collector of textiles of 40 years standing.

Etienne-Joseph Feldtrappe's La Traite des Négres (ca. 1815)

Céble Gontar

Comprised of four abolitionist-themed vignettes, Etienne Feldtrappe's mulberry-on-white roller-

printed cotton toile, La Traite des NËgres was manufactured in Normandy circa 1815. The

scenes that Feltrappe assiduously copied and arranged onto the cloth into a semi-narrative

grouping were not of his own devising. They originated with separate sets of paintings by the

English artist George Morland (1763-1804) and by FrÈret, an obscure French painter. Morland's

canvases, The Slave Trade (1788) and African Hospitality (1790), produced during a crest of

anti-slavery sentiment in England, are well known. FrÈret's original pictures from his Le Mythe

de Bon Noir (The Story of the Benevolent Black) have not been located. Yet, both the Morland

and FrÈret canvases provided London printmaker John Raphael Smith and Parisian engravers

Citoyenne Rollet and Nicolas Colibert source material for their respective mezzotints. It was

from those widely circulated prints that Feldtrappe crafted his inspired toile, versions of which

may now be found in ten important museums, including three in the US. This paper will identify,

for the first time, all four of Feldtrappe's scenes and their sources, together with the artists who

devised them. La Traite des NËgres' specific domestic use and northern French market will be

examined within the context of other abolition-inspired objects, prints, and writings from

America and Europe. Among many such printed toiles whose scenes are routinely biblical,

mythological, or historic, La Traite des NËgres stands as an anomalous example whose ardent

political message was reinforced by the cotton it was printed on.

Cyble T. Gontar teaches American Decorative Arts (1650-1850) at Sotheby's Institute of Art in

New York City. Gontar is completing a PhD in American art at the Graduate Center of the City

University of New York and earned an MA in the History of Decorative Arts and Design at

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. She is a principal author of Furnishing Louisiana:

Creole and Acadian Furniture 1735-1835 (December 2010) and has written for The Magazine

Antiques, Antiques and Fine Art, the Metropolitan Museum Journal and Heilbrunn Timeline of

Art History.

The Wild Civilized: An Environmental Art Studio Installed Outdoors In An Institutional

Space

Neil Goss

In 2011, I set up an outdoor dyeing and weaving studio that also functioned as a sculptural

installation, The Earthway Studio. The purpose was multi-dimensional: to educate the university

community and the public about culturally pluralistic fiber processes such as spinning, dyeing

and weaving, to glean and process a bulk of my materials on site and to inspire others through

demonstrations and performances to ignite a relationship with the land and to offer the concept

of tolerance for diversity when looking at different approaches to living life. The purpose of this

conference presentation is to share the experience of the Earthway Studio with a larger audience

interested in the ways that performance, fiber arts, politics, and nature intersect. As a 21 year-old

undergraduate, I found that it was possible and necessary to negotiate institutional regulations

and policies in order to set up an outdoor installation on the university campus for an unusually

long period of time. The point of the project was to highlight ways in which we can live as part

of the world and with the Earth. This is in contrast to the majority simply living upon it while

being stimulated by digital technology and being controlled by social norms and political

formalities. By working with the University it was possible to both honor institutional policy

while working and living in an unconventional studio space in an autonomous fashion.

Neil Goss has been concentrating his concepts, materials and work around natural Earth

processes while contemplating, incorporating, and responding to human impacts upon those

processes. He is a senior achieving his BFA in Textiles and Ceramics with a minor in Art History

from the University of Kansas School of the Arts. Goss has been in multiple group shows, will

have his first solo show this spring, and is the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards

including the Doris Carey Scholarship, TSA workshop scholarship, Hollander Family Fund

Scholarship, and KU SOTA research travel funds.

The Cultural Politics of Textile Craft Revivals

Jillian Grylak

This proposal is for a joint presentation by professor and graduate student critically appraising

the cultural politics of textile revitalization projects. We envision our presentational framework

to be modeled on a conversation, which compares the implications of our different experiences

as a folklorist doing fieldwork in Colorado's San Luis Valley and a weaver participating in a

workshop located in the Bargath district of Orissa, India. One of our main interests, which is

conditioned by the assumption that "all tradition is change," examines the political basis for such

workshops that attempt to revive traditional crafts as economic redevelopment projects.

Questions arise for us pertaining to the marketing of cultural identity and ethnic heritage via

material culture (specifically weaving and embroidery), gender politics, aesthetic practices, class

(or caste) dynamics as well as authenticity, conservatism, cultural transmission, and artistic

choice. Above all, we query the very essence of craft revitalization movements in terms of

individual creativity relative to an agenda of reviving or transforming a "waning" or moribund

craft practice for socio-economic purposes. Our experiences initially converge when we discuss

how ethnoaesthetic criteria operate in these workshop situations and the relative degrees of local

women's autonomy (socially, politically, and economically). We diverge when it comes to the

successes and longevity of projects (e.g., why some externally funded textile revitalizations take

hold and endure while others disappear), the subversive tactics or complicity of women artisans

vis-‡-vis goals of external funding organizations, plus the aesthetic and economic viability of

these textile craft revitalizations in light of political authority, social structure, and power.

With a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Jillian Gryzlak has done freelancing

as an artist and object maker for spectacle theater. Jillian's interest in cultural expressiveness led

her to India and Indonesia where she lived with and learned from female weavers. Afterwards

she began as a teaching artist. While continuing to make public art with youth about social

justice issues, she pursues her MA at DePaul University researching cultural motifs and color

symbolism in handwoven textiles. Jillian is also Art Director for Ag47, an all female arts

mentorship program serving youth in Chicago.

Sogdian Textile Design: Political Symbols of an Epoch

Elmira Gyul

Sogdian fabrics produced in Central Asia became one of the shining symbols of the Early Middle

Ages, characterized by the blossoming of city cultures of the region, the broad international

contacts created by the emergence of the Great Silk Road, and the active interaction of urban and

nomadic societies. These silk fabrics were highly appreciated for their quality and variety of

design. As a rule, the designs of Sogdian fabrics were considered from the point of view of their

cult or religious character. The general high demand of these fabrics in the countries of both the

West and the East, possessing various religious systems (Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrism,

Totemizm, etc.) allows us to interpret their designs not as having cult meanings, but rather as

political symbols of the epoch which are related to the state interests of the various societies

based on the various cultural-religious backgrounds. For example, one of the universal symbols

with political implications we can identify is the motif of the "tree of life", the expression of a

vertical power protected by divine force. Also among state and power symbols are the image of

the wild boar, horse or goat (an embodiment of Veretragna, the god of the war and victory), the

image of the lion (force, power, prosperity) etc. The universality of the design of Sogdian fabrics

is one of the reasons that have made these fabrics an important key factor in the political climate

of this epoch.

Elmira Gyul, an art historian from Uzbekistan, is a graduate of the faculty of history, Tashkent

State University. Since 1990 she was a senior Academic Associate in the Carpet Department

under the direction of L.Kerimov of the Institute of Architecture and Art (Azerbaijan). From

1997 until the present she is a leading Academic Associate at the Fine Arts Institute of Academy

of Sciences of Uzbekistan, and an associate professor at the State Arts and Design Institute. Dr.

Gyul is the author of two monographs and over one hundred scholarly articles on the history and

methodology of Central Asia art.

Locally Grown & Sustainable Textiles: Exploring Current Possibilities

Faith Hagenhofer

Whether one speaks of food, energy, or - as here - textiles, conversations on "sustainability", a

term that has been used to describe a conflicting array of methods and materials, have been

expanding. The food activist movement has coined the term, "local", equating high quality

foodstuffs with small carbon footprint. This borrowed term in the textile world often refers to

locally assembly from imported materials. Together, "local and sustainable" must refer to

specific places. I use my farm as an example. 20 Years ago I began working with hand felted

wool as an art medium. For six years farming and art making have been moving toward a soft

collision in my life; Daily activities can be acts of artisanal farming and farmeric artistry.

Currently 90% of the wool I use in my sculptural work originates with the sheep I raise. I relish

this intimate involvement with my art supplies - physically, practically and conceptually. I have

long examined cultural associations of fiber/textile media, practices, and techniques. Recently,

I've been investigating issues of local and sustainable fibers/textiles from my ground up. I've also

explored sustainable textiles worldwide, reading the literature and contacting numerous

producers. The field changes constantly as "Sustainability" and "Localness" are hot topics, about

which there are numerous opinions and from which many want to profit. I've drawn conclusions

about textile production, consumption, and industry, which show me that finding more farmer's

markets to carry locally grown yarn is not, by far, the only way forward to realizing local

sustainable textiles.

Faith Hagenhofer was raised in Staten Island, New York and has lived in Tenino, Washington

since 1983. Faith Hagenhofer has been a feltmaker for 20 years, and has been shepherding a

flock of sheep with wool that meets her medium's specific needs for the last 10. Her textile work

ranges from flat felt yardage to sculptural conceptual pieces, sometimes functional sometimes

not. Some pieces can fit in your hand while others need a large room to appreciate them. Her

work is held in many private collections and has been exhibited regionally and in group shows

throughout the Untied States. Most recently she exhibited at the Textile Museum in Washington

D.C., the Pratt Fine Arts Center, Seattle, WA, the ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL, Pendleton Center

for the Arts, Pendleton, OR and the Centrum Gallery at Oregon College of Art & Craft. She

holds a BA from the Evergreen State College, an MLS from the University of Arizona, and a

Certificate of Craft from Oregon College of Art & Craft. Faith has taught workshops for many

schools, colleges, and guilds for roughly 15 years. She is also a printmaker and book artist.

Margareta Taub Kapitan and the Long Arm of the Suharto Regime

Roy Hamilton

Suharto's "New Order" regime (1967-1998) produced a massive interjection of the bureaucratic

apparatus of the state into local affairs throughout Indonesia. Beginning in the late 1960s, a

village headman was appointed by the central government to serve as its administrator in every

village. When her husband was appointed the first headman in their community, Margareta Taub

Kapitan (1934-2011) was automatically delegated to head the village's PKK (Pembinaan

Kesejahteraan Keluarga, or Family Welfare Advancement) group. In order to develop an

income-earning activity for the women of her group, Margareta seized on a particular type of

weaving, known in Insana as buna, or supplementary weft wrapping. This laborious technique

had previously been used primarily as a minor decorative element, but Margareta realized its

potential for producing more elaborately decorated forms of cloth. She began teaching her

techniques to the weavers in her PKK group, and soon the groups in other villages in Insana

began asking her to teach them. By the 1980s the fully decorated buna skirt had become a

distinctive hallmark of Insana, immediately distinguishable from the skirts of any other region of

Timor. Through hard work, intelligence and determination, Margareta parlayed the opportunities

presented by changing political circumstances into her status as the widely recognized leader of

weavers in Insana. Her success was nevertheless undeniably tied to the promulgation of new

structures of power at the village level during the era of the now-despised Suharto regime.

Roy W. Hamilton is Senior Curator for Asian and Pacific Collections at the Fowler Museum at

UCLA. His book "Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific"

(co-edited with B. Lynne Milgram; 2007), won TSA's R. L. Shep Award. Previous books include

"The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia;" "From the Rainbow's Varied Hue: Textiles of

the Southern Philippines;" and "Gift of the Cotton Maiden: Textiles of Flores and the Solor

Islands." At present Hamilton is co-editing a book on the textiles of Timor, which will

accompany a 2014 exhibition.

Stitching Race: A Tool for Historical Memory

Karen Hampton

This paper examines the use of textiles as a vehicle for speech. From 2001 through 2010, I

created a series of art works that provide a visual narrative of the mixed race communities of

Eastern Florida. With embroidery as the tool, I use mapping, portraits, and direct quotes to create

a conceptual landscape of this early history. Although mixed race communities existed in a few

pockets of the American frontier during the late 18th Century through the middle of the 19th

Century, the most successful mixed race communities of that period thrived in Eastern Florida.

Families living in this Territory included Europeans, African slaves and their descendants,

Majorcans and Native Americans from the Cree and Seminole tribes. It was under the Spanish

Flag that race mixing began and families created alliances, built community, established schools

and formed business partnerships across the color line. In Spanish Florida it was not uncommon

for British landholders to marry or to take as life partners African American women. These

mixed heritage women ran businesses, taught school and were plaintive in court cases throughout

the territory. Though the Spanish regime ended in 1821, when Florida became a territory of the

United States, my embroidery will show how the landscape of East Florida continued to be

affected by these early pioneers, who were never forgotten by their descendants.

Karen Hampton (Mount Rainier, MD) is a mixed media textile artist whose work is steeped in

oral history and is an expression of the narrative. A storyteller at heart, she imparts

conceptualized stories about the "other" in society. She views herself as a vehicle for ancestral

stories to transcend history and remain as historical memory. The canvas of her work varies from

a coarsely woven to a fine silk cloth that is aged and imbued with conceptualized images of a

forgotten part of the American story. Using images and text she embeds the cloth with the hopes

and visions of African American lives, telling their stories from a maternal perspective. In 2008,

Hampton received the Fleishhacher Foundation's Eureka Fellowship. She has exhibited since

1993, holds an MFA from University of California, Davis (2000). She teaches in the Fashion

Design program at Howard University.

Cross-Cultural Commemoration: Historical Chinese Patchwork Inspires a New Tradition

in America

Marin Hanson

This paper will report on preliminary research into the relationship between a certain historical

Chinese patchwork garment, the baijia pao or "one hundred families robe," and a recent

commemorative practice within the community of American adopters of Chinese children, the

making of "One Hundred Good Wishes Quilts." For centuries, Han Chinese mothers made

patchwork baijia pao as gifts for their sons to celebrate auspicious birthdays. Ideally, the robe's

patchwork body was constructed from fabrics donated by numerous local well-wishers, the so-

called "hundred families." The fabrics, symbolizing the combined strength of the donors, were

believed to help the young boy resist or deflect evil spirits and ghosts. More recently, the baijia

pao appears to have inspired a new tradition called the "One Hundred Good Wishes Quilt"

(OHGWQ). American parents in the process of adopting a child from China solicit pieces of

fabric from family and friends, which they use to construct a bed quilt that celebrates and

welcomes their new child. OHGWQ websites frequently cite Chinese tradition as inspiration and

use the Chinese term baijia bei, or "one hundred families quilt" to describe their projects,

suggesting and/or constructing a link between the traditional Chinese baijia pao and this new

form of commemorative patchwork. This paper will place the baijia pao and the OHGWQ in

their individual cultural contexts and investigate the possible connections between them. In

doing so, it will also explore complex issues of trans-national identity, cultural appropriation, and

meaning-making, and will suggest avenues for further research.

Marin F. Hanson is the Curator of Exhibitions at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum

(IQSC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). She holds undergraduate degrees from

Grinnell College and Northern Illinois University and earned her MA in museum studies and

textile history from UNL. She is the co-editor of "American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870-

1940," the first publication in the IQSC's comprehensive series of collections catalogs

(University of Nebraska Press, 2009). Ms. Hanson is currently pursuing doctoral research on

cross-cultural quiltmaking practices, with particular emphasis on China and the United States.

Embroidered Relations in Kutch: Women, Stitching and the Third Space

Michele Hardy

The embroidery of Gujarat State in India is relatively well known to Western textile enthusiasts.

Often referred to as shisha or abla embroidery in reference to the tiny mirrors it includes, it is the

subject of numerous books and exhibitions some of which were organized to help preserve

traditions from the 1960's. Jain's seminal work, Folk art and culture of Gujarat (1980), for

example, catalogues the Shreyas Collection, developed in the late 1970's in anticipation of the

demise of many folk crafts in Gujarat. This paper examines the fraught context of embroidery in

Kutch, the largest district in Gujarat, since the late 1960's. There have been profound changes

within the district politically, economically, environmentally, and culturally?changes which have

effected traditional lifestyles. For the Mutwa, for example, their livelihood as pastoralists was

completely undermined in one generation. Embroidery emerged at this point as an income

generating activity for women. With improved roads and transportation, embroidery is also

attracting increasing numbers of tourists drawn by the area's reputation for fine crafts and

apparent timelessness. Embroidery is also viewed as backward, provincial, and even detrimental

to development. New embroidery is often dismissed as lacking in authenticity. Mutwa women

are not unaware of these contradictions. I argue that embroidery is akin to Bhaba's "third space"

(1994). Characterized by conflict, tension, and creativity, embroidery as third space negotiates

change, forges new power relations and effects evolving, hybrid identities.

Michele A. Hardy is a cultural anthropologist and Curator with The Nickle Arts Museum,

University of Calgary, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In this capacity she curates exhibitions,

publishes catalogues, and conducts research into the museum's rug and textile collections. She

regularly teaches courses in Museum and Heritage Studies, and since 2009, is the Program

Coordinator. Her recent publications include: The Embodied Embroiderer: Crafting Bodies in

India, Cahiers mÈtiers d'art:::Craft Journal and The Fyke Collection of Afghan War Rugs

(http://www.ucalgary.ca/fyke_war_rugs/). Research interests span critical museology, the

anthropology of art, issues of representation and identity, Asian textiles and contemporary craft.

Creating a Future: The Expanding Political and Economic Role of Textiles, Education of

Foreigners, and Creation of External Markets in Cuzco, Peru

Andrea Heckman

This paper is based on thirty years of field research in Andean communities of indigenous

Quechua speaking people living near Cuzco, Peru. It includes comparisons of textile innovations

and attempts to create markets for weavings produced in Ausangate (Pitumarka Valley and

Pacchanta-Ocongate), highland regions above the Sacred Valley, and the Patacancha Valley near

Ollantaytambo. It explores adaptations of textiles produced for tourist markets, in various forms

(runners, pillows, book bags, purses, and pencil holders) and sizes (miniatures). The successful

role model of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cuzco has inspired weavers to modify

traditional textiles used for specific purposes within the cultural context in order to satisfy

perceived market demands. The key issue is whether weavers' families continue to use textiles

with meaningful symbols denoting status, power, and prestige for the wearer. Do weavers dress

up to project ethnicity for outsiders, or do they wear traditional clothing signifying communal

identity while demonstrating weaving for tourist groups? Do commercialization and the money

economy effect what is produced? Do weavers have control over choices about what they make

or are these choices based on what sells? Are they retaining their cultural integrity related to their

textile heritage? Do young people want to weave? What are the benefits of being a legal weaving

cooperative in Peru? This presentation will address these questions based on recent fieldwork

updated in 2011-2012.

Andrea Heckman (Ph.D. UNM, Latin American Studies, Anthropology and Art History) has

researched Andean textiles and festivals for over thirty years. She was a Fulbright Scholar

(Peru1996) and published Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals, which won the John

Collier Award for Excellence in Visual Anthropology. She is a documentary filmmaker:

Ausangate (Peru 2006); Mountain Sanctuary (New Mexico 2009); Bon: Mustang to Menri

(India, Nepal 2011) and Woven Stories: Weaving Traditions of Northern New Mexico (2011).

She teaches Anthropology and Media Arts for the University of New Mexico and serves on the

Society for Visual Anthropology Board (American Anthropology Association).

Arashi Shibori

Ana Lisa Hedstrom

This Japanese process, no longer practiced in traditional form, has been embraced and re-

invented by a new generation of international artisan designers. Arashi shibori was invented in

1880 by Kenezo Susuki as the industrial revolution swept through Japan. His invention allowed

hand-dyed yukatas (summer kimonos) to be produced with relative speed and facility,

accommodating the 400 intricate variations eventually developed. Contemporary Western shibori

is likewise intrinsically linked to the economy and culture of our time, filling a growing niche

market of consumers who prefer limited-edition fashion to mass production. It is a process that

perfectly reflects the Slow Fiber movement. I will show examples of antique arashi as well as

fabric by Japanese designers who have embraced the Western experimental approach, using new

fabrics and surface applications. We will examine images of arashi pleats by international

designers such as Karen Brito and Anne Selby, naturally dyed scarves from Aranya in India, and

my own design production. I will discuss the differences and similarities of these textile

productions and demonstrate how the process has evolved. By bringing disappearing hand-craft

skills into the 21st century paradigm, we preserve cultural traditions and continue the evolution

of the creative process.

Ana Lisa Hedstrom is known for her signature textiles based on contemporary adaptations of

shibori. Her textiles are included in the collections of major museums including the Cooper

Hewitt, the Museum of Art and Design, and the De Young Museum. Her work has been

exhibited and published internationally. She has taught and lectured at numerous international

Shibori conferences and schools. Her awards include two NEA Grants and she is a fellow of the

American Craft Council.

Patronage, Photography and Politics: The Influence of Archduchess Isabella on Design

Sandra Heffernan

Aristocratic woman played an important role disseminating design, notably, Archduchess

Isabella in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her influence on aesthetics and production of peasant

inspired design was considerable at the turn of the nineteenth century. A member of the

wealthiest branch of the Habsburg family, she lived on vast modern, well equipped, mechanised

estates in Hungary. Significantly, the brightly coloured costumes of the BÈllye estate's Sok·c

Slav immigrants from the south attracted her attention. She developed social and economic

concerns for aspects of peasant life. She was ambitious, had a feel for politics and worked to

provide opportunities for rural women to gain income. She promoted education and embroidery

training initiatives that drew support of the Austro-Hungarian government. Another motivating

factor was the impact of the Austro-Hungarian exhibition embroideries in a special pavilion at

the Paris Women's Arts Handicrafts Exhibition in 1892. The same year Home Industries were

established for women to learn embroidery and sell designs both at home and abroad. Isabella

and her family wore CÌfer Home Industry designs and as a skilful photographer she promoted the

CÌfer school in the Sunday Journal in 1898. Later, in 1902 Norman and Stacey's Tottenham

Court Road Emporium sold Home Industry dress. This paper highlights Isabella's influence on

peasant inspired dress including rare unpublished and published photographs to reveal her

political influence on dress aesthetics, production, materials and use.

Dr Sandra Heffernan is interested in textile and dress design theory and practice and new studio

approaches in textile design. She has published material culture object based artefact research

and undertakes the development of new bi-product materials. Her studio practice focuses on

sustainable dye approaches.

Knitting as Dissent

Tove Hermanson

Primarily a feminine duty or pastime, knitting has a deliciously rich history of political

subversion in fiction and life. As a preemptive measure just prior to the Revolutionary War

(1775-1783), American colonists boycotted British goods, spinning their own yarn and knitting

and weaving all their own clothing. Madame Defarge, from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two

Cities" (1859), knitted constantly in the background; the domestic pastime belied a sinister

agenda; readers learn she had been knitting a registry of all those condemned to die in the name

of the new republic. Largely abandoned with the invention of knitting machines, there has been a

youth-driven revival of yarn arts in recent decades, a statement against mass production and

reclamation of women's crafts. Activists have begun incorporating large-scale knit and crocheted

pieces into political public art statements. Called "yarn bombing" or "yarn graffiti," these

installations may beautify public spaces and add a touch of the handmade to our industrialized

environments - drab urban landscapes are the usual targets if temporarily. More overtly political

yarn bombers may target military tanks or relevant statues; Marianne Joergensen stitched a pink

blanket over a combat tank to protest Denmark's involvement in the Iraq war in 2006 [figure 1].

Contrary to its innocuous grannie associations, knitting can ‘politicize’.

Tove Hermanson is a freelance writer and lecturer on fashion history and culture with a

background in English, Film Theory, Art History, and Costume Design. She explores everyday

culture through a fashion-historical lens to gain insight into politics, social and class struggles,

gender and sexual identity themes, race issues, and more. She currently publishes articles in the

Huffington Post, the academic fashion blogs Worn Through and her own Thread for Thought, in

addition to ad hoc lectures. Additionally, she is the Editor of the Costume Society of America's

monthly E-Newsletter.

Mao's Words, Man's Writing and Woman's Embroidering --Political Slogans on Shidong

Miao Clothes

Zhaohua Ho

Based on my ethnographic research in Shidong 2006-2007, this paper aims to reveal how by

"asking words"--the popular texts of Chairman Mao -- from Shidong Miao literacy men that

were embroidered on clothes in Southwest China during the Mao Era (1950's-1980) acted as a

"civilized fashion" for Shidong Miao illiteracy women to raise self-identity during a severe

political atmosphere. The time while Mao was in power (1949 to 1978) was marked by a series

of violent movements, which resulted in great impacts on society, politics, economy and

ideology. People spoke of the myriad of meetings they had to attend. Among the gatherings,

women had to perform: Shidong women could "read and write." Of course, their reading and

writing abilities were exaggerated or simply not true. However, the embroidery of slogans and

Mao's texts became a fashion during this era. This paper tries to answer the following questions:

How illiteracy Miao women learned Chinese characters by embroidery? How men did

transferred Chairman Mao's words for local Miao women? What political and cultural agency of

Shidong Miao was expressed in this special form of clothing, and how did the words of

Chairman Mao impact Shidong Miao in their daily lives. There is reason to believe that

Chairman Mao's texts were more than fashion or simple decorative patterns. I argue that through

the excuse of civilization to Shidong people, Chairman Mao's words were revealed the power of

politics and the manner of assimilation as well as resistance.

Zhao-hua Ho ( ) She is an Associate Professor in the Textiles and Clothing Department,

Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan, and also the Executive Director of Textiles Design Division

at the same institute. She completed her BA Chinese Literature, Masters in Textiles and

Clothing, both at Fu Jen Catholic University. She received her PhD from the Institute of

Anthropology at National Tsing Hua University in 2011. Her thesis title is that "Gifts to Dye For:

Cloth and Person among Shidong Miao in Guizhou Province." Her scholarly interests include the

anthropology of clothes, anthropology of art, Chinese fashion history, Miao ethnography, textiles

in museum displays, and the reconstructions of Taiwan aboriginal textiles.

A History of the Development of Judicial Robes

Mathew Hofstedt

A history of the development of judicial robes with emphasis on those worn by the Justices of

the Supreme Court of the United States. To include the evolution of robes from English court

dress, symbolism of judicial robes, and notes on the historical robes worn by the members of the

nation's highest court.

Matthew Hofstedt is the Associate Curator in the Office of the Curator at the Supreme Court of

the United States, where he develops historical exhibitions and manages the Court’s

collection. He holds a MA in Museum Studies from George Washington University and a BA in

History and English from the University of Notre Dame.

Revitalization of Ikat Weaving in Flores Island, Indonesia

Alfonsa Horeng

Textiles have been an intrinsic part of life across Indonesia for 2,000 years. They have bound

communities together and played an integral role in the social, spiritual, and economic lives of

the people. In respecting those traditions, Lepo Lorun, (Women's Weaver Cooperative), made up

of 863 women in 17 villages in Flores Island, was established in 2003 with a three-fold mission:

to preserve the ancestral traditional ikat textile techniques, to create a structure for economic

empowerment for its members, and to share weaving culture with the global community. Its

success has not been an easy journey. The women initially questioned continuing weaving, rather

than holding more lucrative jobs on farms. Through the work of Lepo Lorun, they realized that

woven cloth could be a source of income, and they began to value older traditions like preparing

dyes from local plants. The younger generation would rather pursue careers in the cities that they

deem better opportunities. In place of ikat, their generation prefers wearing western clothes. The

cooperative encouraged its members to pass on their love of weaving to the younger members.

Lepo Lorun struggles with new product development, accessing larger markets and fair trade

pricing. They watch government resources pour into Bali to help artists, unable to capture

assistance for weavers in rural islands. Through the challenges, the cooperative has made great

strides in empowering local women to turn weaving from something they do in their spare time

into a skill they can rely on financially.

Alfonsa Horeng is Founder and President of the Women's Weaver Cooperative at the Lepo

Lorun Center in Flores Island, Indonesia. The cooperative's goals, among their over 800 weavers

in 17 villages, include preserving Sikka ikat weaving traditions, creating new ikat patterns,

bringing back natural dye processes, encouraging women to exchange farm work for weaving,

and creating global economic opportunities for women. As a master backstrap weaver, Ms.

Horeng has received numerous international awards. She has exhibited, made presentations, and

conducted workshops across Europe, and in Australia, Indonesia, and the United States.

Political Alliances and Persianate Patterns: Seventeenth-Century Ceremonial Textiles at

the Amber Court

Sylvia Houghteling

In a 1986 "Textile Museum Journa"l article, Ellen S. Smart used inscriptional evidence written

onto the corners of summer carpets and durbar velvets to demonstrate the central importance of

the Amber (now Jaipur) court collection to the history of seventeenth-century South Asian

textiles. As Smart pointed out, the textiles collected by the Kacchawaha dynasty, the ruling

family of contemporary Jaipur, represent the largest and best-documented group of carpets,

chintzes and silks from seventeenth-century South Asia. Moreover, as I argue in my dissertation,

the Amber-Jaipur collection has great historical and interpretive possibilities as well. In this

paper, I will analyze the political meaning of fabrics collected during the reign of the Amber

ruler, Mirza Raja Jai Singh (r. 1621-1667), a historical figure best known for his close alliance

with the Mughal emperors, Shah Jahan (r. 1628-1658) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707). I will use

a series of seventeenth-century cotton rumals, or ceremonial cloths made in Golconda, to explore

the visual manifestations of this unique political alliance. Just as Mirza Raja Jai Singh was

singular among the Hindu Rajput rulers for his ties to the Mughals, so too do these painted cotton

cloths used at the Amber court represent a melding of Persianate motifs favored by the Mughals

with local, Indic colors and designs. Furthermore, by re-imagining these ceremonial cloths in

their courtly uses, this paper addresses more than the iconographic or aesthetic content on the

textiles; it proposes that the rumals, and textiles more generally, played an active role within

seventeenth-century political life.

Sylvia Houghteling is a PhD candidate in the History of Art at Yale University. Her dissertation,

"Trade Patterns: The Mercantile Aesthetics of South Asian Cloth ca. 1700," supervised by

Edward Cooke, Tim Barringer and Ruth Barnes, uses the Amber-Jaipur collections to study the

evolution of textile patterns with the flourishing of interior trade and the rise of global markets

for Indian cloth. In 2007, Houghteling completed her M.Phil in History at the University of

Cambridge under the supervision of C.A. Bayly. Houghteling's undergraduate thesis at Harvard

University studied a 19th-century movement that promoted sericulture in rural American

households.

Gu Family Embroidery and the Politics of Shanghai Local Identity and Heritage

I-Fen Huang

From a small sea-going market town in southeast China, Shanghai rose to become a treaty port

and then a global city during the last few centuries. In the course of this process, the local elite

and scholars exploited a local specialty of women's needlework, called Guxiu, or Gu Family

embroidery, as part of their program in constructing their regional identity and promoting local

culture. In this paper I shall explore the ways in which this identity politics influenced the

aesthetics, production, collecting, and study of Guxiu in late imperial and modern China. I have

organized my paper in four parts, each focusing on one stage of the transformation of Guxiu:

First, as a luxury commodity of literati taste of late Ming and Qing; Second, as an "applied art"

("gongyi meishu") that might save the failing Chinese textile industry under the pressure of the

Western machine-based textile production; Third, as "national treasure" sent to international

expositions; Fourth, and finally, as a designated member of the "national intangible cultural

heritage" in 2006. The reception of Guxiu as the pure, artistic expression of female talent also is

an "invented tradition." It was established through the efforts of avid promoters of Shanghai

local culture and adopted uncritically by later scholars and local enthusiasts. It is within this

framework that we may best understand the current revival of Guxiu in Shanghai and the cultural

heritage movement in contemporary China.

I-Fen Huang is PhD candidate of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. She

works at the intersection of art history, cultural history, and women's studies, with a special

interest in pictorial textiles of late imperial China. She is currently writing her dissertation

entitled 'Gu Family Embroidery in Late Imperial and Modern China: from Women's Needlework

to Cultural Legacy'.

A Pattern of Holes: Knitting, War, and the Body

Barb Hunt

I lived in the United States during the Vietnam War and I have strong memories of its impact on

individuals and families. I am now an artist living in Newfoundland, Canada, a province settled

for the most part by Irish fishers. Knitting, once essential to survival, continues to be ubiquitous

here, and this has influenced my art practice. I began a life-time's work: to knit each one of the

over 350 types of antipersonnel land mines, in various shades of pink. The colour pink is

connected to textiles. It was named after the Dianthus flower whose notched edges look like they

were cut with pinking shears - from "pinck" in Dutch, which refers to the small ornamental holes

in cloth made by these shears. And knitting itself is holes - "lumps of air with wool around

them", from a popular WWI song about knitting. With its warm comfort, knitting was often a

means of expressing care for distant soldiers; not only socks but bandages were once knitted by

hand. However, changes in the character of war have produced new weapons and civilians have

become targets. Antipersonnel land mines are a deadly 'crop' planted (for the most part) in the

southern hemisphere, but manufactured in the northern hemisphere, a horrible extension of

global colonialism. My antipersonnel project reminds the viewer of home and the body while

contemplating the products of war.

Barb Hunt studied studio art at the University of Manitoba, Canada and completed an MFA at

Concordia University, Montreal. Her current work is about the devastation of war; she knits

replicas of antipersonnel land mines in pink wool and creates installations from worn camouflage

army uniforms. Her work has been shown in Canada, the US and internationally. She has been

awarded residencies in Canada, Paris and Ireland, as well as grants from Canada Council and the

President's Award for Outstanding Research from Memorial University of Newfoundland, where

she teaches in the Grenfell Campus Visual Arts Program.

Ottoman Fabrics During 18th-19th Centuries

Selin Ipek

Sponsored by the Turkish Cultural Foundation

Beginning of the 16th century sultans costumes' fabrics were created at the special workshops

within the body of the palace by court masters (ehl-i hiref). The designs for the fabrics used for

court apparel were created by court designers known as hassa nakkaşları, and the fabrics for

court apparel were woven by the court weavers known as hassa dokumacıları. A plan showing a

weavers' workshop which is kept today in the Topkapı Palace Archive is to be attributed to the

court weavers. Because the palace workshops were unable to meet the demand, orders were also

given to workshops in Istanbul and Bursa. Fabric was also ordered from the renowned weaving

centers of the West in Italy, like Venice, Genoa and Florence. The western culture had started to

influence Ottoman art in 17th century and its influence massively increased in 19th century.

Initially, westernization entered into military dress, subsequently had its reflections in the men's

fashion and then in women's fashion and children's fashion. The tailors' journals are the most

important documents that give evidence to women's fashion transforming into a Western style

and emergence of one-piece dresses and two-piece dresses with a skirt and a jacket. These

journals are particularly outstanding because they represent the orders of court ladies taken by

tailors, fabric varieties, and women's fashion of the time, "harem" women and their lives. In its

collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum has a fabric sample notebook that once belonged to a

Greek merchant. This book contains fifty samples of Savai and Selimiye fabrics sold in Istanbul

between the years 1790-1820. By using the cost journals of tailors at Topkapi Palace achieve and

fabric sample notebook at V&A Museum and visual material, this paper will try to introduce

selected examples of fabrics prepared in the workshops during 18th -19thcenturies.

I received my B.A. in Art history in 1999 and M.A. degree in 2003 on the subject "Religious

Fabrics in the Topkapi Palace Museum Sent to Mecca and Medina" Islamic Arts at Mimar Sinan

Fine Arts University. Barakat Trust grant of 2003 enabled me to extend my comprative research

to the Islamic religious textiles of the V&A Museum. I wrote three articles about Kaaba

coverings which were published in Turkey. Another article entitled "Ottoman Ravza-ı Mutahhara

Covers Sent from Istanbul to Medina with the Surre Processions" was published in Muqarnas (V.

23, 2006). I am working at the the Topkapi Palace Museum since 2006, as the assistant of

Museum President Prof. Dr. Ilber Ortayli. I completed my PhD on the subject "Fashion of the

Court Women's Attire of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in the Light of Written and

Visual Sources kept in the Topkapı Palace Museum" in 2009 at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts

University. I presented a paper entitled "Merchants Meeting in the Comission Book of Beyhan

Sultan", Tradition, Identity, Cultural Crossings and Art, in Honor of Professor Gunsel Renda,

Hacettepe University, Ankara in 2005 and my article entitled "Festive Clothes of the Harem: The

Account-Book of the Dressmaker Matmazel Kokona" was published by ACTA TURCICA

Online ThematicJournal of Turkic Studies, July 2009. Finally, last year I presented a paper

entitled "Women's Fashions at the Ottoman Court in the 18th and 19th Centuries", International

Costume Conference ENDYESTHAI Historical, sociological and methodological, approaches at

Athens' Benaki Museum.

Re-creating Military Sashes, Reviving the Sprang Technique

Carol James

The scene is a battlefield. In a time before modern methods of communication, how do you tell

who's who? How are commanding officers identified in the heat of the fighting? Army dress is

functional, protecting the body and facilitating combat. It also includes design elements that

identify groups and rank. Military sashes were frequently the mark of command on the field.

Well into the 1800s, non-commissioned officers, as well as generals, wore sprang sashes. Re-

enactors of the War of 1812 have created a demand for these items. What is sprang? And how

were these sashes made? Sprang is a technique, partway between braiding and weaving. Each

row of work moves across the warp to produce two rows of mirror-image fabric. The author has

been using the sprang technique to replicate military sashes based on pieces in museum

collections. How are the patterns created? What materials best imitate the original sashes? How,

exactly, would a person set up a small test piece? What kind of frame best holds a larger work?

The author investigates these questions and speculates on qualities of sprang that would have

recommended it as the method of choice for these sashes.

Carol James is a textile artist specializing in off-loom techniques such as fingerweaving and

sprang. She has been making sashes for military re-enactors and museums for 15 years. Author

of two books, she has been teaching these techniques across North America and Europe. She has

presented at conferences such as the Centre for Rupertsland Studies, Handweavers Guild of

America, and the Braid Society.

Cloth as Economic Product & Cloth as Communication: N.S. Harasha's 'Nations' in

context

Janis Jefferies

The economics and the semiotics of cloth unite with powerful effect in N. S. Harsha's 'Nations'.

His solo exhibition was curated by Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts, London, UK)

from 16 September-21 November 2009. Mimicking the regimental rows of industrial machinery

that typify the production lines found in Asian sweatshops, as they churn out cheap garments to

meet the insatiable demands of the rag trade, Nations consists of 192 "Butterfly" treadle

machines draped in the flags of different nations. Each machine is connected to the next by a

web of multicolored loose threads. In response to N. S. Harsha's Nations, I will explore the wider

issues around migration, the use of cheap labour by the West's garment industry, the

marginalization of individual freedom within the global market economy, the use of cloth as a

cultural symbol and political tool, and the "romance" of unity through difference.

Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer and curator. She is Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the

Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles and Artistic Director of

Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Goldsmiths. She is recognized by her peers as one of the leading

practitioner-theorists of her generation, through exhibitions, conferences, residencies, visiting

professorships, and curating. She has published 42 journal articles, 10 catalogue essays, 2 edited

books and several anthology chapters. She was one of the founding editors of Textile: The

Journal of Cloth and Culture and is a member of the international advisory board for Craft.

A Patchwork History of Textile Use in Southeastern Turkey: Examination of a Rare Set of

Kurdish Work Clothing

Charlotte Jirousek

In 1919 a pair of refugees fleeing from strife occurring in Southeastern Turkey arrived at a

mission station in Mardin wearing well-worn Kurdish everyday clothing as a disguise.

Subsequently the mission worker who received the couple donated these ensembles to our

costume collection. These rare garments are artifacts of the original wearers, as well as of the

experience of the refugees, presumably Armenian, who were fleeing from the terrible events of

this period. When clothing is saved, it is usually special occasion clothing, not the sort

commonly worn for daily work. One of the most interesting features of these garments is the

extensive patching. There are more than twenty different fabrics, including several types of

handwoven, sometimes naturally dyed and hand block-printed textiles. There are also

industrially woven print cottons. Therefore these garments are rare documents of late 19th-early

20th c. multicultural textile production, trade and use in this region. Although today we may

think of southeastern Turkey as isolated, it was then a nexus of trade routes, including the major

river systems of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the network of roads that connected into the trade

routes generally termed the Silk Road. These garments will also be discussed in the context of

field research on traditional textiles and dress done in this region. In addition, historical images

and eyewitness descriptions of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Kurdish dress will

provide context.

Charlotte Jirousek teaches courses in design foundations, and historical and cultural aspects of

textiles and dress. She is also curator of the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection. Prof.

Jirousek conducts research on the textiles and dress of Turkey in relation to the West, and

documents traditional textile technologies throughout Turkey.

Queen Alexandra's 1902 Coronation Gown

Donald Johnson

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 attire would project to the world. In 1901 Lady

Curzon, wife of the Viceroy of India, returned to England from India and at a social event met

the new queen. Lady Curzon wore a dress made from Indian cloth that so impressed Alexandra

that she requested Lady Curzon upon her return to India to make her coronation gown as well as

three additional dresses. The gown, embroidered with gold, magnificently portrayed the pomp

and grandeur of a coronation as well as vividly demonstrated the extraordinary textiles India

produced. Queen Alexandra's use of Indian fabric in her gown however markedly contrasted

with the attire worn by British women in India who steadfastly used British cloth for their gowns

and dresses. This paper analyzes Queen Alexandra's coronation gown, British power,

imperialism, and the textile traditions of India from which its fabric came.

Donald Clay Johnson grew up in Wisconsin and received his bachelors and doctorate from the

University of Wisconsin. He trained as a librarian at the University of Chicago and worked as a

professional librarian for 44 years, half which he was Curator of the Ames Library of South Asia

of the University of Minnesota. He began collecting textiles as an undergraduate. In 2011 the

Goldstein Museum of Design of the University of Minnesota had an exhibition "Beyond

Peacocks and Paisleys: Handcrafted Textiles of India and its Neighbors" using textiles from his

collection.

The Use of Imported Persian and Indian Textiles in Early-Modern Japan

Yumiko Kamada

It is well known that high-quality imported textiles have long been used as status symbols by

various elites around the world. Japan is no exception. From the early 17th century, despite the

policy of seclusion being in place, Japanese rulers received Persian and Indian textiles and

carpets as diplomatic gifts from the Dutch. How and why were imported Persian and Indian

textiles used by the ruling class in Japan? Why were these imported textiles valued by the

Japanese generally? What were the similarities and differences in the reception of these textiles

among the Japanese and Europeans? How did the Japanese merchants and ordinary people get

access to these imported textiles? In order to consider these issues, this paper will discuss, from

an art historical perspective, the variety of uses of imported Persian and Indian textiles in Japan.

For instance, a tradition developed of using these textiles as covers for the tea caddies used in the

tea ceremony. Persian and Indian textiles were also pasted on albums which then continued to be

valued by successive generations. This paper concludes with a discussion of the political and

cultural significance of the use of Indian carpets in Shinto festivals. From the 18th century,

Indian carpets, especially those from the Deccan, were imported into Japan by the Dutch and

used as float covers during the Kyoto Gion Festival and also, as this researcher discovered,

during the Nagahama Hikiyama Festival, a tradition which continues to this day.

Yumiko Kamada, Ph.D. 2011- Assistant Professor, Waseda Institute for Advanced Study,

Waseda University, Tokyo 2011 Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (Islamic Art

History) Dissertation: "Flowers on Floats: The Production, Circulation, and Reception of Early

Modern Indian Carpets" 2008-2010 Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2004

M.A. The University of Tokyo (Art History) 2002 B.A. Keio University, Tokyo (Art History)

Research field of interest: Islamic art in general and specifically carpet and textiles, illustrated

manuscript painting, history of collecting, and reception of Islamic art objects in the East.

The History & Conservation of Sixteen Mughal Carpets in the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh

II Museum, City Palace, Jaipur

Tina Kane

This paper will discuss a number of the 17th century carpets in the collection of the Maharaja

Sawai Man Singh II Museum in The City Palace of Jaipur in India. In 2008 the author was

brought in as a consultant to Princess Diya Kumari, Maharini of Jaipur, to propose a program of

conservation of Her Royal Highness' Mughal carpet collection. There will be a description of the

sixteen carpets examined; a discussion of the conditions in which the carpets are currently stored

and exhibited; and, more generally, an overview of the history of this unique and renowned

collection of Indian carpets.

Tina Kane, a textile conservator in private practice, since 1970. She worked in the Textile

Conservation Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1978 to 2010, where she

specialized in medieval tapestry restoration, and also served as Adjunct Instructor at Vassar

College, from 2002 to 2010, where she taught a course on medieval tapestry and narrative. Her

recent publication is The Troyes MÈmoire: The Making of a Medieval Tapestry (Boydell Press,

2010). In 2008, she was consultant to Princess Diya Kumari, Maharini of Jaipur, for conservation

for Her Royal Highness's Mughal carpet collection.

Analyses of Dye, Weaving and Metal Thread in Ottoman Silk in Ottoman Silk Brocades

and their Reproductions

Recep Karadag, Emine Torgan, and Yusuf Yildiz

Sponsored by the Turkish Cultural Foundation

Some Ottoman silk brocades samples were provided from Topkapi Palace Museum collection in

Istanbul. In this study, an analytical method based on a RP-HPLC-DAD is developed for the

identification of dyestuffs in the historical art objects. The extraction of dyestuffs from the silk

brocades was carried out with hydrochloric acid / methanol / water solution. The most important

dyestuffs detected were natural dyes apigenin, indigotin, carminic acid, ellagic acid, etc. dyes

which are found in historical silk brocades. Analyses of historical samples were compared with

analyses of unmordanted silk, mordanted silk, biological sources, silk dyed according to

historical recipes and standard dyestuffs. The colour measurements values of the for historical

textiles and reproduction silk brocades were measured by CIL*a*b*. The surface morphology

and chemical composition historical silk brocades were investigated by FESEM-EDAX. The

investigation showed that the metal threads were damaged most probably due to the uncontrolled

environmental conditions. The detected metals as a result of EDAX analysis of the metal threads

from the historical silk brocades are presented in this work. Weaving techniques of the Ottoman

silk brocades were analyzed by the optical microscope. According to the results of dye, metal

threads and technical analyses, yarns of the new brocades were dyed and weaved with same

material, same conditions, same techniques and same dye sources. Reproduction silk brocades

were compared with Ottoman silk brocades. Both of the reproduction and Ottoman silk brocades

are same characteristically.

Dr. Recep Karadag graduated in Chemistry from the Marmara University in 1986. He received

his Master's degree in Chemistry from the Institute of Sciences in 1990, and in 1994, completed

the Doctoral program (PhD) in Analytic Chemistry. He became an Associate Professor in the

area of Textile Technologies in 2004, and in 2009, became a professor. He is presently a member

of the teaching faculty of Marmara University and serves as a consultant for the Turkish Cultural

Foundation. He works in the areas of natural dyeing, different analyses from historical and

archaeological art objects, and natural pigments.

Emine Torgan was born in Istanbul in 1983. After graduating from Bayrampaşa İnˆn¸ Technical

High School, she went on to the Chemistry Teaching department of Marmara University's

Atat¸rk Education Faculty and graduated in 2006. In 2008, she completed her Master's degree in

Analytical Chemistry at the Marmara University Institute of Sciences. She presently serves as a

specialist it the Turkish Cultural Foundation Natural Dyes Research and Development

Laboratory.

Yusuf YILDIZ, Ph.D. Marmara University, Istanbul Turkey, 2000. Post-doc.Technion, Inc.

Research Laboratories, Nutley, New Jersey-USA, 2003 Senior Research Scientist in

Analytical/Organic Chemistry Gibraltar Laboratories My current research is Method

Development and Validation on organic natural products and herbs by using HPLC, Gas

Chromatography & GC/Mass Spectrometer.

Progress toward Establishing a Knitting Heritage Museum

Karen Kendrick-Hands

The concept of a Knitting Heritage Museum arose from a perceived need to collect, preserve,

document and share knitted and crocheted objects, tools, and related study materials. This entity

would raise the status of knitting and crochet, and create opportunities for scholarly research and

enhanced visibility, as achieved by quilting and other fiber art centers. The author has concluded,

after interactions with various museums and textile collections, that knitting and crochet are

generally underrepresented. For valid reasons, documentation of objects that do exist is often

incomplete or inaccurate and access for both study and exhibit is extremely limited. Although a

rich popular literature of techniques, designs and history exists, that information is not frequently

accessed by museum professionals. A Knitting Heritage Museum is one means of bridging this

gap. This organization would preserve and promote the past, present and future of knitting and

crochet; increase access to and the accuracy of its documentation in historic, costume and textiles

collections; create a home for the source materials of leading practitioners and designers, as well

as exemplars from the ethnic groups who brought their fiber traditions to America; and foster the

continued evolution of knitting and crochet as expressive art forms. This organization may create

a digital collection, develop a physical collection -or create a public space for exhibitions, and

interaction. Next steps will be explored at a Symposium co-hosted with the Wisconsin Historic

Society, November 8-10, 2012, in Madison WI.

Karen D. Kendrick-Hands is an attorney, community activist and lifelong, obsessive knitter:

artisan, published designer, retailer and educational consultant. Inspired in part by quilt

collections and study centers, and spurred by the limited access to knitting and crochet in

existing museum and research settings, she is leading the effort to develop a knitting heritage

museum. In cooperation with the Wisconsin Historic Society and a team of likeminded yarn

artists and industry professionals, she is developing a Symposium (November 8-10, 2012) to

explore how best to collect, preserve, document and share knitted and crocheted objects and their

inherent meaning.

Comforter Art Action: A materialist review of a material aid art project

Lois Klassen

For ten years, the production of handmade, charity blankets has been a subject in my

photographs, texts, performances and installations. I have hosted sewing circles in galleries,

museums, and community sites. The blankets have been distributed to displaced people

internationally and locally. As an on-going project, Comforter Art-Action is both a social art

practice and a materialist critique.

Comforters are things in motion: they are constituted of textiles that have been manufactured,

remaindered, reconstructed, bundled, transported, distributed, shared. To recognize their

perpetual motion is to understand how things carry evidence of social conditions. In the current

iteration of Comforter Art Action, I am situating the materialist possibilities of the project as a

site for interaction. With each blanket equipped with its own QR code and website, the blanket

becomes a portal for makers and users to encounter visual evidence of the blanket's material and

social lineage. This project is enabled by the uptake of cell phone technology in the developing

world, and Africa in particular.

Whereas, Comforter Art Action began in response to the escalation of displacement following

the events of September 11 2001, the project has provided North American participants a means

to respond to various disasters: local homelessness, post-Katrina evacuation, others. Currently,

the confluence of famine and war in east Africa is a motivator to sew. Comforter is a social

action that facilitates an ethical reckoning of North American luxuries.

The collaborative and interdisciplinary artworks of Lois Klassen combine materialist and social

art practices. They appeared in public galleries (Richmond Art Gallery, Western Front, Centre A,

aceArtinc, Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba), museums (The Glenbow Museum, The

Reach Gallery Museum), residencies (MOPARRC, Banff New Media Institute, The Hammock

Residency) and various festivals. Her curation projects have appeared at VIVO 2010: Safe

Assembly, and World Peace Forum. Lois Klassen is a recent graduate of the MAA (VA)

program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She works part time for the Emily Carr

University Research Ethics Board.

The Final Art Taboo: Identity Politics of Motherhood

Kate Kretz

Female artists have gained some ground over the past few decades, but there are still unspoken

rules remaining: artists who happen to be mothers tend to keep it quiet lest they be written off,

and heaven forbid they make art about it. While art historians have always studied and noted the

influence of travel, friends, and milieux on the work of male artists, the most profound and life-

altering experience of all has been ignored in these discussions of creative inspiration, because it

is an exclusively female phenomenon. This paper will feature work done by cutting edge

contemporary textile artists who have artistically "come out" as mothers, addressing the topic

with humor, depth, and sometimes, shocking candor. Fiber, a medium that references protection,

nurturing, and other motherly attributes, serves as the perfect vehicle for art evoking the complex

nature of contemporary motherhood. In addition, this paper will briefly follow one artist's use of

fiber to chronicle the journey of motherhood: from stitches created while confined to bed rest

early in the tenuous pregnancy, to work embroidered with hair from a mother's head during the

gestation period, carrying a physiological record of the pregnancy. Despite all the signs that

undertaking this subject matter could constitute career suicide, more women artists are coming to

the same conclusion: if you want to be true and honest in your work after the visceral,

emotionally transformative experience of a lifetime, how could you possibly make art about

anything else?

Kate Kretz's work has appeared in the NY Times, ArtPapers, Surface Design, Vanity Fair Italy,

ELLE Japon, and PASAJES DISENO. Exhibitions include the Museum of Arts & Design, Van

Gijn Museum, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Wignall Museum, Katonah Museum, Frost Museum, Fort

Collins MOCA, Telfair Museum, Museo Medici, Lyons Wier Ortt & 31Grand Gallery, and

Packer/Schopf in Chicago. She's received numerous state fellowships and a Millay Colony

Residency. Kretz earned a certificate from The Sorbonne, a SUNY Binghamton BFA, and a

University of Georgia MFA. She currently works in her Washington, DC, studio while giving

workshops and lectures at various universities.

Ahead of His Time: George Hewitt Myers and his Legacy

Sumru Belger Krody

This presentation will discuss the collecting activities of The Textile Museum's founder George

Hewitt Myers as well as how his collection and the manner in which he used it mirrors his

philosophy and approach to textile arts. Myers began collecting textiles "by accident" in the

1890s. His attraction sprang from the fact that textiles, whose makers tend to be unknown, are

usually judged on the object's intrinsic merits rather than the name or reputation of an artist. For

Myers, these anonymous textile artists inherited a genius for color and exhibited much patience

and considerable pride in their work. Myers was also impressed by the history and longevity of

this art form and found that the early weavings from non-Western cultures were unmatched both

aesthetically and technically. In the early 1920s, Myers began collecting more methodically in

order to expand the breadth and depth of his collection. He orchestrated the transformation of his

house into a museum and of his private collection into a public one in 1925. After this point, his

collecting focus increasingly shifted toward t historically important or technically unusual

textiles regardless of their condition. Myers was well aware that museums, besides being arbiters

of taste, were repositories of objects for further study and preservation, and he was interested in

adding to the knowledge of textile history. Myers wanted people to appreciate textile arts, good

craftsmanship, design, ingenuity and beauty. He worked to have textiles accepted as an important

component of art history and to encourage scientific research on the care and conservation of

textiles. Through the documents in the George Hewitt Myers archives, this presentation will

chronicle this transformation of the mind and the development of the Museum's collections.

Sumru Belger Krody is Senior Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Collections and Head of the

Eastern Hemisphere Curatorial Department at The Textile Museum and the Managing Editor of

The Textile Museum Journal. She has curated several Textile Museum exhibitions and is the

author of three books written to accompany her exhibitions. Born in Izmir, Turkey, Ms. Krody

earned a B.A. from Istanbul University and an M.A. in Classical Archaeology from the

University of Pennsylvania. She has presented many lectures and written many articles on

Ottoman and Greek Island embroidery traditions, Central Asian ikats, and Oriental carpets.

A Group of Heated Stamp Designed Textiles in the Topkapi Palace Museum

Tuba Kurtuluş

The Topkapi Palace Museum textiles collection holds a number of kaftan, kolluk

(sleevelet/armlet), takke (skullcap) and salvar (shalwar) that are made of stamp designed silk

materials. These stamp designs were applied onto the materials as cotton, velvet and silk fabrics

such as satin, tafta (taffeta), canfes (fine taffeta), kutnu by a technique called embossing or

gaufrage (in French). The patterns, in this technique, were formed by making the fabrics

settled/caved in. Stamping process applied into the satin fabrics looks very similar to the leather

bookbinding technique called "tooling". As applied onto the upholstery fabrics like velvet, today,

we do not have any knowledge for the Ottoman period, about how this technique was applied.

The heated stamp technique which was applied into Ottoman textiles since 15th century was also

used in Europe and Asia. Stamp designed velvets and silk fabrics are available in the West

countries like England, Germany, Italy and Spain. Stamping patterns onto cloth was a traditional

decorative technique in Northern India and Persia. Additionally this technique was also used into

metal thread fabrics in India. The use of this technique in different geographic areas at the same

time indicates that there was a cultural interaction. Moreower it is also possible that the use of

these textiles became an international fashion. This paper will try to show samples of the textiles

decorated with heated stamp technique and produced in various geographies, comparing them

with Ottoman samples.

Tuba Kurtuluş was born in Istanbul. Her undergraduate program was about the Traditional

Turkish Handicrafts, MA thesis was about A Group of Prayer Rugs from the Topkapi Palace

Museum, doctorate thesis is about the Heated Stamp Designed Textiles from the Topkapi Palace

Museum. She worked as a lecturer in the Fine Arts Faculty of the Canakkale 18 Mart University.

She has been working in the Topkapi Palace Museum since 2005 as the curator of the

Avadancilar department which is hold Ottoman religous textiles. She participated some

handicrafts exhibitons and wrote some catalog items, article and papers for exhibitions and

congress.

A Silent War: Batik Revival as Economic and Political Weapon in 17th Century Java

Ruurdje Laarhoven

Sultan Agung of the highly respected Javanese inland agrarian state of Mataram, first had sought

the assistance of the Dutch in an attempt to expand his commercial interests. The Dutch declined.

This was a major offense to the Indonesian ruler and made the Sultan very angry. It was made

even worse when the sultan twice failed to seize Batavia in the late 1620s to dislodge the hated

Dutch. From that time onwards a silent war began which lasted throughout the 17th century.

Since local rulers and their men could not fight Dutch might, retaliation was instigated by the

wife of the sultan with the assistance of thousands of women and slaves associated with the

courts. Local rulers in towns controlled by the Dutch quietly aligned themselves with the women

by prohibiting their subjects from buying Indian textiles from the Company, and their message

and campaign spread far and wide. A decline of the Company's textile trade set in, while women

everywhere rekindled the weaving of their own cloths and import substitution was promoted.

The most striking silent weapon the Javanese women used was the revival of batik as an industry

that started in the latter part of the 17th century. Batik effectively substituted for imported

painted textiles thereby declaring the power of women, backed by the sounds of their looms

clicking in their thousands.

Ruurdje Laarhoven, originally from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, trained there as a teacher

before emigrating to Australia from where seven years later she moved to the Philippines, which

culture intrigued her. She consequently studied anthropology at the renowned Ateneo de Manila

University. The publication of her MA thesis, "Triumph of Moro Diplomacy," led to a

scholarship at the Australian National University where she undertook her doctoral studies on the

textile trade of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) based predominantly on the company's

primary source materials. Currently she lectures in anthropology and humanities at Hawaii

Pacific University in Honolulu.

Making Relations Material: the smallest of politics

Judith Leemann and Shannon Stratton

Drawing on their recent experience curating Gestures of Resistance, an exhibition of

performative craft that unfolded over the course of five months at the Museum of Contemporary

Craft, Portland, OR, the authors, embedded and implicated, mine the layered manifestation of

participating artists' contributions for insight into the complex play of materiality and micro-

politics that characterized the emergent exhibition.

The exhibition, itself an extension of the authors' research into craft, performance, and the

politics of slowness, here becomes the site of inquiry, this time into the performativity of

materials themselves. Taking the approach that the material and its attendant processes both

make possible certain kinds of performances and also do themselves perform/act/generate, the

authors seek to articulate the active operations of materials with their affordances, associations,

resistances.

Of equal interest are the mischievous structures artists devise to realize new kinds of relational

interaction through the canny dispatch of materials within particular social spaces. First, as a

means of surfacing, amplifying, and making legible otherwise invisible relational dynamics; and

second, as the material scaffolding for a maker's fiction, the essential narrative fulcrum across

which new kinds of relationship among makers, institutions, and public can be imagined.

Focusing on artists using textile processes in this role, the authors also include observations

about other exhibition artists' deployment of the kindred handcraft processes of carpentry and

pottery as a way of seeing where textile processes behave in kind and where their operations

differ significantly.

Shannon Stratton is co-founder and Executive & Creative Director of 'threewalls' Chicago, a not-

for-profit residency and exhibition space. Stratton teaches at The School of the Art Institute of

Chicago. Judith Leemann is an artist, educator, and writer. She is Assistant Professor in Studio

Foundation at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, and Artist-in-Residence at

the Design Studio for Social Intervention. Stratton and Leemann co-curated Gestures of

Resistance at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon (2010). Their chapter on

craft, collaboration and new curatorial models will be published in 2012 in Collaboration in Craft

(Berg).

ARTivention: Utilizing Fiber Arts for Activist Engagement

Margaret Leininger

ARTivention is a collective that utilizes fiber art techniques to engage the public about social,

political and aesthetic dilemmas in contemporary society. All projects undertaken by

ARTivention include a communal making component and an action component. This is

accomplished through either the maker or the viewer not only thinking about the work, but also

taking action whether in the form of writing letters to representatives, making monetary

donations or serving others in some capacity that empowers the larger community. Incorporating

familiar textile techniques such as quilting or knitting links the familial language of textiles to

larger social issues we face today. Projects completed to date include Care Packages, Found

Objects and Trans/plant. Care Packages consists of 17 quilted prayer mats were constructed by

Muslim and Christian community groups in the Chicago area and sent to Guantanamo Bay

Uighur detainees. In addition to making the prayer mats, individuals also sent letters of protest to

the Department of Defense. A larger communal based project, Found Objects, utilized the talents

of knitters around the country by knitting and placing tiny sweaters in public places with a tag

attached asking the finder to make a monetary donation to the National Coalition for the

Homeless. Trans/Plant is the latest development for ARTivention that will explore the refugee

and migratory populations of Phoenix, AZ through the production of a tactile installation. The

final goal of ARTivention is to exist outside the confines of the art commodification system and

making art once again, accessible to the populace.

Maggie Leininger incorporates observations of social interactions, various ethnographies and

complex systems into her studio practice. Exploring the various techniques associated with

textile production, Leininger positions her art within the context of the familiar alluring the

viewer to interact with the work on multiple levels. To date, Leininger's work has questioned

situational identity, language and communication, socio-political issues and the role of the artist

within society. Leininger received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a

MFA from Arizona State University, where she currently is a visiting assistant professor.

The Politics of Christian and Muslim Women’s Head Covers

Christina Lindholm

Women have been covering their heads since before recorded history. In Mesopotamia, it

signified noble status while the lack of a head cover identified a slave or harlot, who, if caught

covering her head, could be subjected to flogging, having boiling pitch poured on her head or

having her ears cut off for daring to misrepresent herself. There are examples dating to the

present of women who regularly use a textile to cover their head on either an occasional or daily

basis. It can denote anything from a religious preference, an expression of cultural pride or

tradition, to a fashion statement, yet these covering are met with a variety of sentiments, ranging

from approval to disdain to even fear. Christian women from Ethiopia wear large white scarves

with brightly colored woven decorative ends with no repercussions, yet hijab, the Muslim

woman's head cover is the cause of over a decade of controversy in France, Turkey, Egypt and

Belgium and other European nations. They are denounced in France while at the same time

Hermes, a traditional French company, has introduced a series of scarves aimed at the Muslim

market. How can a cloth create so much debate, confusion and prejudice? This paper explores

the multiple meanings and shifting political tolerances towards women's head covers in the

Middle East and the views of the women who demand the right to wear these covers.

Christina Lindholm has served since 2008 as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies for

the 3000 VCUarts students. This follows a five year position as Dean of the VCU Qatar campus

where she managed the transition from a sponsored program to the first official off-shore branch

campus of an American university. Dr.. Lindholm earned her PhD at the University of Brighton,

and a BS and MS at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her area of research is the dress of the

Middle East. She is a member of several professional organizations including the Textile Society

of America, the Popular Culture Association and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Among her

publications are articles in the Berg Encyclopedia of World Fashion (2010), the 3rd edition

(2002) of Dictionary of American History (Charles Scribner's Sons) and the 2nd Edition (2002)

of The St. James Fashion Encyclopedia (Visible Ink Press). She has served as a consultant to

many companies, including Proctor and Gamble, DuPont, Play, Timberland, and Olivvi.

Mary Walker Phillips and the Knit Revolution of the 1960s

Jennifer Lindsay

In 1978, Mary Walker Phillips won the American Craft Council Fellows Award for being "the

first to introduce knitting as a form of artistic expression." Phillips's work in the 1960s bridged

industrial design and studio craft; her wall hangings pushed knitting outside traditional

associations with home craft and into the realm of modern art, architecture and interior design.

Phillips trained as a weaver at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 1940s and the 1960s with

Marianne Strengell and Glen Kaufman. Her initial forays into knitted textiles were experimental

responses to prominent contemporaries, Anni Albers and Jack Lenor Larsen, who believed that

knitting had the potential to replace weaving as the dominant mode of 20th-century textile

production. From designing adventurously conceived knitted prototypes for mass-production and

use in architectural and industrial settings, Phillips discovered greater freedom in making wall

hangings, often at architectural scale, which demonstrated her extraordinary command of

knitting's technical and expressive possibilities. Using non-traditional materials, Phillips's

refined, quintessentially modern compositions revealed her fascination with architectural

sources, and with the historic and ethnic textiles that inspired many fiber artists of the 1960s.

This presentation on Mary Walker Phillips's journey from industrial designer to studio artist in

the medium of knitting will address major influences on her work, both personal and broadly

expressed within the emergence of art fiber during the 1960s, including a perception that hand

craft was consistent with the democratic goals, values and aesthetics of American modernism.

Jennifer Lindsay holds an M.A., History of Decorative Arts, from Smithsonian

Associates/Corcoran College of Art + Design, 2010.† A lifelong passion for knitting inspired her

Master's thesis on Mary Walker Phillips (1923-2007) and the emergence of knitting as a

contemporary art medium.† Lindsay coordinated public outreach for, design and installation of

the Smithsonian Community Reef, a community-made, crocheted replica of a coral reef featured

in the National Museum of Natural History's 2010-2011 exhibition of the Hyperbolic Crochet

Coral Reef -- a global, interdisciplinary, collaborative fiber art project that raises environmental

awareness and promotes marine stewardship through craft.

Building Community in the Nation's Capital with a Collaborative Fiber Art Project

Jennifer Lindsay

The Smithsonian Community Reef, a "satellite" of the Institute For Figuring's Hyperbolic

Crochet Coral Reef project, was created in just five months in 2010 at the Smithsonian National

Museum of Natural History, and was a highly successful local expression of a global fiber art

project that has its theoretical roots in Feminist theory and interdisciplinary connections to

hyperbolic geometry, marine science, environmental conservation, and community activism.

Using crochet, a single element technique popular in the 1960s, participants of all ages and

abilities can make playful, tactile forms that, when assembled, resemble a living coral reef. In

making the reef, participants learn to work with new materials like plastics and recyclables, to

take collective ownership over the project's success, and to become individually and collectively

empowered. To promote broad participation in the Smithsonian Community Reef, I developed

workshops to describe the purpose of the project and transfer the hands-on fiber skills. The

research I did for my Master's thesis on Cranbrook Academy of Art and its pedagogy, and the

discussions I was privileged to have with Cranbrook-educated fiber artists who worked in the

1960s, helped me to better understand and express not only the essential content of the coral reef

project, but also its open invitation to creativity and experimentation. I will discuss some of the

positive outcomes of this project, and how it compares or differs from similar collaborative

installations in fiber and other media, past and present.

Jennifer Lindsay holds an M.A., History of Decorative Arts, from Smithsonian

Associates/Corcoran College of Art + Design, 2010. A lifelong passion for knitting inspired her

Master's thesis on Mary Walker Phillips (1923-2007) and the emergence of knitting as a

contemporary art medium. Lindsay coordinated public outreach for, design and installation of the

Smithsonian Community Reef, a community-made, crocheted replica of a coral reef featured in

the National Museum of Natural History's 2010-2011 exhibition of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral

Reef -- a global, interdisciplinary, collaborative fiber art project that raises environmental

awareness and promotes marine stewardship through craft.

The Slow Cloth Manifesto: An Alternative to the Politics of Production

Elaine Lipson

Modern production, whether of textiles, art, or ideas, encourages sameness, speed, efficiency,

and mediocrity. Slow Cloth is a philosophy that returns meaning to making, whether the making

is by hand or machine, is an individual artistic enterprise or a commercial endeavor, is a means

for cultural expression in a community or a means for personal exploration. Influenced by the

Slow Food movement, there are several textile-related practitioners and organizations now

claiming the slow descriptive, yet few have articulated a framework or reference for what slow

means. In the context of my definition, which I began conceiving and writing about in 2007,

slow is far more than the time it takes to complete something. Its qualities connect us deeply to

the past and the future, to tradition and to a sustainable future, while informing us in the present.

Slow Cloth is not a project or a technique; it's a focus on process, quality, skill, mastery, joy,

community, sustainability, contemplation, and preserving tradition while honoring innovation

and expression. This approach lends itself naturally to weaving, knitting, sewing, embroidery,

quilting, fashion design, textile design, rugmaking, beadwork, or any other form of working with

textiles. Slow Cloth embraces related ideas of slow fashion, slow craft, and a sustainable

approach to life. This paper explores the qualities encompassed by the concept of Slow Cloth

that give meaning and relevance to working with textiles and fiber in the twenty-first century.

Elaine Lipson is a writer, editor, artist, and author of The Organic Foods Sourcebook

(Contemporary Books, 2001) and The International Market for Sustainable/Green Apparel

(Packaged Facts, 2008), the first comprehensive market research report for sustainable textiles.

From 2009 to June 2012, she was an editor in the books division of Interweave. With 15 years of

expertise as a writer and educator in the natural and organic products industry, and a lifetime as a

textile artist, scholar, and writer, Elaine developed an original philosophy of Slow Cloth in 2007

on her blog; she also maintains an international Slow Cloth community page on Facebook.

Rug Hooking in Guatemala: Income, Cultural Property, and Sustainability

Mary Littrell

This paper considers use of readily available raw materials in many less developed

countries?used clothing from North America?as catalysts in innovative and potentially

sustainable new product development for the global market. In Guatemala, a visit to the weekly

village markets finds Maya families scouring pile of used clothing arriving from North American

charity organizations and commercial rag sorters. Storefronts (pacas) offer additional men's,

women's and children's attire. For the past three years an internationally recognized rug artists

from the U.S. has worked with Mayan Hands, a Guatemalan artisan group, to teach rug hooking

to Guatemalan weavers who are eager for new product development, given market saturation for

their existing products. Central to the project is the use of cloth strips cut from recycled clothing.

Although a new technology to the weavers, by focusing on familiar motifs from their culture's

intellectual property (huipil designs), the artisans assess that they are drawing on "what we own"

to create unique, one-of-a-kind rugs for the international marketplace. The paper will discuss a

variety of challenges the artisans have faced in learning the new technology. As an example,

Mayan women traditionally express their deep affection for color by filling their textiles with an

array of primary hues. The U.S.-introduced concept of "popping" a design by surrounding it with

neutral colors tested the weavers' sense of aesthetics. A next step for the project is a "design

school" for eight of the artisans to become teachers in order to sustain the project and allow the

U.S. designer to exit the venture.

Mary A. Littrell is Professor and Department Head Emeritus in Design and Merchandising at

Colorado State University. Dr. Littrell's research addresses multiple facets of business social

responsibility, with special focus on artisan enterprises. In her research she examines models for

how textile artisan enterprises achieve viability in the increasingly competitive global market for

artisan products. Her research illuminates the daily lives of textile artisans and the challenges

they face in attaining sustainability. Recent books with co-author Dr. Marsha Dickson include

Social Responsibility in the Global Market: Fair Trade of Cultural Products and Artisans and

Fair Trade: Crafting Development.

Cotton: Implications for the Global Economy, Subsidies, Tariffs and the Consumer

Michael Londrigan

Cotton has long been a staple of the US economy and has now turned into a global commodity

propped up by US subsidies paid to US cotton farmers and constrained by tariffs here in the US

and the world, specifically China. The US produces on average 15.8 million bales of cotton per

year (past 6 year average) with a bale of cotton averaging 480 pounds. Of the 15.8 million bales

produced in the US 75.6% roughly 12 million bales will be exported worldwide with China

being the single largest importer of US cotton. US mills have consumed on the averaged 3.85

million bales over the past six years. The purpose of this paper is to look at the importance of US

cotton in the global economy and examine why tariffs originally put into place to protect the US

cotton farmer, the mills, and the garment producers in the United States has failed and the

political ramifications surrounding the use of subsidies paid to US farmers. In addition the paper

will look at the current tariff system in place and its impact on consumer prices. If the tariff

system that is currently in place is not protecting the jobs that it set out to protect then why is it

still in place? Why do the tariffs remain at such high levels as to have a significant effect on the

price of all things that consume cotton?

MICHAEL LONDRIGAN Chairperson, Fashion Merchandising Department Industry veteran

Michael Londrigan is the Chairperson of LIM College's Fashion Merchandising department.

Professor Londrigan arrived here in 2008 with nearly 30 years of experience in the apparel

industry focusing on retail, wholesale and textiles. He has a strong background in product

development along with extensive executive sales, marketing and merchandising skills. He holds

an MBA in Marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Professor Londrigan is the author of

the textbook Menswear: Business to Style, published by Fairchild Books. This groundbreaking

text allowed colleges throughout the country to introduce a course specifically in menswear

marketing.

Made in Haiti

Carole Lung aka Frau Fiber

This presentation explores the project Made in Haiti (MIH) as a model for grassroots garment

production addressing: the global rag trade, honorably paid garment production, and sustainable

economic development in Haiti. Initiated in 2009, MIH explores the possibilities of re-purposing

Pepe (second hand clothing imported from US), hiring Haitian tailors at honorable wage (at the

time Bill Clinton proposed sweat shop labor as the solution to Haiti's economic woes), and

building a Haitian customer base. Located in Port Au Prince, in an area identified by the UN as a

Red Zone, because its inhabitants receive no aid from the numerous NGO's, which are Haiti's

primary economy, the neighborhood supports itself with automotive repair / painting, tailoring,

woodcarving, and artistic production. This project initially resulted in the production of 39 one-

off garments. Today MIH produces a small collection every four months, consisting of stenciled

and hand dyed t-shirts, wrap dresses, shirt aprons, lap top covers, messenger bags and back

packs. MIH employees two tailors, one translator, and five artisans. Items sell on Etsy and in pop

up shops in the United States.

Following a twelve-year career in the couture bridal gown industry, Carole Frances Lung

received a BFA and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute

Chicago. As Frau Fiber, textile worker and activist, Lung has created site-specific performances

of garment production labor in United States, Germany and Ireland. In 2006, she began the

project Sewing Rebellion, a national campaign to STOP SHOPPING AND START SEWING.

Lung is the recipient of numerous artist fellowships and awards, and has lectured internationally.

She is Assistant Professor in the Art Department at California State University Los Angeles.

Branding Chanderi: Community, Cloth and the Politics of Ownership

Jane Lynch

A recent headline reads: "Be Indian, buy Indian." Although suggestive of a nationalist slogan

from the late colonial period, this headline signals a critical turn in the politics of everyday life in

contemporary India. What does it mean to "buy Indian" now? How have the expansion of a

consuming middle class and the proliferation of brands in local markets changed the ways in

which goods--and textiles, in particular--are made, circulated, distinguished, and owned? Given

its historical depth and broad significance in South Asia, the handloom textile industry offers

unique perspectives on the changing political economy of India. Taking into account shifts in

government policies and new initiatives to brand Indian handlooms, the primary ethnographic

and archival research discussed in this paper investigates the ways in which these handloom

textiles mediate social and political life. Three textiles in particular, each woven in the historic

town of Chanderi, are examined: a stole designed for the 2010 Commonwealth Games hosted in

New Delhi; a black and gold sari that was gifted to Bollywood actress, Kareena Kapoor, by her

co-star, Aamir Khan; and a curtain produced for sale in the Indian retail store, Fabindia.

Following the trajectories of these three textiles, this paper provides insights into the multiple

"regimes of value" that are navigated--and produced--by traders, government officials,

consumers, and artisans in the contemporary handloom textile industry, including ideologies of

aesthetics and taste, moral claims about production and consumption, and locally mediated

conceptions of how to fashion an Indian lifestyle.

Jane Lynch is a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She holds a

M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan (2010), a M.A. in Social Science (2007)

from the University of Chicago and a B.A. with honors in Anthropology (2001) from Columbia

University. Her dissertation research on the handloom textile industry in India has been

supported primarily by fellowships from Fulbright and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for

Anthropological Research. She has presented aspects of this research at the South & Central Asia

Fulbright Conference and the Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin.

The Politics of Pastoralism: Navajos, Churros, and the Challenges of Sustainability in a

Globalizing World

Kathy M’Closkey

Navajos, or Dine', were dramatically affected by rapid changes in two of the three largest post-

Civil War domestic industries: agriculture and textiles. In my 2010 TSA paper, I revealed how

changes in the wool tariff triggered an escalation in textile production by thousands of Navajo

weavers, as traders sought ways to market the unstandardized wool clip. Another

underresearched aspect of Navajo history concerns how the federal government's haphazard

attempts in upbreeding Navajo flocks to national market standards triggered a failed

development policy, resulting in the reduction of one-half their livestock during the Depression.

For sixty years the government restricted traders from purchasing breeding stock in order to

ensure Navajos' self-support. This proscription coupled with a lack of price supports for purchase

of non-breeding stock to relieve overcrowding, resulted in an overgrazed range. Thus, conflicting

government policies culminated in stock reduction which targeted churros, the coarse-woolled

breed preferred by spinners and weavers. Weisiger (2009) reveals how this centerpiece of John

Collier's conservation reforms failed because Navajo women, owners of all of the goats and most

of the sheep, were shut out of the political process. Many Dine' resisted upbreeding since churros

have resilient characteristics lacking in other breeds. Given women's high status traditionally, as

reflected in their Creation narratives and matricentered social geography, Navajos' relational

ontology incorporates k'e, networks of reciprocity encompassing the non-human world. These

networks persist, as revealed in the film Weaving Worlds, confirming how the empirically based

ecological understandings of Dine' are intimately tied to their social structures.

Kathy M'Closkey, anthropologist at the University of Windsor, Ontario, has received funding

from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada since 1998. She is also a

research affiliate with the Southwest Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, the sponsor of

Swept Under the Rug: A Hidden History of Navajo Weaving (UNM Press, 2002, 2008). Her

forthcoming book Why the Navajo Blanket Became a Rug: Excavating the Lost Heritage of

Globalization, repositions weavers and woolgrowers within a globalization framework. Kathy

has curated five exhibitions of fiber work by women. She served as research director for the PBS

documentary Weaving Worlds.

The Cultural Politics of Textile Craft Revivals

Suzanne MacAulay