Tribal Art London – London’s leading Ethnographic Fair – opened today. Over twenty exhibitors are taking part, including OATG members Cordelia Donohoe and Joss Graham. The venue is the Mall Galleries near St James’s Park and tickets are free.
It was supposed to run until 18 September, but will now close at 17:00 on 17 September due to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Click here for more details.
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A reminder of a hybrid talk, which will take place in person in Oxford, as well as on Zoom. On Wednesday 21 September anthropologist and author Frances Larson will talk about her book Undreamed Shores: The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology.
“In the opening two decades of the twentieth century, at a time when women were barely recognized at the University of Oxford, five women trained at the Pitt Rivers Museum and became Britain’s first professional female anthropologists. Between them, they did pioneering research in Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Siberia, Egypt, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and the pueblos of southwest America. Through their work they challenged the myths that constrained their lives. Yet when they returned to England, they found loss, madness and regret waiting for them.” – PRM website
The talk begins at 18:00 BST and you can register for either the in-person event or an online ticket here.
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The speaker for our next OATG talk is Fiona Kerlogue and her subject is Translating textiles: The Indonesian collections of Josef Šrogl.
“Museum collections in Europe contain large numbers of textiles brought back from various parts of Asia by travellers and European overseas residents, who collected them in a variety of circumstances, not often recorded in the museum documentation. Family correspondence held in the Náprstek Museum, [National Museum], Prague, from one such collector, Josef Srogl, who was collecting in the Dutch East Indies between 1895 and 1922, was passed to the museum at the same time as much of his collection, providing insights into the journey through which the textiles passed. Many of the perspectives of the collector, information about the available sources, insights into his criteria for selection and his thoughts about the intended uses for the textiles are revealed.”
This Zoom talk will take place on Thursday 29 September at 18:30 BST. It is free for OATG members and there is a small charge for non-members. You can find more details and register for it here.
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The next World Textile Day event is on Saturday 1 October at Saltford near Bristol. Entry to the exhibition and sale is free, but there is a small charge for attendance at the talks – two on sashiko and one on textile trappings.
These events are always very busy, so you are advised to get there early! Full details of the location and facilities, plus a list of vendors can be found here.
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On Thursday 6 October we have the long-awaited talk by Maria Wronska-Friend, which was originally scheduled for April 2020. Maria is currently based in Australia, and we are delighted to be welcoming her to Oxford for this in-person talk. Her subject is Kimono and Sarong: Four centuries of Japanese and Indonesian textile connections.
“The exchange of textiles between Japan and Indonesia was initiated probably in the 17th century by the Dutch traders who, until 1868, had a monopoly in the trade with Japan. As the trade goods used to be dispatched from the ports of Java, at times textiles destined for Indonesian markets were sent to Japan where they became highly treasured goods, incorporated into local dress or used in the tea ceremony. At the same time, at least from the beginning of the 19th century, residents of Java highly treasured Japanese katagami fabrics brought to Batavia as a return cargo from Nagasaki.”
The location for this talk, which begins at 18:30 BST, is the Pauling Centre on Banbury Road, Oxford. It is free for OATG members and there is a small charge for non-members. You can find more details and register for it here.
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Oxford Asian Textile Group blog 