The new issue of our journal, Asian Textiles, is now out and should be winging its way to members. A pdf of it will also be uploaded to the Members Resources section of our website.
I really enjoyed reading the article on Burmese sazigyo by the late Ralph Isaacs OBE. We have a small collection of these manuscript binding tapes, which Ralph kindly examined and commented on back in 2010. This particular article is dedicated to the analysis of tapes done by the late Peter Collingwood OBE, and has some great diagrams. It also provides an insight into Peter’s method of working and is richly illustrated.
Other articles in the journal include Tibetan dress in Darjeeling in the early 19th century, May Beattie as a benefactor of the Ashmolean, and Discovering Moroccan textiles – a journey with Sheila Paine.
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A new free exhibition focussing on the Ainu people opened recently at Japan House in London. It is entitled Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River.
“Historically, members of the Ainu community were not able to fully express their distinct culture, however a movement to celebrate and sustain the Ainu language, textiles, crafts and traditions continues to gather pace, in particular among younger members of the Ainu community.
Ainu Stories is a collaboration with the people of Biratori, an area located in the Saru River basin in southern Hokkaido. Through intimate video interviews and displays of contemporary Ainu works, the exhibition explores four central themes of contemporary Ainu culture: the critically endangered language; society and the preservation of the environment; Ainu textiles, song and dance; and woodcarving and tourism.” – Japan House website
An illustrated review of the exhibition by Urban Adventurer can be viewed here.
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Next Thursday, 30 November 2023, the Fashion and Textile Museum (London) will host an online talk by Aarathi Prasad, the author of a new book on Silk: A History in Three Metamorphoses. The talk begins at 18:00 GMT and you can book for it here.
“Prasad’s Silk is a cultural and biological history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the biologists who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, manipulating the habitats and physiologies of moths, spiders and molluscs……… From the moths of China, Indonesia and India to the spiders of South America and Madagascar, to the silk-producing molluscs of the Mediterranean, Silk is a book rich in the passionate connections made by women and men of science to the diversity of the animal world. It is an intoxicating mix of biography, intellectual history and science writing that brings to life the human obsession with silk.” – Harper Collins website
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An exhibition devoted to Syrian textiles opened at the Katonah Museum of Art in New York State last month and will run until 28 January 2024.
“Stories of Syria’s Textiles: Art and Heritage across Two Millennia highlights textiles’ outstanding contributions to Syrian culture during antiquity and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as today……. In the exhibition’s first section, which focuses on the ancient cities of Dura-Europos and Palmyra, ancient textile fragments will be displayed with sculptures that depict people wearing luxurious clothing with intricate embroidery and silks from China: together, these objects evoke and attest to Syria’s role at the western edge of the Silk Routes in antiquity. The second section features clothing designed and created by skilled artisans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These textiles reveal the social and cultural traditions not only of elite city residents in Aleppo and Damascus, but also of desert nomads and villagers living in the Syrian countryside and mountains.” – museum website.
Woman’s coat, probably from Northern Syria, late 19th-early 20th century. Photograph courtesy of the Museum of International Folk Art.
An online talk linked to this exhibition takes place on Thursday 30 November 2023 at 5:30 pm EST, which is 22:30 GMT. Maya Alkateb-Chami and Rania Kataf share their perspectives on ongoing efforts to document and preserve Syria’s textile heritage in Syrian Textiles Up Close. Click here to register for this free event.
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The next OATG event takes place on Thursday 7 December at 18:30 GMT. This is a Zoom lecture by OATG member Sheila Fruman, entitled Pull of the Thread: Textile Travels of a Generation. Sheila will present highlights from her recent book of the same name in which she studied “intrepid travelers [who]combed the streets and bazaars of Central and South Asia finding, researching, collecting and selling textile treasures to interested Westerners. Taken together, their stories are an enlightening guide to understanding how we connect to the past, and how textiles connect the world.”
This should be of particular interest to OATG members as two of Sheila’s nine subjects – John Gillow and Joss Graham – are fellow members.
As usual this event is free for members, with a small fee payable by non-members. Click here for more information and to register.
To whet your appetite, an extract from Sheila’s book – along with some fabulous photos – is available to read in the Cabana Magazine blog here.
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Oxford Asian Textile Group blog 