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The OATG have recently had a couple of in person events, with a visit to the British Museum and a talk by Rachel Silberstein. Members who are unable to travel to Oxford will be delighted to hear our next event, which will take place in early September, will be an online lecture by Dr Dorothy Armstrong.
In the meantime the next edition of our Asian Textiles journal will be published shortly and members may also enjoy looking at the recordings of some of our previous talks. Simply go to our website and click on the Events section and then on the Members Resources page. You will need to enter the current password, which can be found on the inside back page of the current Journal. I was travelling in April and missed the talk on Frontiersmen of the Crossroad: The Fusion Style of Chinese Shan Dressing by Ake Rittinaphakorn, so am looking forward to watching the recording of it.
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The current exhibition at the Design Museum in London is The Offbeat Sari, curated by Priya Khanchandani. This major exhibition celebrates the contemporary Indian sari, bringing together dozens of the finest and most innovative saris.
“Worn as an everyday garment by some and considered by others to be formal or uncomfortable, the sari has multiple definitions. Conventionally an unstitched drape wrapped around the body, which can be draped in a variety of ways, its unfixed form has enabled it to morph and absorb changing cultural influences.
In recent years, the sari has been reinvented. Designers are experimenting with hybrid forms such as sari gowns and dresses, pre-draped saris and innovative materials such as steel. Young people in cities who used to associate the sari with dressing up can now be found wearing saris and sneakers on their commutes to work. Individuals are wearing the sari as an expression of resistance to social norms and activists are embodying it as an object of protest.” – Design Museum website
The short video below gives an insight into the exhibition, and more information on some of the highlights can be found here.
There is also a book, edited by Priya Khanchandani, to go with the exhibition.
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David Richardson and I will be giving a free online talk on Saturday 29 July 2023 as part of the Textile Museum’s Rug and Textile Appreciation sessions. Our subject will be Changing Women’s Fashions on the Indonesian Island of Sumba. Most textile lovers are aware of the Sumbanese men’s hip wrappers known as hinggi, but many know little about the women’s tubeskirts, known as lau. These are made using a wide variety of techniques, which we will discuss in this talk.
The talk is free, and begins at 11:00 EDT/08:00 PDT, which is 16:00 BST, and you can register for it here.
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The New TRIBAL ANTIQUE & DECORATIVE TEXTILES FAIR will take place on Sunday July 30th at St Mary Abbots Centre, Vicarage Gate, W8 4HN, near Kensington Church Street, London. This is an upcoming new antique textile fair, following the demise of the Hilton Olympia Tribal Art Fair. All of the best dealers, from that event and more, will be exhibiting on July 30th. The organisers hope that this will become a destination event and will happen in June and November in subsequent years.
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On Thursday 3 August Assistant Curator Eliza Spindel will be conducting a free tour of the current exhibition on Palestinian embroidery at Kettles Yard in Cambridge, UK. The tour is timed to begin at noon and there is no need to book ahead.
You can learn more about some of the dresses in the exhibition in this blog. Did you know that the vine leaf motif indicates a dress is from the Hebron area, due to the large number of grapes grown on the Hebron hills?
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I wrote in my previous blog about the new exhibition at the Brunei Gallery in London on the Japanese Aesthetics of Recycling – The Karun Thakar Collection. On Thursday 10 August at 18:00 Karun will be giving a talk and guided tour of the exhibition. Admission is free, and attendance highly recommended!
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Quite a few members of the OATG are also members of the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California. The TMA/SC are celebrating 38 years of presenting textile programmes next month, and will hold a special event on Saturday 19 August. This will be a symposium and banquet lunch, and they have two great speakers lined up. The first is OATG member and Textile Museum curator Lee Talbot, who will speak about Indian Textiles: 1,000 Years of Art and Design. The second speaker is Professor Walter Denny and his subject will be How We Look at Turkish Carpets: James F. Ballard and a New Way of Collecting. For further details of this event click here.
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Oxford Asian Textile Group blog 