New Year, new textile events!

On Wednesday 17th January 2024 the Oriental Rug and Textile Society (ORTS) will hold their first in person lecture of the year in London. The speaker is Avalon Fotheringham of the V&A, and her subject is Connecting Threads: New Investigations into Madras Handkerchief Exchanges between South India and the Caribbean.

“Connecting Threads is an AHRC+NEH funded humanities project dedicated to exploring how Indian cotton weavers and their customers across the Global South impacted wider fashion histories. The project is now entering the second phase of its pilot case study, which focused on the South Indian ‘Madras Handkerchief’ and the impacts of its consumption in the Caribbean. This lecture will summarise the project’s findings, including new discoveries which shed light on the possible origins of Madras and the importance of the Caribbean market to global trade and fashion.” – ORTS website

The talk begins at 18:30 GMT and is free for members. Guests are welcome upon payment of a small fee, but do need to contact Dimity Spiller in advance.

Linen Day, Roseau, Dominica – A Market Scene, by Agostino Brunias, c.1780. Yale Centre for British Art.

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Also taking place on Wednesday 17th January 2024 is the first online lecture in a series hosted by the Washington-based Textile Museum. These lectures will all be given by authors who have contributed to the most recent issue of the Textile Museum Journal. The speaker is Nikolaos Vryzidis, who specialises in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. He will be discussing a fourteenth century Asian silk in a monastic Greek manuscript. Dr Vryzidis will demonstrate how the “study of this rare and intricately patterned textile can contribute to our knowledge of the importation and dissemination of Asian silk damasks and damask-like fabrics in late medieval Europe.” – Textile Museum website

This online talk begins at noon EST, 09:00 PST, which is 17:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

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On Thursday 18th January 2024 the Katonah Museum in New York State will hold an online talk linked to their current exhibition on Syrian textiles (which closes on 28th January). In Syrian Textiles Up Close leading experts Deniz Beyazit and Julia Carlson will “discuss how the fine garments designed and created by skilled artisans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveal social and cultural traditions.” – Katonah Museum website

This free talk takes place at 14:30 PT, 17:30 ET, 22:30 GMT.

Man’s abaya (cloak), from Aleppo or Damascus, late 19th-early 20th century

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The London Antique Rug and Textile Art Fair (LARTA) runs from Tuesday 23rd to Sunday 28th January 2024 in Battersea Park. According to their website this is “the UK’s leading annual fair dedicated to the appreciation of antique rug and textile art. Our specialist event brings together quality decorative pieces and interesting collectors’ items presented by some of the UK and Europe’s most dynamic and knowledgeable dealers.

Our aim is to promote this vibrant art form to a wide audience, and offer a tempting array of textiles and weavings for sale. The scope of our interest is broad, and includes weavings from the Far East, Central Asia, Persia, India, Turkey, the Caucasus as well as from Europe and Africa, and from all periods up to the early 20th century. Customers typically include collectors, interior decorators and designers, private buyers and international dealers.” – LARTA website

Information on the exhibitors can be found on their website.

Image from a past LARTA Fair. © The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair / John Englefield

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Wednesday 24th January 2024 sees the second of the Textile Museum talks by authors featured in its journal. The speakers are Anna Jolly of the Abegg-Stiftung and Corinne Mühlemann from the University of Bern. They will be discussing two velvet Iranian letter pouches, which are currently held in the Danish National archives. They believe that the letters which these pouches once held can help to date the textiles to pre-1637.

“By placing the two letter pouches in the context of diplomatic exchange between the Safavid court and a European court, this case study highlights the role luxury textiles played in 17th-century Iranian diplomacy.” – Textile museum website 

This online talk begins at noon EST, 09:00 PST, which is 17:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

© Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen. Photo by Pernille Klemp.

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On Saturday 27th January 2024 the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California will host and online talk by Professor Walter Denny entitled How We Look at Turkish Carpets: James F. Ballard and a New Way of Collecting. In this talk Professor Denny “will focus on carpets from the Ottoman Empire acquired by early 20^th century American collector James Ballard.  Ballard’s collection, today divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum, has influenced a century of American carpet collecting and changed the way we look at carpets made in Anatolian workshops, villages, and nomadic encampments.” – TMA/SC

This Zoom talk takes place at 10:00 PT, 13:00 ET, which is 18:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

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The final talk in the Textile Museum journal series takes place on Wednesday 31st January. This time the speaker is Yu-Ning Chen and her subject is Mosurin Wool Textiles in Imperial Japan.

“Chen discusses military-related patterns on mosurin fabric, representations of mosurin in print media, including Japanese prewar textbooks, and descriptions of both the consumer culture surrounding this fabric and the female factory labor involved in its production in modern Japanese literature.” – Textile museum website

This online talk begins at noon EST, 09:00 PST, which is 17:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

Photo courtesy of Mukogawa Women’s University.

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Next some OATG news. Our AGM will take place on Saturday 17th February 2024 at 14:00 in the usual venue of the Ashmolean Museum Learning Centre. The formal proceedings will be followed by a Show and Tell, which is always a lively event. The Eventbrite invitations will be sent out in due course.

Image from a previous Show and Tell

Those who attended last year’s Show and Tell may remember Peter Umney-Gray and his scissor bags.

Short (24.2cm) and long (44.8cm) scissors with appropriate Shahsavan bags (29cm and 47cm), showing how short bags could possibly have been used for short sheep scissors.

Peter’s book Scissor Bags & Sheep Scissors in the Nomadic Tradition has now been published. With 292 pages and 299 illustrations this should surely satisfy any readers’ curiosity about this subject! It is available for £55 plus postage from Argali Publishing.

“Scissor bags, and the end-pivot sheep scissors they contained, have not until now been given the attention they deserve. The utilitarian purpose and ephemeral nature of these mainly woven objects by nomadic pastoralists have meant that not many of them survive….. The results of field research among the Shahsavan of Northwest Iran, the Sarıkeçeli Türkmen of the Toros Mountains, Türkiye, and the Uygurs of Xinjiang help to shed light on this tradition….” – Peter Umney-Gray

Inscribed end-pivot sheep scissors, Iran, lying on a scissor bag.

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OATG members who were unable to attend recent events will be glad to know that the recordings of the talks given by Sheila Fruman (Pull of the Thread: Textile Travels of a Generation) and Patricia Cheesman (Unravelling Tai Textiles from Laos) are available to view via the password-protected section of our website. Click here, then on the Members Resources link and enter the password.

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Textile-related papers, talks, exhibitions and books

A new paper by OATG member Chris Buckley has been published in Asian Archaeology.

“This paper presents a new map and account of the emergence and spread of spindle whorls in archaeological sites across southern China and southeast Asia. Spindle whorls are evidence of intensive yarn production, and hence of weaving. In the past two decades a considerable amount of new data on the presence of spindle whorls in the archaeological record has come to light, along with improved dates for existing sites.” – Chris Buckley.

A free copy of this fascinating work can be downloaded here.

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A special exhibition dedicated to weaving with banana fibre (bashofu), is currently taking place at the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Osaka This exhibition is entitled Kijoka’s Bashofu Story and will run until 19 December 2023.

A short video of the banana fibre exhibition.

The exhibition features the work of master weaver Toshiko Taira, and you may find this article about her by Toshie Tanaka of interest.

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Next a reminder of an exhibition still showing at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. Textile Masters to the World – the global desire for Indian Cloth runs until 31 December and “spotlights the historic global impact of textile production in India, and its role as evidence of trade and cultural exchange between India and regions such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe from the 14th to 19th century.” – ACM website

An overview of the exhibition. Image © ACM Singapore.

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OATG members Chris and Angela Legge have an exhibition of Central Asian Ikat of the Nineteenth Century in their Oxford gallery until 21 October 2023, featuring some really stunning textiles. Open Thursday to Saturday and by appointment.

An Uzbek silk robe, currently on display at Legge Gallery in Summertown, Oxford.

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The next OATG event takes place this Thursday 12 October at 18:30 BST in Oxford. Our speaker will be collector and writer Jonathan Hope, and his subject is Some observations on historic Javanese batik. He will show a series of images of batik being prepared and worn in central Java and will discuss the significance of certain traditional patterns and he will share some memories of travelling in Java over a period of almost half a century. He will also bring some textiles from his extensive collection to show attendees.

This event is of course free to OATG members. Non-members are welcome to attend for a small donation. Please click here for more details and to register.

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A new exhibition devoted to Syrian textiles will open on 14 October 2023 at the Katonah Museum of Art, in New York State, 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.

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The next event to be hosted by the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California will take place on Saturday 21 October 2023 at 10am PT, 1pm ET, 1800 BST. This is a Zoom talk by author Sheila Fruman and her subject is Pull of the Thread: Textile Travels of a Generation, based on her new book of the same title.

“Sheila Fruman has concentrated on nine intrepid travelers from the 1960s up to now, who, in their youth, combed the streets and bazaars of Central and South Asia finding, researching, collecting and selling antique woven ikat and embroidered Uzbek textiles and robes, Kashmir shawls, Anatolian kilims, Turkmen carpets and many other textile treasures to interested Westerners.  This generation of dealers and collectors all made important and even essential contributions to their fields, publishing books, staging exhibitions, and often gifting items to major institutions such as the V&A and MET.” – TMA/SC 

Pip Rau in her Islington shop in the 1980s

One of these intrepid travellers was Pip Rau. I never had the chance to go to her shop, but did visit a wonderful exhibition of her Central Asian ikat textiles – twice!

This Zoom talk is free, but you do need to register for it here.

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On Sunday 22 October 2023 at 11am OATG member Walter Bruno Brix will be giving a talk at the Museum of Folk History in Vienna as part of the re:Pair Festival. His subject is Mottainai – don’t waste anything!

“Repairing has a long tradition in Japan. Especially with textiles, which are valuable because they had to be made entirely by hand. Obtaining the fibers, spinning the threads and weaving required a lot of time. So it’s understandable that every little scrap of fabric was used and every piece of textile was repaired and recycled. Pants and jackets, even entire garments, were lined with other fabrics and sewn through with small stitches to make them warmer and more durable. Today, sashiko is mostly only known as a decorative technique; it was originally used to make textiles last longer. The word ‘boro’ means shreds in Japanese.” – museum website

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A selection of upcoming textile events

A new exhibition opened today at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. It is entitled The Fabric of Democracy: Propaganda Textiles from the French Revolution to Brexit and runs until 3 March 2024.

“Curated by design historian Amber Butchart, this exhibition explores printed propaganda textiles over more than two centuries. Discover how fabric designers and manufacturers have responded to political upheaval from the French Revolution through to Brexit.

The mechanisation of textile industries from the mid-18th century led to the development of print techniques that could create more detailed imagery on cloth, quicker than ever before. These increasingly affordable processes ‘democratised’ textile decoration, allowing governments, regimes, and corporations to harness the power of print to communicate, from wartime slogans to revolutionary ideals.” – Fashion and Textile Museum website

Peace in our Time Scarf 1938 on loan from the Paul and Karen Rennie Collection © Jonathan Richards

If like me you find the subject of propaganda textiles fascinating you may enjoy this blog I wrote a few years ago, which includes links to a paper by Michele Hardy of the Nickle Galleries on How Soviet propaganda influenced traditional oriental carpets and another by Irina Bogolovskaya on The Soviet “Invasion” of Central Asian Applied Arts: How Artisans Incorporated Communist Political Messages and Symbols.

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The exhibition China’s hidden century, which opened at the British Museum in May, closes on 8 October 2023, so if you haven’t yet had the chance to see it don’t delay!

One of the things I like about the British Museum is that they always have interesting blogs and videos to accompany their exhibitions and give you insights into the work of the curators and conservators. I particularly enjoyed this video by curator Jessica Harrison-Hall about a 140-year-old outfit, which would have been worn by a Han woman.

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On Monday 2 October 2023 Japan House London will be hosting Ainu Stories by Ankes, during which the singing duo Ankes will introduce their heritage and background, accompanied by a performance of Ainu songs. They will explore their Ainu roots, discussing their identity, cultural background and life in Biratori, in conversation with Simon Wright of Japan House London. You can attend this event in person, or watch a live stream – but you do need to register. Click here for more details. This event is in advance of the exhibition Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River , which opens on 16 November 2023.

Ankes (Harada Rino and Shinmachi Seiya)

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On Thursday 5th October 2023 the Royal Asiatic Society will host a book launch for The Art of Iran in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries: Tracing the Modern and the Contemporary. This will be an in person event, with a talk by the book’s author Dr Hamid Keshmirshekan, an art historian based at SOAS. It will take place at 1830 BST at the Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD. You can also attend by zoom, by registering with Matty Bradley

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The final World Textile Day of this year will take place in the West of England, more precisely at Saltford, which is just thirty minutes from both Bristol and Bath, on Saturday 7th October 2023. Doors open at 10am – be sure to get there early for the best selection of ethnic textiles from a wide variety of traders! For full details click here.

Image of a previous World Textile Day event at Saltford.

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The following day The Textile Society will be hosting their Antique and Vintage Fair in Chelsea Old Town Hall, London. I’ve never attended the London Fair, but have been to the one they hold in Manchester several times and have found several treasures there.

The London Fair “offers an outstanding range of vintage fashion, antique textiles and costume sourced from around the world. Textiles from the 18th century up to the swinging 1960s and 70s, furnishings including pre-1950s rugs, and unique fashion accessories can be found here. Visitors can explore the fair for secondhand books, ephemera and advice on textile conservation.” Full details and ticket booking can be found here.

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The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum run a regular series of Rug and Textile Appreciation Mornings in which collectors and experts discuss textile topics and display examples from their personal holdings. The next event in this series takes place on Saturday 7 October 2023 at 11am EDT, which is 16:00 BST. This will be an online talk by Amanda Phillips of the University of Virginia on the subject Sea Change: Ottoman Textiles from 1400-1800.

“During the Ottoman Empire, the sale and exchange of silks, cottons and woolens generated immense revenue and touched every level of society. As attested by surviving objects, trade with Italy, Iran and India was supplemented by both extraordinary and mundane textiles exchanged within the empire. Based on her recent book, Sea Change, Amanda Phillips offers a brief history of the Ottoman textile sector, arguing that the trade’s enduring success resulted from its openness to expertise and objects from far-flung locations.

This virtual talk begins with a massive silk hanging made for Sultan Bayezid I (r. 1389-1402) and ends with a velvet floor covering made in the 1700s. Using weave-structure and visual analysis of surviving objects, Phillips will consider textiles as objects of technological innovation and artistic virtuosity. She will also highlight the ability of textiles to transform in the hands and on the bodies of their consumers, taking on new meanings and sometimes agency of their own.”

This program is a partnership with the New England Rug Society and the Hajji Baba Club. Click here to register.

Loom-width “kemha” (detail), Istanbul, 1575-1600. The Textile Museum Collection 1.50. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1951.

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Andean Textile Arts will hold the next in their series of Textile Talks on Tuesday 10 October 2023 at 7pm Eastern, which is unfortunately midnight here in the UK. The speaker is curator Shelley Burian and her topic is New Materials in Ancient Techniques – Compositional Secrets of Colonial “Mesa Awayo”.

She will discuss “the composition and function of small rectangular warp-face woven mantles, often referred to as “mesa awayos”, woven in the 17th/18th centuries by Aymara-speaking peoples who inhabited regions encompassing modern southern Perú and northern Bolivia. These textiles demonstrate ways Andean communities adapted materials introduced through Spanish colonization into their own hierarchy of materials and production techniques.” – ATA website.

The registration fee for attending this online talk will go to further support revitalisation of Andean textile traditions. Click here for more details.

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Last – but certainly not least – is the next OATG event. This will be in person in Oxford and will take place on Thursday 12 October at 18:30 BST. Our speaker will be collector and writer Jonathan Hope, and his subject is Some observations on historic Javanese batik. He will show a series of images of batik being prepared and worn in central Java and will discuss the significance of certain traditional patterns and he will share some memories of travelling in Java over a period of almost half a century. He will also bring some textiles from his extensive collection to show attendees.

This event is of course free to OATG members. Non-members are welcome to attend for a small donation. Please click here for more details and to register.

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A selection of textile events taking place this month

A new exhibition has opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showcasing kanthas from Bengal. Entitled A Century of Kanthas: Women’s Quilts in Bengal, 1870s-1970s it runs until 01 January 2024.

“Like quilts around the world, kanthas embody thrift, labor, and imagination. Women in Bengal (modern-day Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal, India) created kanthas for a host of reasons—as ritual seating, bedcovers, baby swaddling, and much more. Most disintegrated with household use, but many that survived are now heirlooms that carry women’s individuality and love for their families across generations.

This exhibition brings into conversation two types of kanthas: nakshi (ornamented) kanthas and galicha (carpet) kanthas. The nakshi kanthas on view, from between about 1870 and 1930, are made on layers of soft, white, repurposed fabric embroidered with meaningful motifs in a delicate palette and often covered with rows of parallel white running stitches. Galicha kanthas, produced especially in the 1950s and 1960s, are thick, uniformly rectangular quilts with vivid cross-stitch embroidery in intricate geometric forms on a surface of new cloth backed by upcycled fabrics.” – Museum website.

Galicha (carpet kantha), c. 1940-1950, by Artist/maker unknown, Bengali, 1998-102-8

I’m familiar with the nakshi kanthas, but have never come across the galicha type, so this has really opened my eyes.

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We have a small collection of sazigyo – Burmese tablet-woven bands used to wrap around palm-leaf manuscripts – so I was very interested to read this British Library blog on the use of manuscript textiles in Thailand and Laos. It’s written and illustrated by Methaporn (Noon) Singhanan, who is a Chevening Fellow at the Library.

“Thai and Lao manuscript textiles have a rich history that dates back to at least the 18th century. Buddhist teachings and scriptures, written on palm leaves or paper, were highly valued, and often adorned with intricate designs, illustrations, and calligraphy. Manuscript textiles were created to protect and preserve these texts from dust, humidity and insects and, as a result, many were transformed into beautiful pieces.” – Methaporn Singhanan

Luxury manuscript textile from northern Laos, made from a re-used tube skirt of exquisite quality, combining a silk and silver-thread tapestry (border) with a large piece of Ikat fabric (main body) and a cotton waistband. Ca. mid-20th century. British Library, Or 16886

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Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery opened at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, UK, this week and explores the historical life and contemporary significance of Palestinian embroidery. It runs until 29 October 2023, and will also be shown in Manchester in 2024.

“Curated by Rachel Dedman, the exhibition looks at the ways in which embroidery, primarily undertaken by women, has evolved through a century of turbulent history for the Palestinian people.

This is the first major exhibition of Palestinian embroidery in the UK for over 30 years, with more than 40 dresses and embroidered objects on display lent from important private collections in Jordan and Palestine. Every dress tells a story: whether about the lives of women with their astonishing skills and creativity in the early decades of the last century, or the trauma of displacement as a result of the war of 1948. And reflecting the decades since: in which the vibrant colours and patterns of Palestinian embroidery, now often created for a global market by groups of women, have become symbolic of nationhood, memory, and resistance. Alongside historic dresses are artworks by five contemporary artists, films of embroiderers speaking about their work and rarely seen archive material.” – Kettle’s Yard website

Kettle’s Yard Director Andrew Nairne will give a free informal introduction to the exhibition on 20 July 2023 from 12:00-13:00.

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OATG member Lee Talbot – curator at the George Washington Textile Museum – is giving a free online talk tomorrow Wednesday 12 July at 7pm CT. His subject is Korean Fashion from Royal Court to Runway. I’ve seen a couple of video walkthroughs of exhibitions by Lee and he is a very knowledgable and engaging speaker. Click here for more details and to register.

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The next OATG event is an in-person talk in Oxford by Dr Rachel Silberstein this Thursday, 13 July. This was initially scheduled for 2020, so we are delighted we are finally able to hear her speak. Her subject is A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing.

“This talk examines the expansion of commercialized dress and embroidery production during the late Qing period. With a focus on Suzhou, the center of fashionable dress production and embroidery, it shows how this city benefitted from the Gu embroidery trend, and how the expansion of commercial embroidery created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops and subcontracted female workers. Though little attention was paid to these workers, objects of fashion reveal much about women’s participation—as both producers and consumers—in the commercialization of textile handicrafts. By reading objects of clothing and accessories from museum collections alongside pattern-books and advertisements, we will see how embroidery shops and accessory producers sought to brand and market their wares, and in turn, what these efforts tell us about the conflict of gender values inherent to the commercial production of dress and embroidery.” – Rachel Silberstein

An anonymous family portrait of four generations of a Manchu family in late Qing Beijing, ca. 1853. Ink and mineral pigments on paper, 185.5 × 384 cm. Mactaggart Art Collection (2007.23.1), University of Alberta Museums. Gift of Sandy and Cécile Mactaggart. (detail)

As usual, this talk is free for OATG members (who should have already received their invitation), with a small charge for non-members. Click here for full details.

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The Brunei Gallery at SOAS, London, will host a new exhibition from the Karun Thakar collection from 13 July to 23 September 2023. The subject of this exhibition is Japanese Aesthetics of Recycling, and it features over one hundred objects, including Boro and sakiori textiles, washi and kin-tsugi or gin-tsugi pottery. 

“Boro (Japanese: ぼろ) is a class of Japanese textiles that have been mended or patched together. The term is derived from Japanese boroboro, meaning something tattered or repaired. Fashioned from worn clothing and ‘waste’ fabric to create ‘Boro’, the textile pieces have become very popular with collectors in Japan & throughout the world over the last 20 years. These pieces are often marketed as ‘abstract art’ in the Western context. They are in fact an important aspect of Japanese history and culture, showing the resilience and creativity shown by working people living in very harsh environment with very few resources.

Boro coat from the Karun Thakar collection

Washi (handmade paper) was widely used in the Meiji & Showa period to make wrappings for valuable kimonos, tea storage bags, wrappers for documents as well as floor coverings and room dividers. Often old ledgers were recycled and layered to make these objects, persimmon paste was used to make them waterproof. Shifu garments will also be exhibited, these were woven using twisted and plaited paper yarn, farmers originally cut the pages of ancient account books in order to turn them into woven paper. The ink writing on the paper also remained visible in the finished fabric leaving an interesting speckled pattern.

Various examples of kin-tsugi or gin-tsugi “golden joinery” pottery will also be exhibited form The Heian period (平安時代, Heian jidai) 794 to 1185 to Edo period (江戸時代, Edo jidai) 1603 and 1867. Breakage and repairs were not disguised in these pots and were seen as rich part of the history of these objects. Yobi-tsugi pieces, which were constructed from different broken pots will also be exhibited.” – SOAS website

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On 13 and 14 July a Textile Bazaar will be held at Hellens Manor near Ledbury in Herefordshire – a great chance to find a textile treasure to add to your collection. A list of exhibitors can be found here.

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Another great opportunity to buy wonderful textiles comes next week on Wednesday 19th July at this pop-up sale. A great range of textiles to see for interiors, film, costume, and collectors. Sallie Ead will be there with her selection of antique European and other ethnographic textiles, John Gillow and Martin Conlan (Slow Loris) will have a fabulous selection of textiles from around the world. It runs from 1100-1800 and entry is free.

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Many of you will be aware of the Textile Research Centre in Leiden, which I was lucky enough to visit a few years ago.

“The TRC is an international research hub for textiles and dress. It is a centre open to anyone who is interested and working in the field of textiles and dress, literally from students, academics, professional textile makers and designers, to the public. As a knowledge centre, the TRC is involved in both collecting a wide range of textiles, dress and accessories and in passing on knowledge about techniques and uses to the current and future generations. ” – Museum website

The TRC’s Dr Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood is giving a talk about the work of the centre, at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London on 20 July 2023 at 14:00. Tickets cost £17.50, but do include entry to the current exhibition Andy Warhol: The Textiles. Click here for more details.

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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.

A selection of Sumbanese lau decorated using a variety of techniques

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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Finally, news of another textile fair. 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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Japanese, Chinese, Indian and Swedish textiles…..

The first OATG event of the year was our AGM and Show and Tell, which was a great success. Some superb pieces were shown and a lively discussion ensued.

David Richardson showing a young girl’s zari choli, from Kachchh in Gujarat, which was made over eighty years ago.

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Our next OATG talk will take place this Thursday 26 January at 18:30 GMT. Our speaker is Rachel Peat and her subject is Connecting Threads: Japanese Textiles in the British Royal Collection.

Magnificent textile gifts have been a central ‘thread’ of courtly relations between Britain and Japan for centuries. From rolls of silk given to Queen Victoria in 1860, to an embroidered screen sent as a Coronation gift by the Emperor Meiji in 1902, this lecture will situate Japanese textiles within the broader history of diplomatic exchange. Alongside tapestries and embroideries, attention will be given to loyal addresses backed with silk brocade, long-lost kimono and the silk lacing on a seventeenth-century armour.

​The talk will particularly explore how specific materials and motifs on Japan’s textiles have been used to convey bonds of friendship between the two Courts. Featuring unique photographs and first-hand convey from the Royal Archives, it will also shed light on how members of the British Royal Family enjoyed and displayed these works – from adorning the walls of royal residences, to wearing Japanese garments themselves.

Kawashima Orimono Co. Ltd, Embroidered folding screen with a scene from the Tale of Genji (detail), 1970–71. RCIN 29941. Royal Collection Trust / © King Charles III 2022

Rachel is Assistant Curator of Non-European Works of Art at Royal Collection Trust. Her role encompasses over 13,000 works of art from across the globe, which today furnish 13 current and historic royal residences. She is editor of Japan: Courts and Culture (2020), the first publication dedicated to Japanese material in the Royal Collection, and curator of the exhibition of the same name at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, open until 26 February 2023.

This Zoom talk will be free for OATG members, with a small fee (payable via PayPal) for non-members. Click here for more details and to register.

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On Thursday 2 February 2023 Ruth Clifford has organised a free hybrid symposium on the subject Craft in Fashion. This is a hybrid event, taking place in person (in Liverpool, UK) and online. “The symposium will explore the role of slow craft processes in the global fashion industry, the place and importance of traditional craft skills, and the potential of craft ……. in challenging inequalities in the industry and tackling existing unsustainable practices.” Ruth Clifford

Speakers include Lokesh Ghai, a textile artist, researcher and educator based at UPES University, Dehradun, India; Justine Aldersey-Williams, textile artist and teacher, founder of the North West England Fibreshed and co-founder of the Homegrown Homespun project in Blackburn, Lancashire; Dr Seher Mirza, designer, weaver and postdoctoral researcher currently working on the Decolonising Fashion and Textiles project at London College of Fashion and Swati Bhartia, a fashion and textiles designer who has extensive experience working in craft and handloom development in India.

The session will begin at 16:00 GMT and last for two hours. To register to attend in person please click here. If you want to attend online then please click here instead.

The following week sees the opening of the linked exhibition Craft in Fashion: contemporary examples from rural India, which runs from 6-17 February 2023 at the Liverpool John Moores University.

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The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair (LARTA) takes place at Battersea Park from 24-29 January 2023.

“The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair (LARTA) was launched in 2011 and is the UK’s leading annual fair dedicated to the appreciation of antique rug and textile art. Our specialist event brings together quality decorative pieces and interesting collectors’ items presented by some of the UK and Europe’s most dynamic and knowledgeable dealers.

Our aim is to promote this vibrant art form to a wide audience, and offer a tempting array of textiles and weavings for sale. The scope of our interest is broad, and includes weavings from the Far East, Central Asia, Persia, India, Turkey, the Caucasus as well as from Europe and Africa, and from all periods up to the early 20th century. Customers typically include collectors, interior decorators and designers, private buyers and international dealers.

The quality of the exhibitors at LARTA guarantees an event of high artistic significance and cultural merit. Many of our dealers exhibit regularly at important international antiques fairs and specialist symposiums. Several have written expert articles and books, travelled extensively to learn about the material culture and traditions of the weaving regions, and celebrated this extensive subject through exhibitions in their galleries.” LARTA website

A full list of exhibitors can be found here.

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HALI have organised a series of special events in Italy – Florence, Milan, Turin and Genoa – from 5-11 February. These include talks and guided tours of museums and galleries. Registration is required to attend the events. The cost is £75 per person for HALI subscribers, £125 per person for non-HALI-subscribers and £40 per person for students.

©Hali

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On Thursday 9 February 2023 Frances Wood will be giving an online talk on Chinese Illustration and Printmaking in China. She will discuss the “fascinating history of Chinese illustration—from the invention of printing in the 7th century through to the development of the complex sets of woodblock printing we see today.

Early illustrations were mainly of Buddhist subjects but by the 10th century books of all types, from literature to technological manuals, were widely available: expensive editions were beautifully illustrated whilst cheap chapbooks flooded the other end of the market. Colour illustrations and prints appeared from the 12th century, made from complex sets of woodblocks, most notably the ‘New Year’ prints that decorated houses at that auspicious festival.” – Museum website.

Frances has worked for more than 30 years as Curator of the Chinese collections in the British Library. I think that many of these woodcuts may show people in the dress of that time. This talk is one of a series linked to the current exhibition at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath entitled Revolution, Propaganda, Art: Printmaking in Modern China, which runs until 3 June 2023.

For more details and registration for this free online talk, which begins at 18:30 GMT, please click here.

The video below, created several years ago by Francis Gerard and Haiyao Zheng, should hopefully whet your appetite.

https://vimeo.com/142991238

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On Saturday 11 February 2023 the New England Rug Society will be hosting an online talk on Swedish textiles. This event is co-sponsored by the TMA/SC and the Textile Museum. This speaker is Gunnar Nilssen and his subject is Northern Delights: Swedish Textiles from 1680 to 1850.

“Certain textile techniques unique to rural communities in Sweden have a long history, and the best pieces stand comparison with the most celebrated traditional textile art elsewhere in Europe, including the best Flemish-weave and röllakan examples. Yet they remain little known outside their locality.  In times past, the peasantry in Skåne, southern Sweden, devised and utilised five different textile techniques about which little has been written in English.  In this program, Collector Gunnar Nilsson lets us into the secrets of munkabälte, dukagång, krabbasnår, upphämta and trensaflossa.” – Press release

This talk takes place at 18:00 GMT (10:00 PT, 13:00 ET), and you can register for it here.

Carriage cushion, röllakan (interlock tapestry), 48 x 121cm, Skytts härad (county) southwestern Skåne, inscribed and dated (in mirror reverse) END-IHS 1780

Korean, Nasca, Japanese, Costa Rican and Anatolian textiles

If you have been missing your regular textile fix during the holidays read on….

The Textile Museum in Washington DC recently held an exhibition entitled Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway. This exhibition featured several textiles which were originally exhibited at the World Fair in Chicago in 1893. After the Fair ended many of the textiles from the Korean pavilion were given to the new Field Museum in Chicago.

The Corea (Korea) Exhibit in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. [Image from Bancroft, Hubert Howe The Book of the Fair. The Bancroft Company, 1893.]

The Textile Museum exhibition has now ended, and sadly there are presently no plans for it to travel. However the curator, Lee Talbot, has made this excellent thirty minute video, which gives a great overview of the exhibition, with background information and close-ups of many of the textiles. In it he explains how dress gradually altered through the effects of major socio-economic changes, and the importance of the participation of Korea in the 1893.

An excellent short video guide to the exhibition

The textiles on show range from cushions to wedding dresses, undergarments to children’s clothes with motifs and colours for spiritual protection. A range of simple but striking bugaji wrapping cloths are also on display. Many exhibitions tend to focus on women’s clothing as it is often more colourful, so it was interesting to learn more about the clothing worn by Korean men. Why not settle down with a cuppa and some Christmas cake and enjoy this video!

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The Textile Museum in Washington DC is holding a series of online interviews with authors of articles in the current edition of its journal.

On Wednesday 11 January “contributing scholar Lois Martin will discuss her studies of an exquisite 2,000-year-old early Nasca textile known as the “Brooklyn Museum Textile.” Completely reversible, the textile has a sheer central cloth decorated with warp-wrapped designs and framed by an elaborate, three-dimensional border executed in cross-knit looping. Ninety-two tiny costumed figures parade along the border, marching in four single-file lines. Many believe the Brooklyn Museum Textile may represent approximately one quarter of a year; Martin suggests it could be a 365-day calendar.” – TM website.

Mantle (the Brooklyn Museum Textile) (detail), Nazca, 100-300. Brooklyn Museum, John Thomas Underwood Memorial Fund 38.121. Photo by Justin Kerr.

The timings for this free Zoom event are 12:00 ET, 09:00 PT and 17:00 GMT, and you can register for it here.

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Our next OATG event takes place on the afternoon of Saturday 14 January. We are delighted that this year we will once again be able to hold our AGM in person in Oxford, rather than virtually. Members will soon be receiving full details of how to participate in the Show and Tell session, which will follow the formal proceedings.

David and Sue Richardson showing a nineteenth century export patolu featuring tigers and elephants, formerly owned by the Sukawati Royal family of Ubud in Bali. January 2020 Show and Tell.

This is always a lively event and I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone brings and learning the stories about these textiles.

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Also taking place on Saturday 14 January is a Zoom talk hosted by the TMASC and NERS entitled Myth to Art: New perspectives on Anatolian Kilims. The speaker is Ali Rıza Tuna, an independent scholar from Switzerland.

“Anatolian kilims impress at first sight by their colors and the abstract expressivity of their designs, but they also imply more to the mind than what is seen by the eye. What makes a “kilim design” immediately recognizable among other designs? What mental processes create that “style” of motifs? Which characteristics define the kilim’s aesthetics and their agency on the observer? What are the keys to the communication that happens between us and a kilim, despite our ignorance of its symbolic language? What is it about kilims that makes us even project our own myths over their forms?

As a collector and researcher of Anatolian textiles over the last four decades, Ali Rıza Tuna addresses these questions by revisiting some fundamental paradigms used in kilim studies in his recent book From Myth to Art: Anatolian Kilims.” TMASC website.

This free Zoom event takes place at 10:00 PT, 13:00 ET, 18:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

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The next online interview in the Textile Museum series takes place on Wednesday 18 January 2023. Contributing scholars Scott Palumbo and Keilyn Rodríguez Sánchez will take part in a discussion with guest editor Jeffrey C. Splitstoser on the subject of Indigenous Knotted-Cord Records in Costa Rica.

Talamanca census, detail of numbered pendant cords; Bribri, Talamanca region, Costa Rica; 1873-1874. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Museum Support Center NMNH E1543. Donated by William Gabb, 1874.

“Dr. Palumbo and Dr. Sánchez will present evidence for the use of knotted-cord records in southern Costa Rica, an area virtually unknown for its use of knotted-cord record keeping. They will bring an anthropological perspective to their review of ethnohistorical sources and interviews with elders, who describe the structure and mathematical functions of knotted-cord records that were used decades earlier. The authors present this rich ethnographic material, consisting of knotted-cord devices from Costa Rica, and compare it to Andean “khipus” (knotted-cord devices used for record keeping).” TM website

This free Zoom programme takes place at 12:00 ET, 09:00 PT, 17:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

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The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair (LARTA) takes place at Battersea Park from 24-29 January 2023. A full list of exhibitors can be found here.

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Finally, our next OATG talk will take place on Thursday 26 January at 18:30 GMT. Our speaker is Rachel Peat and her subject is Connecting Threads: Japanese Textiles in the British Royal Collection.

Magnificent textile gifts have been a central ‘thread’ of courtly relations between Britain and Japan for centuries. From rolls of silk given to Queen Victoria in 1860, to an embroidered screen sent as a Coronation gift by the Emperor Meiji in 1902, this lecture will situate Japanese textiles within the broader history of diplomatic exchange. Alongside tapestries and embroideries, attention will be given to loyal addresses backed with silk brocade, long-lost kimono and the silk lacing on a seventeenth-century armour.

​The talk will particularly explore how specific materials and motifs on Japan’s textiles have been used to convey bonds of friendship between the two Courts. Featuring unique photographs and first-hand convey from the Royal Archives, it will also shed light on how members of the British Royal Family enjoyed and displayed these works – from adorning the walls of royal residences, to wearing Japanese garments themselves.

Kawashima Orimono Co. Ltd, Embroidered folding screen with a scene from the Tale of Genji (detail), 1970–71. RCIN 29941. Royal Collection Trust / © King Charles III 2022

Rachel is Assistant Curator of Non-European Works of Art at Royal Collection Trust. Her role encompasses over 13,000 works of art from across the globe, which today furnish 13 current and historic royal residences. She is editor of Japan: Courts and Culture (2020), the first publication dedicated to Japanese material in the Royal Collection, and curator of the exhibition of the same name at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, open until 26 February 2023.

This Zoom talk will be free for OATG members, with a small fee for non-members. Members will shortly receive an Eventbrite invitation and non-members should check our website for an update.

Upcoming fairs and talks

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.

A vibrant nineteenth century Tashkent Paliak suzani

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.”

Náprstek Museum collection

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.”

Hand-drawn batik on silk made in 2018 in Yogyakarta, Central Java, for the Japanese market. Private collection

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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Selected textile talks and exhibitions

Some OATG members have certainly had a busy summer! Speakers in this video of an event hosted by the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, include our founder Ruth Barnes (now at Yale University Art Gallery) and Sandra Sardjono of Tracing Patterns Foundation. They talk about textiles from Indonesia and the Philippines, but the themes they cover are relevant to many more areas.

“Colonialism, changing customs, war, and contemporary collecting practices have all impacted the use and meaning of textiles in Southeast Asia. In this online Re-History Series discussion, a panel of experts explores themes of loss, destruction, and conservation during colonial periods as well as the present day. They will discuss efforts to center the makers’ voices and recover from losses through research, conservation, and collaboration.” – Museum website

Sandra, along with her husband Chris Buckley, has been working on some exciting projects within the Tracing Patterns Foundation and I hope to share more on that work in the near future.

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Our Membership Secretary, David Richardson, is another OATG member who has been busy researching and writing – this time for an article which has just been published in Textiles Asia. The beautifully illustrated article discusses a collection of heirloom textiles from the Indonesian island of Solor, thus linking nicely to one of the subjects talked about by Ruth Barnes in the video above.

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A new exhibition opened last week at the Deutsches Textilmuseum (DTM) in Krefeld. Peru – ein Katzensprung (stone’s throw) celebrates the museum’s important collection of pre-Columbian textiles and runs until 23 April 2023. This is the first major exhibition of Peruvian textiles at the museum since 1959. An impressive 292 textiles are on display – the vast majority of which are from the DTM collection.

In the past pre-Columbian textiles were not bought for the collection from a cultural-historical point of view, but instead because of their motifs and the variety of techniques used. This is discussed in an interesting illustrated paper by Katalin Nagy for the Pre-Columbian Textiles Conference held in 2019. Click here to read The pre-Columbian textile collection of the German Textile Museum Krefeld.

Shirt, uncu, from the Huari Culture (8 – 10 century AD). Dyed camelid hair weft on cotton warp, tapestry weave. © Deutsches Textilmuseum

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This Thursday, 1 September, sees the opening of an exhibition at the California Museum, Sacramento, entitled Between 2 Worlds: Untold Stories of Refugees From Laos. This is a travelling exhibition that was developed by the Center for Lao Studies.

It ” presents crucial stages of the Lao refugee experience, inviting visitors to contemplate ideas of ‘home’ as seen through the eyes of people for whom the notion is precarious, and for those who have lived or are still living between two worlds.” – Museum website

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On Saturday, 3 September 2022, the World Textile Day team will be in Llanidloes, Wales. As usual there will be an eclectic mix of textiles on sale from an interesting group of dealers. This is in addition to the regular programme of talks. Entry to the event is free, with a small charge being made for the optional talks.

Full details can be found here.

Photo from a previous WTD Wales event.

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I seem to be reading more and more about textiles from the Philippines at the moment. This online event hosted by the Ayala Museum in Manila caught my attention. Intertwined Conversations: Transoceanic Journey of Luxury Goods is a conversation between Elena Phipps and Sandra Castro, moderated by Florina Capistrano-Baker. Elena will discuss how luxury goods such as silk, piña and chintz arrived in the Americas via the Manila Galleon trade and the impact these textiles had. Sandra will look at how traditional Philippine materials were used to make souvenirs in the form of Western material culture.

The timing of this event doesn’t work for our UK members (unless you are a real night owl and want to watch it at 2am), but hopefully does for some of our international members – 9 September at 21:00 EST, 18:00 PST, which is 10 September 09:00 in Manila.

For more details and registration click here.

By coincidence the new edition of Arts of Asia focuses on the Philippines, with articles including The Philippine Dress: 500 years of Straddling Polarities and Unfolding a Collection of Indigenous Philippine Textiles.

Cover of Arts of Asia

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The Textile Museum Associates of Southern California hold their next programme in early September. The subject of the webinar is Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, and the speaker is Anna Jackson, Keeper of Asian Art at the V&A in London.

“The kimono is an iconic garment. A symbol of Japanese national culture and sensibility, it is generally perceived as a traditional, timeless costume. This talk counters that conception, revealing that the kimono has always been a highly dynamic, fashionable garment. It will explore the social and sartorial significance of the kimono in historical and contemporary contexts both in Japan and in the rest of the world, where its impact on dress styles has been felt since the seventeenth century.” TMA/SC

There will be two Zoom sessions, to accommodate participants from different time zones. The talk will be the same in each case, so please only sign up for one! The first is intended for the Western Hemisphere to India and takes place on Saturday 10 September at 10:00 PDT, 13:00 EDT, 18:00 BST. The registration link can be found here.

The talk will be held again on Sunday 11 September and this is intended for those in the East – 09:00 BST, 15:00 Bangkok, 17:00 Tokyo and 18:00 Sydney. The registration link to this talk can be found here.

Left: Outer kimono for a courtesan (uchikake), 1860- 70 (©Victoria and Albert Museum) 
Right: Kimono ensemble by Hiroko Takahashi, 2009 (©Hiroko Takahashi)

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Events and exhibitions featuring textiles from India, Japan, the Philippines, China and Peru

PLEASE NOTE Subscribers who usually read this blog via their email may need to click on the blue title to access it through our WordPress site instead to enable them to watch the videos.

Finally meeting again in person!

Several OATG members recently visited the Fashion and Textile Museum, London to see the exhibition 150 years of the Royal School of Needlework: Crown to Catwalk. The group was guided around the exhibition by Sue Miller, and were grateful for her insights.

Woollen cloak by Livia Paplernick

One of the pieces that stood out was this wonderful woollen cloak, incorporating cotton hand embroidery, glass, jewels and metal threads. It was one of four pieces made by Livia Paplernick for her final show, and was chosen to represent the contemporary aspect of the Royal School of Needlework.

In my most recent blog I mentioned an event at the Royal Ontario Museum.  The video of Curator Conversations: For the Past, Present and Future of Ajrakh Blockprinting is now available to view at your leisure.

In it Sarah Fee is in conversation with textile artist Salemamad Khatri on his work to create and revitalize Ajrakh blockprinting in Kachchh, India. They are joined by Abdulaziz Khatri, trade manager at Khamir (a platform for the promotion of traditional art) to explore the role of artists and their supporters to preserve and promote the culture, community and environment of Kachchh.  

A key collaborator of Canadian contemporary artist Swapnaa Tamhane in the creation of the exhibition Swapnaa Tamhane: Mobile Palace, Khatri’s work is an integral part of the installations. Here he gives his perspective on the process of producing the textiles for the exhibition, and the difference between producing his own artwork and working with a contemporary visual artist. 

Turning next to a few events taking place around the world.

A new permanent exhibition of textiles has opened at the Ayala Museum in Manila. Skeins of Knowledge, Threads of Wisdom: The Mercedes Zobel Collection of Indigenous Philippine Textiles has been curated by Patricia M. Araneta and Floy Quintos, and the installation was designed by Gino Gonzalez. It shows how the “indigenous textile arts in the Philippines demonstrate the ingenuity, creativity, adaptability, and sophistication of the early Filipinos.” – museum website.

Left: an important tritik technique suit worn only by men of the magani rank. Right: A Bagobo jacket of cloth discarded from sails and sacks, ornamented with trade beads and mother-of-pearl shown above a pair of pantaloons with ikat and beading. Photo © Floy Quintos

Even if (like me) you can’t go to the exhibition, I would strongly recommend reading this excellent guide, produced by the museum. It has superb images – though some of them do take a while to download. I was fascinated to learn that abaca (fibre from a plant in the banana family) cloth gets its sheen from being burnished with a cowrie shell.

Abaca cloth burnished with cowrie shell.

The temporary exhibition Langs Geborduurde Wegen (Along Embroidered Roads) at the Museum de Kantfabriek in Horst, The Netherlands will now be on show until the end of 2022. It showcases some of the textiles from the extensive collection of Ien Rappoldt, who has been visiting Guizhou province for the past two decades, recording the embroidery art of the women.

The special exhibition Humans, Beasts, Gods. Textile Treasures from Ancient Peru continues at the Abegg-Stiftung in Switzerland until 13 November 2022.

Among the holdings of the Abegg-Stiftung in Riggisberg is a small but impressive collection of textiles from Ancient Peru. The majority of these early Peruvian textiles were collected by Werner Abegg between 1930 and 1933.

“The most interesting of these are now presented to the public for the first time in a dedicated exhibition.
The peoples of Ancient Peru were already producing a vast array of finely crafted fabrics and garments over two thousand years ago. That we can marvel at them today is thanks to a combination of climatic and geographical conditions, specifically the dry, salty soils of the desert regions of coastal Peru, in which these precious artefacts were preserved. Protected against both moisture and light, they survived the ravages of time either as offerings to the gods or as grave goods, the burial customs of past civilizations being a crucial factor in the “survival” of countless Peruvian textiles. ” – Museum website

I’ve already blogged several times about the Japanese textiles exhibition currently showing at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Dark blue-ground festival kimono decorated with sea creatures; Cloth: cotton; tsutsugaki (freehand resist); The John R. Van Derlip Fund and the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke FoundationFoundation

On Thursday 18 August textile conservator Dr Ishii Mie will examine Japanese Textiles: Traditional Dyes and Conservation Methods. An associate professor of art at Saga University, Japan, Dr. Ishii will introduce methods of textile conservation and recovery using examples from the royal collection stored at Shuri Castle in Okinawa, which was severely damaged by fire in 2019, and will describe the various techniques of textile dyeing in Japan. This is an in-person event, which begins at 18:30 CDT. Click here to book.

A new exhibition opens this week at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney to coincide with the 75th anniversary of India’s independence.

Textile length decorated with beetle wings, India. Acquired 1883. Powerhouse collection. Photo by Zan Wimberley

The exhibition is called Charka and Kargha – a charka being a spinning wheel and a kargha a loom. “The exhibition will feature over 100 rare items that date back to the foundational collections of the Powerhouse acquired since the 1880s. In addition to their beauty, many of the textiles featured in the exhibition incorporate spinning, weaving, dyeing and embroidery techniques. Highlights include block-printed textiles, known as Fustat fragments, believed to be made in Gujarat in the 1400s.” – Museum website

This exhibition runs until January 2023.

I’ve blogged previously about the Kimono Style exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. On Saturday 20 August 2022 two Met experts, Monika Bincsik and Marco Leona, “explore the history and modernization of the Japanese kimono. Learn about Japan’s famed weaving, dying, and embroidery techniques along with discoveries from new scientific research.” – Museum website.

Kyōgen suit (Suō) with rabbits jumping over waves, Japan mid-19th century.

This is a pre-recorded programme which will be available on YouTube and Facebook at 10:00 EDT, which is 15:00 BST. Click here for more details.

Japanese, Indian and Southeast Asian textile events.

PLEASE NOTE Subscribers who usually read this blog via their email may need to click on the blue title to access it through our WordPress site instead to enable them to watch the video. 

My apologies for the long gap between blogs. I’ve been travelling in Indonesia doing some personal research and leading another textile tour. Its taken me a while to get back in gear…….

Palm leaves (some of which have been sliced into fine strips) drying on the island of Flores, and a lady using some of the dried strips for ikat binding. © Sue Richardson

A new exhibition opened a couple of weeks ago at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection, runs until February 2023. The exhibition looks at how the kimono has changed over time. In the late Edo period (1615-1868) the main buyers of kimono were the ruling military class.

“At the same time, a dynamic urban culture emerged, and the merchant class used its wealth to acquire material luxuries. Kimono, one of the most visible art forms, provided a way for the townspeople to proclaim their aesthetic sensibility……..In the Meiji period (1868–1912), Western clothing was introduced to Japan. Simultaneously, modernization and social changes enabled more women to gain access to silk kimonos than ever before. Around the 1920s, affordable ready-to-wear kimono (meisen) became very popular and reflected a more Westernized lifestyle.” – museum website

Early nineteenth century summer robe (Hito-e) with Court carriage and waterside scene. Lent by John C. Weber Collection

If like me you missed the recent exhibition at the Textile Museum in Washington DC Indian Textiles: 1,000 Years of Art and Design you will be keen to watch this thirty minute video tour by the curator, Lee Talbot. It’s really excellent and the pace is just right, with lots of close-ups of the textiles.

Video tour of the exhibition by Lee Armstrong Talbot

Next Saturday, 25 June, OATG members Ruth Barnes and Sandra Sardjono will be taking part in an online panel for the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. The subject is Loss, Hope, and Conservation in Southeast Asian Textiles.

“Colonialism, changing customs, war, and contemporary collecting practices have all impacted the use and meaning of textiles in Southeast Asia. In this online Re-History Series discussion, a panel of experts explores themes of loss, destruction, and conservation during colonial periods as well as the present day. They will discuss efforts to center the makers’ voices and recover from losses through research, conservation, and collaboration.” – museum website.

Ruth is now Curator of Indo-Pacific Art at Yale University and Sandra is the founder and president of the Tracing Patterns Foundation. The other panelists are conservator Julia Brennan of Caring for Textiles, Cherubim Quizon, who specializes in textiles of the Philippines, and Natasha Reichle, curator of the Weaving Stories exhibition.

This free event takes place via Zoom from 10:00-12:00 PDT, which is 18:00-20:00 BST. Tickets need to be booked in advance.

A kantha coverlet, Bemgal, early twentieth century. © Victoria and Albert Museum

Next Saturday also sees the opening of a new exhibition entitled Dressed by Nature: Textiles of Japan at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, showcasing some of the Japanese textiles they acquired from Thomas Murray, the author of Textiles of Japan.

“The Japanese archipelago is home to extremely diverse cultures that made clothing and other textile objects in a kaleidoscope of materials and designs. This exhibition will focus on the resourcefulness of humans to create textiles from local materials like fish skin, paper, elm bark, nettle, banana leaf fiber, hemp, wisteria, deerskin, cotton, silk, and wool. It will showcase rare and exceptional examples of robes, coats, jackets, vests, banners, rugs, and mats, made between around 1750 and 1930, including the royal dress of subtropical Okinawa, ceremonial robes of the Ainu from northern Japan and the Russian Far East, and folk traditions from throughout Japan.” – museum website

Eighteenth century Attush robe. Ainu People, Hokkaido, Japan, or Sakhalin, Siberia

The attush (elm bark) Ainu robe shown above will clearly be one of the highlights of the exhibition. It is fascinating to note the variety of talismanic pendants decorating this robe. These are made of a variety of materials including sturgeon scales, shells, bird bones and silk tassels.

On Sunday June 26 Tom will be giving a talk entitled Accounting for Taste: On the Collecting of Textiles from Japan. This is an in person talk and will take place at 14:00 CDT. Click here for tickets.

Don’t forget to let me know about textile events you hear of so I can share the information on here!