A new display has recently been created at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The subject is Wandering in Other Worlds: Evenki Cosmology and Shamanic Traditions. Through the use of virtual reality headsets, visitors are able to learn more about this “diverse cultural group living across Northern and Central Asia. They are primarily reindeer-herding and hunting people, although in the steppes, Evenki took up horse herding, while in the Arctic, fishing became an important occupation.
Photograph of an Evenki shaman with diur (drum), taken by Maria Czaplicka, 1914-1915
“In 2019, artist Anya Gleizer, researcher Pablo Fernandez Velasco and anthropologist Jaanika Vider journeyed to Evenkia in the Siberian Arctic, retracing the route of an expedition led by anthropologist Maria Czaplicka in 1914–15. Using a VR headset and digital versions of the Museum’s collections, the team hoped to learn more about the objects Czaplicka had brought to Oxford a century before. Swiping through photographs on an iPad and visiting Oxford via the VR headset, locals in Chirinda and Tura shared their stories with them.” Pitt Rivers website
I’m glad to learn this display will be in place until September 2023, as it gives me the chance to read Undreamed Shores – The hidden heroines of British anthropology by Frances Larson, which features the life and work of Maria Czaplicka among others. See this earlier blog for more details.
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OATG members will be delighted to learn that three more talks have been added to the password-protected Members Resources section of our website. This can be found under Events. New members (from the UK and further afield) are always welcome to join this small but growing group of textile enthusiasts. Click here to find out more.
Recordings of these three lectures are now available for OATG members in the Member’s Resources section of our website.
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Thanks go to Sandra Sardjono for alerting me to this webinar, taking place on Thursday 6 October, which has an interesting line-up of speakers. The topic is Safeguarding Textile Heritage and it begins at 19:30 Indian Standard Time, which is 15:00 BST. Click here for more details and to register.
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Lovers of Indonesian textiles who are able to visit Switzerland next month are in for a treat. Collector Georges Breguet, who has written recently for our Asian Textiles journal, is exhibiting some of his cloths from the island of Sumba at Vésenaz near Geneva.
The exhibition will open on Saturday 8 October and close on Sunday 23 October – just a short run so don’t delay.
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Also taking place on 8 October is World Textile Day – South of England. The venue is Brockenhurst Hall in Hampshire and as usual there will be an exciting selection of textiles for sale from a variety of different traders.
John and Joan Fisher of Khayamiya with some of their Egyptian wall hangings.
Entrance is free, but there is a small charge should you wish to attend any of the talks – highly recommended. Click here for further details.
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Saturday 8 October is proving to be a very busy day! The New England Rug Society will host a Zoom talk by Luca Emilio Brancati on the subject of Afghan War Rugs 1979-2022. He will examine how these rugs have developed from the Russian period until now. Dr Brancati is the co-author of this book on the subject, and in 1988 organised the first exhibition of Afghan war rugs .
“The Afghan carpets from Luca Emilio Brancati ‘s Turin collection have the particularity of portraying in their decorations the instruments of war common in Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion. These rare and extraordinary “textile documents” testify to the vitality of the culture of carpet in Afghanistan and the ability of the local nomadic and village manufacturing, capable of capturing new suggestions for carpet decoration from the environment in which it lives.
The Turin collection on the carpets of the Russo-Afghan war was the first of its kind to be exhibited for the first time thirty years ago in Milan and is the only one consisting of carpets exclusively made before the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Afghanistan.”
The talk begins at 13:00 ET, which is 18:00 BST, and you can register for it here.
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On Sunday 9 October John Ang will be giving a Zoom talk for the International Hajji Baba Society on Splendors of Malay World Textiles – the subject of his current exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. The exhibition has seven hundred textiles, divided into twelve major categories, plus textiles from other countries, which relate to these Malay examples.
John with a display of some of his textiles
This article from Malay Mail gives a further insight into John and his collection. The talk takes place at 17:00 EDT, which is 22:00 BST and you can register for it here.
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This Sunday is also the date of the annual Textile Society London Antique and Vintage Textile Fair.
“The Textile Society London Antique Textile 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.
Whether a textile designer or student looking for design inspiration, a collector looking for a unique addition, or just a visitor wanting to browse beautiful materials and objects, this fair cannot be missed.” Textile Society website.
The location is Chelsea Old Town Hall on the Kings Road SW3 5EZ. The Fair is open to the general public from noon, but early entry from 10:00 is available to Trade, Early Bird ticket holders and Textile Society members. Click here for more details.
Later next month a new exhibition entitled Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles opens at Two Temple Place in London. This exhibition “celebrates seven pioneering women who saw beyond the purely functional, to reveal the extraordinary artistic, social and cultural importance of textiles.” Two Temple Place website.
This is a very collaborative project, curated by June Hill and Lotte Crawford and involving no less than seven museums and art galleries from different areas of the country. It’s interesting that they are looking at the role of women as collectors, not as makers of textiles.
Embroidered japangi or cloak from Albania
The female collectors discussed include Edith Durham, who first visited the Balkans in 1900. As well as documenting the craft traditions of the area she also became involved with local politics, helping in hospitals and with refugees and campaigning. This blog about her recalls how she came into conflict with the Foreign office who marked her card thus: Durham, Miss M.E.: Inadvisability of corresponding with……
Louisa at the Khyber Pass
Louisa Pesel was the first President of the Embroiderers Guild and in addition to her own stunning designs for Winchester Cathedral she collected textiles from many places including Morocco, Turkestan, Syria and China. Many of these were donated to the University of Leeds. An excellent source of information about her is this blog by Colin Neville.
The other collectors the exhibition features are Olive Matthews, Enid Marx, Muriel Rose, Jennifer Harris and Nima Poovaya-Smith.
“The exhibition looks at how these collections continue to influence us today and asks why textiles still have to fight for their place amongst the more established visual arts” – a question which I often ask myself too.
In many ways the focus of this exhibition reminds me of one held at the Pitt Rivers Museum earlier this year called Intrepid Women. See my earlier blog on this subject.
Details
25 January – 19 April 2020
Two Temple Place, London WC2R 3BD
Admission free
Also opening late next month at The Met Fifth Avenue is Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara which focusses on the area today encompassed by Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. The history of this region will be illuminated through more than two hundred items. The majority of these will be sculptures, but some textiles are also included. Click here for more details.
Details
30 January – 10 May 2020
The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York
The next talk in the programme of the Oriental Rug and Textile Society is by Zara Fleming on the subject of Bhutanese Textiles: Ritualistic and Everyday textiles of Bhutan. Zara will explain how textiles are woven into everyday life and are used as clothing, currency and gifts. They are also used to signify status and are a vital component of Bhutanese festivals, dances and Buddhist rituals.
Details
22 January 2020 at 19:00
The University Women’s Club, 2 Audley Square, London, W1K 1D8
Koloa: Women, Art, and Technology is an exhibition which opened recently in Hong Kong. It is presented by Para Site in conjunction with Tunakaimanu Fielakepa who is the “foremost knowledge-holder of ‘koloa‘ or customary women’s arts in Tonga”. This exhibition was previously on show in Tonga earlier in 2019. It “features a rich array of Tongan art practices, focused upon the main categories constituting koloa: ngatu or bark cloth making and fine weaving such as ta’ovala garments and ceremonial mats, as well as kafa or woven rope. The presentation includes prized, heirloom pieces as well as newly produced examples specially commissioned for the exhibition.” Para Site website. Additional works by three women artists – Tanya Edwards, Nikau Hindin and Vaimaila Urale – are also included to showcase aesthetic lineages in the Pacific.
A mixed design Tongan kupesi which was made before the 1930s. Courtesy of Lady Tunakaimanu Fielakepa
Details
7 December 2019 – 23 February 2020.
G/F & 22/F, Wing Wah Ind. Building, 677 King’s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong.
Three-layered lined kimono
There are only a couple of weeks left to see the exhibition in Heidelberg called Good Wishes in Silk: Children’s Kimono from the Nakano Collection. Kazuko Nakano has compiled a collection of almost a thousand objects that provide insights into the colourful and symbolic art of kimono design from the Edo period (1603-1868) to the present day.
A selection of around 80 children’s kimonos is now presented in Germany for the first time. Some of these examples are rather sophisticated and are clearly intended to be worn on special occasions, while others are more simple everyday wear. “They are genuine works of art, with a great variety of decorative motifs, and can be perceived as a kind of embroidered wish list with which the parents equip their children for their future lives.”
Details
27 October 2019 – 12 January 2020
Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg, Hauptstrasse 97, 69117 Heidelberg
The January programme from the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California (TMASC) is a talk by Thomas Murray – a well-respected researcher, collector, dealer and author of several books, the latest being Textiles of Japan: The Thomas Murray Collection.
This talk, entitled Traditional Textiles of Japan, will explore Japan’s rich tradition of textiles, from firemen’s ceremonial robes and austere rural workwear to colourful, delicately-patterned cotton kimono. “The traditional clothing and fabrics featured in this lecture were made and used in the islands of the Japanese archipelago between the late 18th and the mid-20th century. The Thomas Murray collection includes daily dress, workwear, and festival garb and follows the Arts and Crafts philosophy of the Mingei Movement, which saw that modernisation would leave behind traditional art forms such as the handmade textiles used by country people, farmers, and fishermen. The talk will present subtly patterned cotton fabrics, often indigo-dyed from the main islands of Honshu and Kyushu, along with garments of the more remote islands: the graphic bark cloth, nettle fibre, and fish skin robes of the aboriginal Ainu in Hokkaido and Sakhalin to the north, and the brilliantly coloured cotton kimono of Okinawa to the far south.” – Thomas Murray.
Details
Saturday 25 January 2020 10:00am
Luther Hall, St Bede’s Episcopal Church, 3590 Grand View Blvd., Los Angeles
For further information and to reserve a place please email info@tmasc.org
A very engaging review of Murray’s book appeared in the Nov-Dec 2019 issue of Arts of Asia, along with several stunning illustrations. This gave a huge amount of background into how the book came into being and really conveyed a sense of the passion for Japanese culture behind it. Those who don’t have access to Arts of Asia should take a look at The fabrics that reveal the ‘other’ Japan written for BBC Future by Andrea Marechal Watson. The images contained in her article should certainly whet your appetite to take a further look at the book from which they are drawn. For further information about the Ainu see my blog from January 2019.
I don’t usually blog about events far in advance, but the exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk at the V&A in London which opens in February is sure to be very popular – in fact the members’ preview day has already sold out. It is being curated by Anna Jackson, Keeper of the Asian Department, who also wrote the introduction to Thomas Murray’s book.
Details
Opens 29 February 2020
Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London
The current exhibition at the Textile Museum of Canada is entitled Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios and celebrates these textiles which show the traditional way of life. Curated by Roxanne Shaughnessy the exhibition also includes a small selection of clothing and footwear in addition to the examples of printed cloth.
Kate Taylor has written an interesting article on this exhibition for The Globe and Mail. In it she explains that as “the Canadian government forced a people living on the land into permanent settlements, the Inuit began to need cash. The art projects…… were initially introduced by government agents. The idea was that the skills used to carve stone, incise bone and sew clothing could be adapted to produce handicrafts for southern markets. But carving and printmaking were just two possibilities: This show offers a wide selection of rarely seen textiles, startlingly modernist and highly colourful designs created in the 1950s and 60s.”
A full colour catalogue will be available in 2020.
Details
7 December 2019 – 30 August 2020
Textile Museum of Canada, 55 Centre Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 2H5.
John Ang will give a talk on The Influence of Foreign Fashion Trends on Malay Dress to the Textile Enthusiasts Group, which is linked to the Friends of the Museums (Singapore). He will discuss the origins and hybrid nature of Malay clothing. John stresses that “Malay dress is not static but always changing. Rather than seeing particular forms of clothing as Malay dress, he will demonstrate that what really constitutes Malay dress is the manner in which it amalgamated and adapted different fashion styles”.
Details
9 January 2020 at 10:00am
Activity Room, Indian Heritage Centre, 5 Campbell Lane, Singapore
Saint Louis Art Museum has a new exhibition, curated by Philip Hu, showcasing a selection of batik textiles from the island of Java dating from the mid-19th to the late 20th century. They include They include pieces “made for royal and aristocratic clientele, ceremonial use, and everyday fabrics worn by men and women.”
The video below gives you some idea of just how much painstaking work is required to complete a piece of batik.
Batik of Java: A Centuries Old Tradition; Courtesy of Asian Art Museum, Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture
Details
13 December 2019 – 7 June 2020
Gallery 100, Saint Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri
Admission free
Next month Raoul “Mike” Tschebull will give a talk at the Hajji Baba Club, New York, on his new bookQarajeh to Quba: Rugs and Flatweaves from East Azarbayjan and the Transcaucasus. “Qarajeh…… is a small, isolated community at the end of a gravel road in eastern Azarbayjan, in northwest Iran. Although some limited weaving still goes on there, this famous weaving village is best known for its striking 19th century kennereh on wool foundations and its beautifully coloured cotton-foundation export rugs and carpets which were woven beginning in about 1900.” Tschebull Antique Carpets website.
Front cover of the book.
The book is published by Hali and showcases 70 pile carpets and flatweaves from his own collection, the majority of which have never previously been published. The images are by the leading textile photographer Don Tuttle.
Details
Tuesday 21 January 2020
The Coffee House Club, Sixth Floor, 20 West 44th St, Manhattan, NY
A reminder that a series of Arts Society study days will take place at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from January to March. These are open to the public as well as members of the Arts Society and are likely to be very popular, hence the advance notice. Subjects include The Visual Art of Power and Rank at the Chinese Imperial Court (David Rosier) and Japanese History, Art and Culture (Suzanne Perrin). Click here for full details.
Finally I hope to see many of you at the Oxford Asian Textile Group AGM on Saturday 18 January at the Ashmolean Museum Education Centre. As usual the official business will be followed by the ever-popular Show and Tell session. Full details will be sent out to members via Eventbrite in January but in the meantime please make a note of the date!
Event date: Friday 22 February and Monday 25 February 2019
Ikat loseng – photo copyright John Ang
Investigating the origins of Ikat Loseng: Malaysia’s Lesser Known Warp Ikat
Many of us have heard the term kain limar, which refers to the famous weft ikats from Malaysia’s northeast states of Terengganu and Kelantan. However ikat loseng, a warp ikat produced in the same states of Malaysia, is largely unknown. John Ang’s interest began with the purchase of his first Malay ikat loseng. Although he told many of his textile collector friends that it was from Terengganu, they insisted it was a warp ikat from Uzbekistan. The similarities between the two were intriguing and inspired him to investigate if there was a connection. His talk will focus on this investigation and its interesting results.
John Ang, who was based in Taiwan for over 30 years but has recently moved to Kuala Lumpur, is an avid collector of textiles. In recent years he has focussed his attention on the textiles of the Malay world and frequently contributes to the journal Textiles Asia.
Friday 22 Feb 2019, 10:00am (for 10:30 start), Indian Heritage Centre, 5 Campbell Lane, Singapore
Kelingkan embroidery – photo copyright John Ang
All that Glitters is not Gold
John’s second lecture is on the subject of kelingkan embroidery. This is a quintessentially Malay textile using flat metal strips to embellish the cloth. John will discuss where and how it was produced, and its possible origins. A short article on this subject, written by Adline Abdul Ghani (formerly of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia) can be found here.
Monday 25 February 2019, 11:00am, Ngee Ann Auditorium, Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore
Raffles in Southeast Asia: Revisiting the Scholar and Statesman
Finally, this major new exhibition is opening at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore on 1 February 2019, and runs until 28 April 2019. It reexamines the life of Sir Stamford Raffles. According to the museum’s website “Sir Stamford Raffles was an official with the British East India Company stationed in Southeast Asia between 1805 and 1824. He is known for establishing Singapore as a British port, as the author of The History of Java, and as a collector of natural history and cultural materials. Opinions of Raffles have changed over time. He has been viewed as a scholarly expert on the region, a progressive reformer, a committed imperialist, and even a plagiariser. In keeping with the Asian Civilisations Museum’s mission to explore encounters and connections, this exhibition presents a complex, multilayered picture of Raffles while presenting the rich artistic and cultural heritage of Java and the Malay world.”
Oxford Asian Textile Group blog 