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.

Russian and Palestinian embroidery, Korean textiles, Central Asian patchwork, Soviet Kazakh women and World Textile Day North.

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 any videos.

The Russian History Museum recently held a free online lecture, which I found out about too late to include in my previous blog. Please note that when this happens I do provide links on our Facebook page, so I would encourage all members to check that out too.

Pictures in Thread: Late Imperial Russia and Needlework was presented by Dr Andrea Rusnock. Luckily the event was recorded so you can now watch it at your leisure.

“Needlework played a key role in nineteenth century Russian culture and art across all social classes, from the peasantry to the urban elite. Women plied their needles to create and embellish household articles, personal items, and interior décor. In addition to the actual objects themselves there was a plethora of publications relating to needlework produced at the end of the Imperial period.” – Museum website

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Also on the subject of embroidery – I posted about this on Facebook last week and it was so popular I thought I ought to share it here too. This 68 page book is available as a free download in English or Arabic from the GWU & Textile Museum website. Simply click on this link, then on the PDF.

Front cover of the book

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This Saturday, 20 August 2022, sees the opening of an exciting new exhibition at the Textile Museum in Washington DC. Korean Fashion: From Royal Court to Runway examines 125 years of Korean costume and fashion and lasts until 22 December.

“After centuries of relative isolation, Korea opened its borders to international trade and diplomacy in 1876, but for years the country remained little known outside of Asia. Korea’s participation in the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 changed that. Visitors to the Korean pavilion were dazzled by the colorful displays of traditional clothing (hanbok), such as embroidered silk jackets and robes made for the Joseon royal court.” – museum website

Bridal robe, Korea, 19th century. © The Field Museum, Image No. A113982c, Cat. No. 33159. Gift of J. F. G. Umlauff, H. Higenbotham. Photo by John Weinstein.

This exhibition will include some of the actual textiles that were shown in Chicago in 1893. It also includes the work of modern designers, giving a fascinating overview of Korean culture.

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Next Wednesday, 24 August 2022, the Nebraska based International Quilt Museum will host a free Webinar, which should be of interest to our members. The museum curator, Marin Hanson, will be in discussion with Christine Martens “about her extensive travels in Central Asia and about the collecting of patchwork and quilted objects she has done on the museum’s behalf. Quilted robes, patchwork hangings, and talismanic children’s garments will all be featured in the discussion.” – museum website.

Tushtuk (decorative curtain). Probably made in Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan in the mid-20^th century. Acquisition made possible by the Robert & Ardis James Fund at the University of Nebraska Foundation, 2011.040.0008. © International Quilt Museum

I’ve known Chris for over a decade, through our shared love of the textiles of Central Asia. She is also an expert on feltmaking and leads tours to visit craftspeople so I’m sure this will be an excellent talk.

It takes place at 14:00 Eastern, which is 19:00 BST and you can register for it here.

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While on the subject of Central Asia, I recently read this article by Askar Alimzhanov in Voices of Central Asia. The Lives and Work of Soviet Kazakh Women in Photos contains many interesting images of Kazakh women. However I think the author in his opening paragraph fails to appreciate that having your photograph taken was treated as a serious business in many communities, and it was not uncommon to see people with solemn expressions.

Dina Nurpeisova, People’s Artist of the USSR, Almaty, 1941. Central State Archive of Film, Photo Documents, and Sound Recording of the Ministry of Culture and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

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The World Textile Day team is in for a busy few weeks, with their first event on Saturday 27 August 2022 at Frodsham in Cheshire. Entrance to these events is free, but there is a small charge (payable on the door) for attending the talks, which this time look at the West African bead trade, Japanese sashiko and textiles across borders.

For more details please visit the World Textile Day website.

Textile talks and articles from around the world!

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

I recently blogged about a lovely book for children, Mea and the Palm Flowers, produced by OATG member Sandra Sardjono of Tracing Patterns Foundation, with the help of Geneviève Duggan and Ice Tede Dara.

Young girl photographed in Pedero, the setting of the book. © David Richardson

Half of all sale proceeds will be donated to the weavers of the Tewuni Rai group, many of whom lost their homes during the devastating Cyclone Seroja last year. If you are a keen weaver, dyer or collector this would make a great gift for the children in your life.

I loved the enthusiasm of this young boy in his short video review of the book, which can be ordered here!

Video of book review

Sonja Mohr of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Köln has just informed me of this very interesting article on Philippine piña textiles.

Scarf length, Philippines, mid 1800s, Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

Interrogating Translucence: Biological and Cultural Definitions of Piña is by Abi Lua, whose current thesis project explores Philippine piña textile connoisseurship and mentality. Here she discusses some of the difficulties in identifying piña, from both a biological and cultural point of view.

Sea snail and threads dyed with its ink. ©Selvedge

This article by Keith Recker for Selvedge also caught my attention. In it Keith looks at the colour purple and how it is produced by milking sea snails. The illustrations are excellent, and it was interesting to learn how the “community’s way of life was shaped around the making of purple, and the journey to the coast to dye yarns was a major event. A group of dyers would walk eight days to the coast. It was a real journey……. ‘involving several river crossings. The men would carry their own food, and when their tortillas, beans and coffee ran out, they would work in local farms to be reprovisioned. Once they reached their campsite on the coast, they’d stay for about three months before heading back to Pinotepa”. – Selvedge

Obtaining ink from the sac of the sea snail on Ternate. ©David and Sue Richardson

Sage green from the innards is used to dye these threads. © David and Sue Richardson

This reminded me of the marine dyes, which I have seen produced on the small island of Ternate in the Alor archipelago of Eastern Indonesia. There, two different colours – purple and green – are produced from the same creature. The purple comes from the ink sac and the green from the innards, with what remains going into the pot for supper.

A quick reminder that this is your last chance to sign up for a couple of talks taking place online tomorrow, Saturday 12 February. The first is on molas by Tom Hannaher, whose online presentation is entitled Painting With Scissors: Mola Art of the Kuna (Guna) Indians and takes place at 13:00 EST, which is 18:00 GMT. he second is on Uyghur feltmaking with Christine Martens.  It begins at 11:00 EST, which is 16:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

A weaver at work. ©Andean Textile Arts

The first of the 2022 series of Textile Talks, hosted by Andean Textile Arts, takes place next Tuesday 15 February, when the subject will be Textile Traditions of the Peruvian Highlands. Participants will learn “how Andean weavers use corn husks in their weaving, which natural dye was part of the Incan taxation system, why Andean brides often receive handwoven jakimas as wedding gifts, and so much more.” – ATA website

The talk also features a video, narrated by one of the presenters Jennifer Moore. The other presenter is Ercil Howard-Wroth. Click here for more information and to register. Please note this talk begins at 19:00 EST, which is midnight in the UK.

An akotifahana from the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.

On Wednesday 16 February ORTS will host a Zoom presentation by Dr Sarah Fee of the Royal Ontario Museum entitled Born of the Indian Ocean:The Textile Arts of Madagascar. The ROM hold 54 Madagascan textiles in their collection, some of which date to the nineteenth century. It was interesting to read about the connection with Omani traders and Indian trade cloths, almost reminiscent of the Silk Road connections. 

There is a lot of excellent information, with very good images and some videos on the ROM website, which I strongly recommend to those interested in Malagasy textiles and culture.

The talk takes place at 18:00 GMT. Non-members wishing to attend should contact Dimity Spiller.

Chief or nobleman’s headdress (detail), Congo, 20th century. The Textile Museum Collection 1962.1.15. Textile Museum acquisition.

Sarah is going to be very busy as she also features in the next in the series of talks from the Textile Museum, centred on the latest edition of the Textile Journal, which she guest-edited.

Cécile Fromont of Yale University will be in discussion with Sarah about Kongo textiles, “which are celebrated as masterpieces of exquisite workmanship but garner limited attention in scholarship.”

This talk takes place on Wednesday 16 February at 12:00 EST, which is 17:00 GMT, and you can register for it here.

Hanbok, © Minjee Kim

On Thursday 17 February the Korea Society will host a live webcast by Dr Minjee Kim entitled Hanbok: A new lexicon of women’s fashion.

“In 2021, hanbok – the generic term referring to traditional style Korean clothing – was registered in the Oxford English Dictionary. In this comprehensive series of lectures, Dr. Minjee Kim, the preeminent scholar of Korean textile and fashion in the U.S., illustrates and elucidates hanbok in sartorial, socio-cultural, and historical contexts.

In the first lecture of the series, Dr. Kim discusses some distinctive qualities of women’s hanbok in comparison with other dress traditions; terminologies of the components and their structural parts; colors, materials, and embellishments; and symbols and ideas behind design principles and ways of dress.” – Korea Society

The webcast begins at 18:00 EST, which is 23:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

Working at the loom. ©Susan Schaefer Davis

On Saturday 19 February the Textile Museum associates of Southern California (TMA/SC) will host a presentation by Susan Schaefer Davis. Her subject will be Women Artisans of Morocco: Their Textiles, Their Stories, Their Lives.

Most textile talks focus, naturally, on the textiles themselves, looking at which materials and techniques were used to create them, in which area they were made etc.

“In this talk, anthropologist, and author of Women Artisans of Morocco, Dr. Susan Schaefer Davis, whose work focuses on Moroccan women, their textiles, changing gender roles, and adolescence, will include all of those aspects of textiles, but will also introduce you to the actual Moroccan women who make them. You will meet several of these women virtually, and to see and learn about the unique textiles they produce, the lives in which they produce them, and their thoughts about their work and goals.”

The talk begins at 10:00 PST, which is 18:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

Textile with embroidered hummingbirds, early Nasca, Peru 100BC – AD 200 
© The Trustees of the British Museum

Our next OATG online event will take place on Thursday 24 February at 18:30 GMT, and the subject will be Peru: A Journey in Time, based on the exhibition at the British Museum. Cecilia Pardo’s talk will introduce you to some of the extraordinary artefacts produced with incredible skill by the different peoples of the Andes displayed in the exhibition. She will focus on the magnificent textiles drawn from both the British Museum, and collections in Peru and beyond. 

​Helen Wolfe will end with a brief overview of the British Museum collection of Early Andean textiles, numbering over 1,000 pieces. This event is free for OATG members and a very reasonable £3 for non-members, payable via our PayPal account. For more details and registration please click here.

Don’t forget to let me know of any textile-related events or articles you think I should include here!

Yet more textile talks!

First a quick reminder of a couple of events taking place this week.

The next online meeting of the Hajji Baba Club of New York will be this Wednesday 8 December. Dr Mariachiara Gasparini will talk on the subject From Wool to Silk and Back: Development and Evolution of the Eurasian Roundel Motif.

“In the 6th century, roundel motifs began to appear on wool and silk textiles in Chinese and Iranian territories. Through the spreading of Buddhism and Islam in the 8th century, textiles with beaded, lobed, and flowery roundels spread across Eurasia; they have been found in Christian Cathedral treasuries, Egyptian and Japanese repositories, and various archaeological sites. Often used as money by the Chinese, these textiles mainly crossed the borders of empires and kingdoms as diplomatic gifts.”

The talk begins at 18:00 EST, which is 23:00 GMT and is free, but you do need to register for it.

This Thursday 9 December the Fashion and Textile Museum, London, will host another online talk, this time with Victoria Finlay, the author of Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World. Victoria looks at how stories of our “relationship with cloth are woven in with questions of how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it, made symbols out of it, and sometimes why they have fought for it.”

Beating tree bark in Papua and attempting to spin cotton in Guatemala are just two of the textile-related experiences Victoria has had, so this should be an enjoyable talk.

Click here to find out more and to book for this talk which begins at 18:00 GMT.

Textile fragment with embroidered hummingbirds, early Nasca, Peru 100 BC-AD 200 ©British Museum

I mentioned in a previous blog that I had really enjoyed an online talk by Jago Cooper and Cecilia Pardo-Grau, the curators of the current British Museum exhibition Peru: a journey in time. This free talk is being repeated on Thursday 9 December 2021 at 18:15 GMT. Click here for more details.

©Minjee Kim

In early November I blogged about a talk organised by the Korean Cultural Society of Boston.  The speaker was Dr Minjee Kim and the subject was Han-bok: Dress of Korean Identity. The KCSB website explained that this talk “will shed light on the inception of the term “hanbok” and the composition of the ensembles for men and women, and its constant transformation in the context of modern Korean fashion history. Then it will overview contemporary hanbok ensembles for new-born babies, children, young and middle age adults, as well as weddings, burials, and funerals.”

Unfortunately the talk began at 23:30 GMT so wasn’t ideal for our UK members. However the recording of this talk is now available here.

Hat from the collection of Roger Pratt

Saturday 11 December is a busy one for textile lovers, with at least three talks that I know of. The first is by Roger Pratt as part of the Textile Museum’s regular Rug and Textile Appreciation Mornings. His subject is Hats of the Silk Road. “In this virtual trek along the Silk Road, collector Roger Pratt will show images and discuss examples of a variety of hats from his personal holdings. These include Turkmen hats, Turkmen Tekke hats, Central Asian non-Turkmen hats, Persian conical Dervish hats, Central Asian longtail hats, inscribed religious hats and Ottoman Syrian Aleppo hats. The hats were first displayed in 2018 at the International Conference on Oriental Carpets XIV in Washington, D.C.” – Textile Museum website

The talk begins at 11:00 EST, which is 16:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

Later the same day is the second in a two-part webinar hosted by the New England Rug Society. Unfortunately I forgot to enter the first part, which was on 4 December, in my blog diary – sorry about that. Jim Burns is the author of several books including The Caucasus: Tradition in Weaving and Antique Rugs of Kurdistan. His talk is entitled Caucasian Rugs: Six Decades of Perspective on Design and Taste. He will discuss examples of weavings from the Caucasus from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The talk begins at 13:00 Eastern Time, which is 18:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

Also on Saturday 11 December the China Society of Southern California will host a talk by Dr David Hugus on the subject of Chinese Rank Badges. This will be the first in a series of three talks on this subject by David, the author of Chinese Rank Badges: Symbols of Power, Wealth and Intellect in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. These badges were officially worn from 1391 to 1911, and thus illustrate the textile art of China over a span of 600 years. This first talk will focus on identifying the birds and animals that represent the nine civilian and military ranks of the Qing Dynasty. The talk is at 18:00 PST, which is great for our US members, but not for our UK ones as that is 02:00 GMT. Click here to register.

Harriet Powers pictorial quilt 1895-98

On Wednesday 15 December Jennifer Swope, co-curator of the current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will give a talk about Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories. “Spanning more than 300 years, the 50 plus quilts featured in this groundbreaking exhibition express the personal narratives of their makers and owners and connect to broader stories of global trade, immigration, industry, marginalization, and territorial and cultural expansion. Hear from the curator as she discusses the diverse stories of the American experience told by these artists and makers, from Harriet Powers to Bisa Butler.”

Click here to register for this free webinar, which begins at 14:00 Eastern Time – 19:00 GMT.

Finally OATG members will be delighted to hear that our Website Manager Aimée Payton, has completed her overhaul of the membership section. It’s been a lot of hard work, but I’m sure you will agree it was worth it. Simply go to our website and click on Membership and then Members’ Resources. You will then be asked to enter the current password and will find everything you need in one place – recordings of past talks, recent copies of Asian Textiles etc., plus a new section of Members Profiles – more on that later…..

New events

There are so many events coming up that I will be uploading two blogs this week.

©Minjee Kim.

On Thursday 4 November the Korean Cultural Society of Boston will host one of their regular programmes on Korean heritage. The speaker this week will be Dr Minjee Kim and the subject is Han-bok: Dress of Korean Identity. This talk “will shed light on the inception of the term “hanbok” and the composition of the ensembles for men and women, and its constant transformation in the context of modern Korean fashion history. Then it will overview contemporary hanbok ensembles for new-born babies, children, young and middle age adults, as well as weddings, burials, and funerals.” – KCSB website.

For more information click here and to register click here.

Please note that this online event takes place at 19:30 EDT, which is 23:30 GMT – fine for our many North American members but only for night owls in the UK.

Next make a note in your diaries that the proceedings of the 2021 Keimyung International Conference on the Silk Road and Central Asia will be available online from Friday 5 November. The subject of this conference is Textiles From The Silk Road: Origin, Transmission And Exchange. Nine speakers from around the world will present on a wide range of topics including Liao Women’s Dress, Animal Materials in Nomadic Costumes, Silk and Cotton Textiles in Ancient India and Central Asian Textile Motifs in Late Sasanian Art.

Brief summaries of each of the presentations can now be read here, but the videos themselves will not be uploaded until 5 November.

Saturday 6 November is a very busy day for textile lovers!

The Phoebe Hearst Museum will host a Zoom presentation on Asafo flags – these are militia insignia of the Fante states along the southern coast of Ghana. This Zoom event will feature Dr. Gus Casely-Hayford and Karun Thakar in conversation. They will “place Asafo flags within the wider context of global textile arts and reveal how the flags’ seemingly simple patterns can be ‘read’ to reveal aspects of the communities who made them, and the performances in which they played a part.”  – ETC website

To register for this event, which is co-sponsored by the Phoebe Hearst Museum and Tracing Patterns Foundation, click here. It starts at 10:00 PT, which is 17:00 GMT.

A great video of these flags in use, which really brings them to life, and a short talk by Gus Casely-Hayford can be viewed here.

I have blogged about these flags from Karun Thakar’s collection before, when some were exhibited at the Brunei Gallery in London. Over 250 of his flags now form an online exhibition. You can see a high quality enlargement of each flag by clicking on the relevant image.

Before viewing the flags, I would highly recommend reading the excellent short article Proverbs on Parade by Duncan Clarke, written to accompany it. In it he explains that the Asafo were military associations and that the flags are appliqué- and embroidery-decorated cloth banners, which were produced by local specialists.

“Asafo flags are paraded through the fishing villages and towns of the Fante region in a vibrant tradition that depicts a cast of characters blending local mythology with European heraldry. Kings and queens interact with soldiers and musicians, dragons and gryphons, elephants and leopards, whales and sharks, ships, trains and aeroplanes.” – Duncan Clarke.

“Two men stand by a large boiling pot on a fire; one has his hand in the bubbling liquid, telling a rival company ‘it boils but it doesn’t burn’, asserting that the rival company makes a big show but is not actually dangerous.” Text by Duncan Clarke. ©Karun Collection.

Clarke goes on to explain how certain images could only be used by specific groups, and that the use of an image from another group could have dire consequences. He also gives the meaning behind some of these images – many of which are linked to proverbs.

Also taking place on Saturday 6 November is the Rienzi Symposium hosted by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. This virtual event explores their current exhibition Hidden Hands: Invisible Workers in Industrial England, which is on show until 2 January 2022. This virtual symposium runs from 10:00-15:00 CDT, which is 15:00-20:00 GMT, and you can see the schedule and register here.

As if that’s not enough historian and author John Vollmer will be giving a virtual presentation for the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art the same day, linked to their current exhibition Weaving Splendor: Treasures of Asian Textiles which I have already blogged about. His talk is entitled Why are Textiles Masterpieces? Asian Textiles in Weaving Splendor and takes place at 13:00 CDT, which is 18:00 GMT.

You can register for this free talk here.

The following day, Sunday 7 November Brian Morehouse will be giving a webinar for the New England Rug Society on the subject Yastiks: A Comparative Study of the Designs of Published and Unpublished Examples. Brian is the author of Yastiks: Cushion Covers and Storage Bags of Anatolia and this talk will explore the changing visual language over time within certain yastik groups. The talk will take place at 13:00 ET, which is 17:00 GMT and you can register for it here.

On Tuesday 9 November the Hajji Baba Club of New York will hold their next meeting online via Zoom. The presenter will be Melinda Watt of the Textile Department, Art Institute of Chicago and her subject will be The Blueberry Pie Carpet: A Morris Carpet at Home in Chicago.

The Art Institute of Chicago has one large and important carpet made by Morris & Co. for the Glessner House, which is located in the historic Prairie District neighbourhood of the city. …. This talk will explore the decoration of the Glessner House, centred on the large entry hall carpet, and focused on the influence of historical and Middle Eastern textiles manifested in the carpet and Morris’ work.

Melinda Watt’s first exhibition at the Institute will open on 18 December and is entitled Morris and Company: The Business of Beauty.

This talk will begin at 18:00 EDT, which is 22:00 GMT. Full details and registration are available here.

Image: Xunka Tulan (Navenchauc, San Lorenzo Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico); Wedding huipil, commissioned late 1970s; cotton, feathers; Fowler Museum at UCLA, X91.546; Gift of Mrs. Gene Stuart

On Wednesday 10 November the Fowler Museum has organised another in its Curator’s Choice series. Elena Phipps, author of several books on the textile traditions of the Andean people, and Hector M. Meneses Lozano, Director of the Museo Textil de Oaxaca in Mexico, will discuss Feather Embellishments in Mexican Huipiles.

“The program will briefly trace the history of the huipil and highlight some of its special features. Lozano will share some examples from the extensive collection of the Museo Textil de Oaxaca, alongside a few special pieces from the Fowler Museum. The discussion will then focus on a unique group of huipiles woven with spun downy bird feathers.” – Fowler Museum. 

This programme begins at 11:00 PST, which is 19:00 GMT. More details and registration here.

©Victoria Vorreiter.

Gavin Strachan kindly sent me information about this Songs of Memory Journal, written by Victoria Vorreiter, who specialises in documenting spirit intermediaries. There are some remarkable photographs of various ceremonies. Those with a particular interest in the Hmong will enjoy reading her beautifully illustrated article Bridging the Realms of Mortals and Deities. Hmong Spirit Intermediaries and their Numinous Powers.

OATG members may recall that Victoria wrote a long article for our Asian Textiles journal in 2016, which is now available for non-members to read online.

Finally an advance notice of the next OATG meeting. This will be an online presentation by Luz van Overbeeke entitled Japanese Ornamental Textiles Through a Dealer’s Eyes. Luz specialises in ornamental textiles of the Meiji era and will discuss some of the most memorable textiles she has found over the years.

This talk will take place on Thursday 18 November at 18:30 GMT and is free for OATG members. There is a small (£3) charge for non-members. Full details and registration here.

Upcoming textile events – Part Two

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. 

As I explained in my previous blog, there are currently so many exciting textile events on the horizon that I have had to split them across two blogs.

Weavers from Fatumnasi village, Timor, Indonesia. © IFAM

The International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe is back!

“Since 2004, the International Folk Art Market has hosted more than 1000 master folk artists from 100 countries in the world’s largest exhibition and sale of works by master folk artists. Artist earnings have exceeded $34 million and impacted more than one million lives in the communities they represent. The Market offers folk artists a respected spot in the global marketplace to gather together and share their handmade traditions and to create economic, social, and individual empowerment.” IFAM website

There are a few changes, with the event spread over a longer period (7-18 July 2021) and attendees booking 2 hour slots – several of which have already sold out! For full details and registration please click here. That link will also take you to a listing of which artists will be participating each week. The video below shows highlights from the 2019 market just to whet your appetite.

The Association of Dress Historians will host its annual New Research in Dress History Conference online from 7-13 June 2021. This special conference will feature 120 speakers across seven days and according to their website it “will be a weeklong ‘festival’ of dress history”!

Illustration of Uzbek dress, © Association of Dress Historians

There will be several panels each day, with thirty minute slots for each speaker. They run from noon until 20:00 BST. It’s important to note that these proceedings are NOT being recorded so this is your only opportunity to hear these presentations. A huge range of topics will be covered:- Uzbek National Dress, Indigenous Vietnamese Dress, Chinese Influence in Swedish Fashion, Chinese Ceremonial Armour, Japanese Motif Dyeing and many, many more. The full list can be accessed here. One ticket entitles you to attend as many sessions as you like, leaving you free to dip in and out of this event. Click here for more information and registration.

A completed doubleweave textile at Tinkuy in 2017. © Andean Textile Arts

On 8 June 2021 Andean Textile Arts will host a talk entitled Peruvian Doubleweave: Past, Present, and Future. The speaker is Jennifer Moore who in 2013 was invited to teach doubleweave to indigenous Quechua weavers in Peru, where they are once again excelling in this technique that had been discontinued after the Spanish conquest. 

“Pre-Columbian Andean weavers were as masterful as any the world has ever known, working on simple backstrap looms but using a wealth of sophisticated techniques. One of these techniques, doubleweave pick-up, was developed in the Andes about 3,000 years ago. While still being done in other parts of the world, doubleweave died out in Peru after the arrival of the Spanish in the fifteenth century.” – Andean Textile Arts website. This talk is at 19:00 EST, which sadly is midnight in the UK. Click here for full details and registration.

Woman’s jacket, blouse and skirt, 1800-1850. © V&A, London.

The Epic Iran exhibition has now opened at the V&A, London to great acclaim – this article in The Guardian, gives a flavour of it. However perhaps the best introduction comes from this Reuters article which also includes a short video of some of the exhibition highlights introduced by co-curator John Curtis.

Don’t forget that Sarah Piram, Curator of the Iranian collections at the V & A, will give an online talk to the OATG next Thursday, 10 June 2021. She will give an overview of some major works, from early silk fragments showing roundels of animals, to Safavid carpets and contemporary craft tradition. Textiles and carpets will be showcased in different parts of the exhibition, and one of the highlights will be the ‘Sanguszko’ carpet which used to belong to the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry – one of the greatest seventeenth century Persian carpets in private hands. This talk will take place at 18:30 BST. OATG members should already have received their invitations, and registration is now also open non-members through this link.

On Saturday 12 June 2021 Sumru Belger-Krody will give an online talk hosted by the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California. The subject of this talk, entitled Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art: Carpets for Prayer, is prayer carpets.

“Among textiles in Islamic society, prayer carpets hold a special place. They beautify spaces, while conveying metaphorical meanings for Muslim worshippers during their obligatory five-times daily prayer. Additionally, prayer carpets have been communicating the distinct aesthetic choices of the individual cultures who created and used them for centuries, while being recognizable as prayer carpets through their very specific design elements. Sumru Belger Krody, Senior Curator, The Textile Museum Collection at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, will discuss the prayer carpet’s universality in terms of its use and certain design aesthetics, followed by a brief description on how diverse Islamic cultures make this textile their own. She will show that certain design elements and their meanings or symbolism are universal, and point to a fluid iconography through time, place, religion, tradition, and culture.” – TMA/SC

Admission is free, but you do need to register for this event which begins at 10:00 PDT, which is 18:00 BST.

‘The nopal plant that is grown in America and produces grana (insect dye).

I had intended including the 15 June talk on cochineal by Elena Phipps here, but have now discovered that it has sold out. For those who have missed out, I’m sharing this link to Elena’s work Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color, a Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In it she “traces the spread of cochineal red from the Americas, where Mexican and Andean weavers had for centuries been using it to create ritual and ceremonial textiles in deep shades of red and pink, to Europe and then to the Middle East and Asia” – Thomas P. Campbell, Museum Director.

Wonsam, ceremonial robe for women (1799-1850). © Seok Juseon Memorial Museum, Dankook University.

On Friday 18 June 2021 the Saint Louis Art Museum will host an online lecture by Lee Talbot, curator of The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. His subject will be Textiles and Women’s Culture in Joseon Dynasty Korea. “For millennia Korean women have invested a tremendous amount of time in textile production, from cultivating and spinning fibers to dyeing, weaving, and sewing. This lecture will present a dazzling selection of garments, accessories, and furnishings from Korean and American museum collections to explore the role of textiles in upper-status women’s lives during the Joseon dynasty. Examined in light of Joseon literature and other visual arts, these fabrics reveal that when women’s personal freedoms were greatly curtailed, textiles could provide a creative, expressive outlet for women’s feelings as well as a valued source of income and store of wealth.” – Museum website.

Unfortunately this event really only works for our non-UK members as it takes place at 19:00 CDT, which is 1am BST. Here is the link to register. For those who can’t attend, this very well-illustrated online exhibition on Women’s Fashion in the Joseon Dynasty should give some insights.

Don’t forget that Chintz: Cotton in Bloom is still on at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London. This exhibition, which was organised by the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, showcases 150 examples of chintz from around the world. These range from mittens to wall hangings and from sun hats to mourning dresses. If you missed the curator talk which took place on 9 April 2021 you may be interested to know that it can now be accessed for a small fee here.

“On the panel were Gieneke Arnolli, former curator of Fashion and textiles, Fries Museum Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. As curator of Chintz: Cotton in Bloom Gieneke discussed the collection and conception of this beautiful exhibition and shared some of the history surrounding chintz. Also joining the panel was internationally respected textile expert and author Mary Schoeser, curator of the display Victorian Chintz and its Legacy. Mary offered her illuminating perspective on English Chintz, its development and place in textile history today. ” – FIT

Robe for a male dignitary (boubou riga or agbada), Nigeria, Hausa peoples, late nineteenth century

Dallas Museum of Art currently has an interesting exhibition entitled Moth to Cloth: Silk in Africa. “Throughout the world, silk is used to make cloth and associated with wealth and status, but  this rare, natural fiber is also indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. Silk was traded between African peoples across the continent and was also imported from Europe, India, China, and the Middle East. This installation of cloths drawn from the DMA permanent collection explores the production of silk and silk textiles in Ghana, Nigeria, and Madagascar.” – museum website

This interview with Dr Roslyn A. Walker, curator of this exhibition, was fascinating and I learned a lot about the various types of silk moths as well as how although “imported silk thread has been replaced by rayon or cotton for over fifty years now, genuine silk remains the material of choice for making prestigious garments that symbolize elevated social/political status, success, and wealth.”

Last year I shared this presentation on the silks of Madagascar, but think it useful to share it again here.fascinating. It is by OATG member Dr Sarah Fee of the Royal Ontario Museum. The quality of the images really enhances the excellent text. The ROM hold 54 Madagascan textiles in their collection, some of which date to the nineteenth century. It was interesting to read of a connection with Omani traders and Indian trade cloths, almost reminiscent of the Silk Road connections. 

I’ve had lots of positive feedback for these blogs, but can only include events that I am aware of. If you do hear of anything relevant please do contact me. I would also like to strongly recommend two other sources of textile events, both compiled by friends of mine. The first of these is the monthly list produced by Cheri Hunter of the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California. To receive this please send an email. The second is compiled by Marilyn Murphy of ClothRoads, and again is produced monthly. Click here to subscribe.

Selected textile events and articles

 

A selection of current and upcoming textile-related events and articles. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list, but rather a sample of the things that have caught my eye.

 

©British Museum EA71854, Trustees of the British Museum.

Next week the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen will host a free two-day programme on The Colour Blue in Ancient Egypt and Sudan. “Since the Neolithic, the colour blue has been highly prized all along the Nile Valley, where its strong relation to the divine is particularly embodied by the god Amun. Blue pigments and dyes occupied a very special place in the visual landscape, where they adorned temples, palaces, statues and people’s bodies thanks to a large repertoire of blue cloths and personal adornments.” – TAES Network at Centre for Textile Research. This interdisciplinary programme includes a presentation on The use of blue in Egyptian garments of the 1st millennium, another on Blue in the iconography and textiles in the medieval kingdom of Makuria (Sudan), and a workshop on Reviving indigo dyeing in Mali: from farming to contemporary arts.

Aboubakar Fofana – master indigo dyer. ©Jonas Ungar

Hole and Corner have a great interview with Aboubakar Fofana, who was born in Mali but grew up in France, in which he discusses indigo dyeing in Ancient Egypt and concludes that “What they were doing 5,000 years ago is the same as I am doing today, and in 100 years’ time we can do the same thing.”

For more details and to register please click here.

Details
3-4 March 2020
Karen Blixens Plads 8
2300 København S
Denmark

 

Lena Bjerregaard, a guest researcher at the Centre for Textile Research, has just published a catalogue of the pre-Columbian textiles from the Roemer-und Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, northern Germany. There are 405 pre-Columbian textiles in the museum collection, of which 133 are represented in this extremely well-illustrated catalogue. “Along the coast of Peru is one of the driest deserts in the world. Here, under the sand, the ancient Peruvians buried their dead wrapped in gorgeous textiles. As organic material keeps almost forever when stored without humidity, light and oxygen, many of the mummies excavated in the last hundred years are in excellent conditions. And so are the textiles wrapped around them.” – Lena Bjerregaard. This catalogue has very generously been made available as a free download which can be accessed here.

 

Curator Oliver Gauert with a selection of textiles, including an Egungun dance costume from Benin. ©Romer-Pelizaeus Museum

In addition to their collection of pre-Columbian textiles, the Romer-Pelizaeus Museum also has extensive holdings from Africa – the focus of their current exhibitions. Voodoo has been curated by Oliver Gauert and also showcases items from other museums such as the Soul of Africa Museum in Essen and the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal. It opened last October and continues until mid-May. ZDF heute journal have produced an excellent video giving an overview of the objects in the exhibition, which includes several textiles.

Details
19 October 2019 – 17 May 2020
Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum
Hildesheim Am Steine 1-2, D-31134 Hildesheim

 

Kaparamip with red cotton fabric border © Textiles of Japan: The Thomas Murray Collection at The Minneapolis Institute of Art

The speaker at the next meeting of the New York-based Hajji Baba Club will be 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
Monday 9 March 2020
The Coffee House Club, Sixth Floor, 20 West 44th St, Manhattan, NY

 

 

Japanese textiles – this time focussing on embroidery are the subject of an exhibition currently taking place at the Japanese Foundation in Los Angeles. The exhibition is entitled Melodies of Shining Silk: Japanese Embroidery and features the work of Shizuka Kusano, a leading contemporary textile artist. “Embroidery was initially introduced into Japan from China together with Buddhism.  It became open to the merchant class culture in the Edo period.  As the clothing arts flourished, advanced dyeing and weaving techniques were used to create kimonos and kimono sashes.  Today, a variety of materials are available, enabling various expressions depending on individual originality and ingenuity.” – Japan Foundation website.

Details
15 February – 21 March 2020
The Japan Foundation, 5700 Wilshire Blvd., #100 Los Angeles, CA 90036

 

A day dress from around 1800 and a portrait of Constance Pipelet, 1797. ©Art Institute Chicago

Opening at the end of the month in Chicago is a new exhibition on Western European dress. Fabricating Fashion: Textiles for Dress, 1700-1825 examines how clothing from that period was assembled by hand and looks at the importance of selecting the right fabric. “In the early 18th century, the most fashionable men’s and women’s ensembles were made of richly coloured silks and translucent lace, but by the early 1800s lighter cotton textiles, both plain and printed, became more common. The increase in Europe’s taste for cotton textiles gave rise to intense international competition for technical innovation and control of worldwide markets, which produced a wide variety of beautiful fabrics.” – Art Institute Chicago website.

Some portraits and prints will be presented alongside textiles from the period, thus bringing an extra dimension to them.

Details
28 March – 26 July 2020
Art Institute Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603

 

Photo ©Barbara Kaslow.

On a similar note, the new British Galleries will open at The Met in New York next week. These will consist of ten galleries with 11,000 square feet devoted to various forms of British art from 1500-1900 including sculpture, ceramics and textiles. These textiles range from tapestries to embroideries, coats to bed panels.

You could always combine a visit to these galleries with a visit to the Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara exhibition which I blogged about recently.

Details
Opens 2 March 2020
The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

 

Part of a banner which will be displayed in full at the special event. Photo courtesy The Siam Society.

The Siam Society will be hosting a special event in collaboration with the Thai Textile Society in late March. On display will be several painted Vessantara Jakata scrolls from the collection of ML Pawinee Santisiri. These banners range in length from 30 to 50 metres and this will be a unique opportunity to see them opened and displayed in full. They are usually used during the Boon Phra Ves festival – a very important Buddhist ceremony.

Details
Saturday 21 March 2020
1.30pm–4pm (Registration opens at 1pm.)
The Siam Society, 131 Asoke Montri Rd, Sukhumvit 21
Members and Students THB 200,  Non-Members THB 300

 

Image courtesy of IMDB

The Oriental Rug and Textile Society (ORTS) will be screening a 1976 film entitled People of the Wind about Bakhtiari migrations. This film is a sequel to Grass, a classic silent film made in 1925 by three Americans who made their way across Turkey and Iraq to meet the Bakhtiari in their winter quarters and follow them and their flocks over swollen rivers and up over snow-covered mountain passes to reach their summer pastures.  Following the same route with descendants of the same people, People of the Wind shows what has changed and what has stayed the same over the intervening decades.

“There are two hundred miles of raging rivers and dangerous mountains to cross. There are no towns, no roads, no bridges. There is no turning back. The Bakhtiari migration is one of the most hazardous tests of human endurance known to mankind. Every year, 500,000 men, women and children – along with one million animals – struggle for eight grueling weeks to scale the massive Zagros Mountains in Iran – a range which is as high as the Alps and as broad as Switzerland – to reach their summer pastures. The film’s astonishing widescreen photography and brilliantly recorded soundtrack take the viewer out onto the dangerous precipices of the Zardeh Kuh mountain and into the icy waters of the Cholbar River.” – Fiona Kelleghan

The film will be presented by Antony Wynne who lived in rural Iran for many years. Click here for more details.

Details
Wednesday 18 March 2020, 19:00.
The University Women’s Club, 2 Audley Square, South Audley Street, London, W1K 1DB

 

Hanbok: The Colours of Korean Lunar New Year

Hanbok: The Colours of Korean Lunar New Year is an exhibition in Sydney, Australia, co-presented by the Korean Cultural Centre and the Hanbok Advancement Center in South Korea. It introduces “many different kinds of hanbok, the traditional garment worn by Korean people on many traditional and family occasions including seollal, Korea’s Lunar New Year. In this exhibition, the KCC will showcase the colourful, eye-pleasing attire highlighting various forms of seolbim or ttae-ttae-ot referring to a new set of hanbok prepared on Lunar New Year’s Day.” – The Asian Arts Society of Australia.

Details
5 February – 13 March 2020
Korean Cultural Centre, Ground Floor, 255 Elizabeth St., Sydney.

 

Woollen tunic, 700-800 AD. © Bolton Museum and Art Gallery.

Back in the UK I was fascinated to read of the amazing collection of Egyptian textiles at Bolton Museum and Art Gallery. The spinning mule was invented in Bolton by Samuel Crompton in the 1780s and over the following century Bolton became famous as a textile production centre. “The first two curators of the Chadwick Museum in Bolton, William Midgley (curator 1881-1908) and his son Thomas Midgley (curator 1908-1934), were specialists in the study of ancient textiles. In some cases, they provided excavators with an assessment of the textiles found at a particular site in return for a share of the finds. As a result, Bolton’s ancient textile collection has a known archaeological context which makes them especially significant for study.” – Museum website. These curators were fascinated by the fact that the people of Ancient Egypt were producing such high quality fabrics thousands of years ago despite not having access to modern technology.

 

©visitmanchester.com

I highly recommend reading this article by Emily Oldfield which gives a great overview of the museum and certainly made me want to head over there.

Details

Bolton Museum, Le Mans Crescent, Bolton, BL1 1SE

 

Layout of pattern with prefelt – beginning to fill in with fleece, Khotan. ©Christine Martens

Finally the March programme from the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California (TMASC) is a talk by Christine Martens, an expert on Central Asian felts and patchwork.

“Felt-making has existed for millennia in the cities and villages of what is now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northwest China, homeland of the Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs. Archeological discoveries give a sense of this ancient art, which continues to flourish in the oases that dot the southern rim of the Taklamakan. Christine Martens will … examine the processes, and tools that distinguish Uyghur felt from those of the Turkmen, Kyrgyz, Turks and Mongolians” – TMA/SC newsletter.

Details
Saturday 21 March 2020 09:30am
Luther Hall, St Bede’s Episcopal Church, 3590 Grand View Blvd., Los Angeles

For further information please email info@tmasc.org

 

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Event: Stitching New Identities -: Embroidery and Socio-Political Change in Late-Nineteenth/Early-Twentieth Century Japan and Korea

Event date: Thursday, 17 January, 2019. 12:00-1:30 PM

“As Japan and Korea opened to the international community in the nineteenth century, their ensuing social, political, and economic transformations found vibrant visual expression in the ancient art of embroidery. Using primary sources including extant textiles and period literature, this lecture by Lee Talbot will examine changes in late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century Japanese and Korean embroidery in light of concurrent socio-political developments. The lecture will illustrate how embroiderers in Japan and Korea developed innovative aesthetics, forms, and subjects that gave visual voice to new social and national identities emerging as their countries forged new, sometime perilous paths domestically and internationally.”  – from the website of the Center for Japanese Studies.

Lee Talbot is currently the Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Collections at The George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. and has previously spent two years as curator at the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum (Seoul, Korea).

Location: Center for Japanese Studies, Room 110 Weiser Hall, 500 Church Street, Suite 400, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1042

 

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Exhibition: Korea – 100 Years of Collecting at the Met

Exhibition dates: 7 February 2015 – 27 March 2016

When the Department of Far Eastern Art was established at the Metropolitan Museum in the summer of 1915, the museum possessed only sixty-five Korean works. Some were mistakenly catalogued as Chinese or Japanese. Dubbed the ‘hermit kingdom’, Korea was then little known to the Western world. Today, its traditional arts, as well as pop music, film and drama, are celebrated markers of global culture. The museum’s collection of Korean art, too, has been significantly transformed and continues to evolve. It now encompasses ceramics, paintings, sculpture, metalwork, lacquerware and textiles from the late Bronze Age to the present.

Works on view include important recent gifts to the museum from the Mary Griggs Burke Collection and Florence and Irving Collection – including a rare sixteenth-century Buddhist painting of royal commission, a striking mid-seventeenth-century gilt-wood statue of a Bodhisattva, and exquisite mother-of-pearl inlaid lacquer boxes from the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910). The stories behind the objects in this exhibition capture the individuals and trends that shaped the Met’s distinctive collection, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. This presentation also reveals the modern Western imagination of Korea, and the many ways Korean art came to be viewed and appreciated in America.

For more information, visit the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.