Textiles from Mali, Nigeria, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan and the Russian Kola Peninsula

I’ve just found out about some talks taking place later this week, which will be of interest to our members.

North House Folk School, based in Grand Marais, Minnesota, is currently celebrating its annual Fiber Week. They are having lots of events on site, but also several webinars on textile traditions from around the world. These webinars will be live, but also recorded and available until the end of February.

© Multicolores

The first webinar takes place on Thursday 17 February at 19:00 CT, which is 1am GMT – so the recording will be very useful! Multicolores is a Guatemalan non-profit organisation, which helps Maya women artists from nine different communities in rural highland villages.  Its Creative Director, Madeline Kreider Carlson, will discuss how these women are producing hooked rugs and embroideries with traditional motifs but using old clothes that would otherwise have gone to landfill. Click here to register for Stitching Stories, Crafting Change: the Maya Women Artists of Multicolores Guatemala.

There are also two talks the following day at times that will work for many of our members.

© Dinara Chochunbaeva

Dinara Chochunbaeva will give a webinar on Friday 18 February at 08:00 CT, which is 14:00 GMT, on the subject Kyrgyz Felt in the Past, Present and Future: Traditions, Problems, and Perspectives.

Feltmaking has taken place in Eurasia for centuries and many will be familiar with the Kyrgyz felt rugs known as shyrdak. Dinara will discuss how the feltmakers are trying to preserve and develop this ancient tradition, ensuring skills are passed to the next generation.

© Dinara Chochunbaeva

I particularly enjoyed this article she wrote for Garland magazine in 2019. In it she talks about some of the patterns used and their protective qualities, and invokes a real sense of the communal nature of shyrdak production. Do click on the link below the image of the women with the fleeces in the article to see more excellent images.

You might also enjoy reading this illustrated paper Kyrgyz Felt of the 20^th and 21^st Centuries, which she gave at the Textile Society of America Symposium in 2010. I was fascinated to read her description of the use of felt in traditional medicine.

© Tina Sovkina

The next webinar begins at 10:00 CT, which is 16:00 GMT and the speaker is Tina Sovkina. Her subject is Saami Textile Traditions of the Russian Kola Peninsula. “ She will share stories and images of the traditional dress and textile practices of the indigenous people of the Arctic, as well as her efforts to promote, protect and preserve the culture of her people.” – North House website.

Photo by Muhammed Dallatu, Kano, December 14, 2019.

On Wednesday 23 February Dr Elisha Renne will be discussing some of her research with Sarah Fee in a Zoom programme as part of the Textile Museum Journal series. She will talk about “ her research collaboration with the late Abdulkarim Umar DanAsabe on a selection of royal garments worn by the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II.

Dr. Renne examines the royal garments alongside discussions with palace officials, embroiderers and tailors. By analyzing photographs of burnouses, robes and turbans worn by Sarkin Muhammadu Sanusi II and earlier emirs, she learned how these garments illustrate their public nature and how they have contributed to the continuing political authority of traditional rulers in northern Nigeria.” – Textile Museum website.

The talk is entitled Royal Garments of the Emir of Kano and it begins at 12:00 EST, which is 17:00 GMT. You can register for it here.

An example of bogolanfini on display in Dallas

A reminder that an excellent exhibition on mud cloth continues for most of this year at the Dallas Museum of Art in the US. Bamana Mud Cloth: From Mali to the World runs until 4 December 2022.

“Mud cloth, or bogolanfini, originated among the Bamana peoples of Mali and its designs can be spotted in products across the world, although the source is not always credited. Bamana peoples used the dye-decorated cloth to make tunics for male hunters and wrappers for females to mark the most important milestones in their lives. While the cloth was previously associated with rural village life, today bogolanfini is worn by urban people, identifying them as native Malians.​

The culturally significant designs on bogolanfini are painted by women with a dye made from fermented mud onto cloth handwoven by men”. – Dallas Museum website

This article by Kimberly Richard for the NBC Dallas website gave a bit more background and a reminder of what a lengthy process making a piece of bogolanfini can be.

I also found this very detailed information on the website of the British Museum useful.

OATG members with our Chair Helen Wolfe in the courtyard of the British Museum. Photo by Cecilia Lloyd.

Speaking of the British Museum, the OATG were delighted to finally be able to offer a small group tour of the Peru exhibition last week. Our Chair, Helen Wolfe gave a short talk before showing the group the exhibits – with special emphasis on the textiles of course!

The exhibition runs until 20 February 2022 so if you want to see some fantastic textiles be quick!

Helen enlightening the group about the textiles they were to see. Photo by Gavin Strachan

Cecilia Lloyd and Jan Thompson admiring two colourful woven shawls, 19th – 20th century. Photo by Helen Wolfe

Felicity Wood and Judith Condor-Vidal viewing a tunic (unku) in the Colonial section of the exhibition, AD 1650-1700. Photo by Helen Wolfe

Focus on Central Asia

Michele Hardy of the Nickle Galleries in Calgary recently shared this article entitled How Soviet propaganda influenced traditional Oriental carpets. Having seen similar carpets and textiles in Central Asia I found it a fascinating read.

An embroidered portrait of Molotov, dated 1934-35 from the collection of the Azerbaijani Carpet Museum in Baku

It’s difficult to be certain, but this portrait of Molotov appears to be chain stitch embroidery on broadcloth. The basic structure and outer motifs in the carpet below appear to be quite classical, but just look at the subject of the central lozenge.

Carpet from 1969 showing a laboratory. State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow.

The subject of Soviet propaganda was also examined by Irina Bogoslovskaya at the Textile Society of America Symposium in 2012 in her paper The Soviet “Invasion” of Central Asian Applied Arts: How Artisans Incorporated Communist Political Messages and Symbols. I remember being really struck by the some of the motifs Irina showed during her talk, the full text of which can be downloaded here. In it she states that “a powerful way to show the difference between Czarist and Soviet power was through mass-propaganda art” and explains how this applied not just to Socialist Realism in paintings, but also to textiles, carpets and even china.

Cotton print from the early 1930s featuring the Turkestan-Siberia Railroad. Cotton print. Collection of I. Yasinskaya.

The cotton print above celebrates the Turkestan-Siberia Railroad, juxtaposing the images of the traditional method of transport – camels – with the modern railroad. Another very popular motif was agricultural machinery, as featured on this design by Sergei Burylin in 1925.

Printed cotton textile from the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Textile Factory

It seems that in the late 19th century the Russian manufacturers were printing textiles designed to appeal to the Central Asian market – generally with floral motifs on a vivid red background. We often see these textiles used as the lining on ikat chapans. The textile below is quite different in that it is clearly imitating an ikat design. This example was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and was produced by the factory of Anton Gandurin and Brothers.

Textile from the factory of Anton Gandurin and Brothers, exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893

The D. G. Burylin Ivanovo State Museum of Local History has a really wonderful collection of printed textiles which you can access online. Entitled From hand block printing to printing machines: The fabrics collection of the Ivanovo Calico Museum, this showcases textiles from 1710-1931. The textile samples are shown in date order, giving us a great opportunity to see how the designs changed over time. Compare the two images below from 1900 and 1920 to see the sudden change in style.

Textile samples from 1900

Textile samples from 1920

The earliest textiles in the collection were hand-blocked and the design was achieved using soot and drying oil. We then move on to examples using madder and mordant dyeing, and later to roller printing. There are lots of ways of searching within the collection. I found the section on agitprop textiles in the 1920s fascinating. Many feel very modern and daring in their designs, but some feel like more of a halfway house, incorporating new motifs such as aeroplanes and stars with the familiar floral elements and colour palette.

Textile designed in 1930 by Olga Fedoseeva for the Ivanovo-Voznesensk State Textile Trust.

It’s also interesting to see how some Central Asian people adopted Soviet motifs. In Turkmenistan short neckties were embroidered by women for their husbands to wear to political meetings. Its clear that these were not traditional apparel as the Turkmen use the word galstuk – borrowed from the Russian – to describe them as there was no word for necktie in Turkmen. The embroidery style and the stitches used were typically Turkmen, but the motifs most definitely were not. Many incorporate important dates, the hammer and sickle, red star, or Kremlin clock tower.

A galstuck with traditional motifs in the lower half and a star, the date 1925 and SSSR embroidered in the top section.
Richardson Collection

A galstuk showing the clock tower of the Kremlin. Richardson Collection

A tush kiyiz is a wall-hanging intended for the interior of a Kyrgyz yurt. This particular example from the collection of the British Museum is far too large for that purpose and may well have been commissioned for a public building.

Tush kiyiz – wall-hanging from the 1950s-1980s featuring the emblems of Soviet Socialist Republics worked in chainstitch.
©The Trustees of the British Museum.

OATG members David and Sue Richardson have a very similar example in their collection. It was acquired 20 years ago in Bishkek and was said to have been made by an old lady from Novopavlovka. The date 1959 is embroidered on the central triangle. This textile illustrates the bizarre marriage of Soviet thinking and Soviet design with traditional Kyrgyz nomadic folk art. The border has been embroidered using quite thick cotton threads in chain stitch throughout. 

Tush kiyiz made in 1959. Richardson Collection

The design is a celebration of the Soviet Union, being dominated by circular medallions representing the Soviet Socialist Republics.  Most of the medallions conform to a set format, with a rising sun, a hammer and sickle, and some feature of the Republic concerned in the centre, and a frame of the local produce, mainly agricultural, such as wheat, maize, cotton, or trees. 

A hoopoe embroidered on the central section

The spaces between these medallions are filled with a variety of wild and domestic animals and birds: a butterfly, a goat, parrot, swan, geese, and cow; a horse, woodpecker and white doves of peace.  On the tumar some of the birds, such as the hoopoe and cuckoo, are named and even a Soviet warplane gets in on the act!

A Soviet plane, also embroidered on the central section.