From India to Indonesia, Denmark to Turkmenistan and much, much more…..

The Spring edition of Asian Textiles is out now!

There is lots of excellent material inside, including articles on textiles from Bhutan, kelaghayi from Iran, baandha from Odisha and Alfred Steinmann’s ship tapis inuh from Indonesia. UK members should have already received their copies and they should arrive with our many international members shortly.

Sheila photographed in Bukhara in 1996 by David Richardson

Some of you will be aware of the passing last week of Sheila Paine, an honorary member of the OATG. Sheila lived such a full and active life travelling, researching textiles, writing numerous books – as well as being the life and soul of the party. She will be greatly missed. OATG will be organising an event to honour her life and a full obituary will appear in the next edition of Asian Textiles.

This short video is a great reminder of everything she stood for, and some of her excellent travel images were featured in an exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum called Embroidered Visions a few years ago.

This Wednesday, 16 March, the Oriental Rug and Textile Society (ORTS) will host a talk by Rosemary Crill on Four aspects of Indian embroidery: early traditions; European exports; embroidery for the courts and embroidery in South India.

“Rather than attempting a survey of India’s many embroidery traditions, this talk will explore several separate aspects of Indian embroidery from the 15th to the 19th century, with a particular focus on groups of textiles that continue to raise questions of different kinds. These include embroidery in the pre-Mughal period; embroidery made for export to Portugal and Britain; embroidery at the Mughal and Deccani courts; coverlets (rumals) from the Punjab Hills and embroidery in South India.” – ORTS website

This will be a hybrid event, taking place at the University Women’s Club in London and simultaneously on Zoom. Non-members are welcome to attend, but those wanting Zoom access need to email Dimity Spiller.

Vase carpet, Persia, around 1600, wool // Courtesy Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst.
 

On Sunday 20 March the International Hajji Baba Society – DC will host a talk by Anna Beselin, Curator for Carpets and Flat Weaves at the Museum für Islamische Kunst Berlin entitled The Berlin Carpet Collection: Today and Tomorrow.

“At the end of the 19th century, Berlin became both the birthplace for oriental carpet studies and the center for collecting and preserving the most extraordinary examples. The Carpet Collection of the Museum für Islamische Kunst, located in the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin, is one of the most important and oldest carpet and textile collections in Europe………In 2023, the museum will close, only to reopen in the summer of 2026 in completely new rooms and a larger space. What measures and what transformation the museum will go through to make the leap into the future is the subject of this lecture, based on its rich carpet collection. Aiming to catch a new and wider audience this talk will introduce you to a fascinating variety of individual histories of the carpet collections highlights, which will be presented in the new Galleries of the Museum for Islamic Art Berlin in 2026.” – IHBS website.

This free webinar begins at 13:00 Eastern time, which is 17:00 GMT.

Anna Beselin is also the author of Knots: Art & History The Berlin Carpet Collection, published in 2019.

I found this article about an exhibition in 2018 of some of these carpets really interesting. The exhibition was called Traum und Trauma (Dream and Trauma) and showed carpets in various states of repair following fire and bomb damage in Berlin during the Second World War.

On Tuesday 22 March Tom Murray will give a talk to the New York based Hajji Baba Club on Archetypes, Aesthetics and Agency: Adat Textiles of Early Indonesian Cultures.

“Indonesian textiles are known to convey messages across time and space by means of an archetypal iconography that include human figures, trees, boats, reptiles, birds and geometric patterns. These encoded images follow ancestral traditions and customary laws known as adat; cloth becomes sacred through a combination of fine spinning, dying, and weaving that creates a sense of aesthetic wonder…..

This lecture will follow the themes presented in the newly published book, Textiles of Indonesia, and will focus on some of the finest cloths to come out of the archipelago, presenting each object with impeccable photographs. Geographically arranged, this lecture pays particular attention to textiles from the Batak and the Lampung region of Sumatra, the Dayak of Borneo, and the Toraja of Sulawesi, as well as rare textiles from Sumba, Timor and other islands.” – HBC website

Click here for more information about this talk, which begins at 18:00 Eastern time, which unfortunately is 22:00 GMT.

Tom’s new book, Textiles of Indonesia, is a must for anyone interested in the textiles of this archipelago. The quality of the textiles depicted and of the photography is outstanding. It includes essays by some of the leading researchers in that area – Lorraine V. Aragon, Joanna Barrkman, Christopher Buckley, Kristal Hale, Valerie Hector, Janet Alison Hoskins, Itie van Hout, Etsuko Iwanaga, Fiona Kerlogue, Eric Kjellgren, Brigitte Khan Majlis, Robyn Maxwell, Thomas Murray and Sandra Sardjono.

Registration is now open for Costume Society of America Symposium, which takes place from 24-29 May in Minneapolis/St Paul. The theme this year is Land of 10,000 Ideas – Innovation through Dress. Please note that Early Bird registrations are only available up to 8 April 2022. More information and a link to how to register can be found here. You can access the full schedule here.

A seminar on Margrethe Hald and the Nordic History of Textile Research will take place at the University of Copenhagen 22 April, 2022 and it will also be possible to follow the seminar online. Details of the various lectures can be seen in the image above.

If you wish to participate please email Morten Grymer-Hansen before the 7 April, 2022 specifying whether you want to participate at the university or online.

Asia Week takes place in New York from 16-25 March. There will be exhibitions, auctions and lectures on a variety of topics, but I couldn’t find many on textiles. The offering by Tom Murray was of course an exception….

Attush robe

“A magnificent Attush robe, is just one of the pieces inImportant Indian & Indonesian Textiles at Thomas Murray, and was made by the Ainu people, in Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan. The tan-colored ground cloth is from elm-bark fiber and decorated with appliquéd indigo cotton, silk tassels, shells, marine creatures, and white embroidery. With compelling ancient graphic designs known to ward off evil, this robe is one of the finest ever to come to light and likely belonged to a shaman or a high-status chief.” – Asia Week Press Release

On Saturday 26 March the New England Rug Society host Alan Rothblatt, who  will be talking about Rare Turkmen Asmalyks.

Alan Rothblatt holding a Tekke ‘bird’ asmalyk

“Of all Turkmen weavings, asmalyks—trappings that adorn the flanks of the camel carrying the bride on her wedding day— have been the most captivating to collectors. This webinar, “Rare Turkmen Asmalyks,” will present a selection of the best asmalyks from the various Turkmen tribes and will provide insights into some of these highly desired items. The majority of Turkmen collectors share a welldeveloped trait: the ability to focus on the tiny details of Turkmen rugs that help determine age and tribal origin and that distinguish the greatest examples. Alan Rothblatt … acquired his first Turkmen weaving over thirty years ago and has been an active participant and frequent presenter at meetings of the International Collectors of Turkmen Carpets, in Hamburg, Germany, as well as at the Rug Collectors’ Weekend, in California.” – NERS website

This webinar begins at 13:00 Eastern time, which is 17:00 GMT. It is free, but non-members do need to email Jean Hoffman to receive an invitation.

And finally please don’t forget that I am always on the lookout for information about events to share in this blog. If you know of any please do email me.

Selected textile events in July

A new exhibition entitled Baghs – Abstract Gardens opened at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London today Tuesday 13 July 2021. This exhibition showcases excellent examples of baghs and phulkaris from the Karun Thakar collection. These were domestic embroidered shawls from pre-partition Punjab, which were mainly done by Sikh, Hindu and Muslim women. There was also an export market for them in the nineteenth century. Bookings for this free exhibition, which runs until 25 September 2021, are available through this link.

Part of the exhibition at the Brunei Gallery

OATG members in the UK should now be receiving their hard copy of our journal Asian Textiles. It takes a little longer to reach our overseas members, but for those who can’t wait a pdf will soon be available on our website in the password-protected area.

This is a particularly eclectic edition, with articles on Alfred Steinmann and the Ship Motif (Gaspard de Marval and Georges Breguet), Multaka-Oxford and the Jenny Balfour Paul pieces at the Pitt Rivers (Thandiwe Wilson), Textiles from the Yemen (Angela Thompson), Finnish ryijy rugs (Igor Honkanen and Gavin Strachan) and much more. We are now using a different printing company and I think the illustrations really shine through.

Another publication that you may find of interest is The Journal of Dress History, produced by The Association of Dress Historians. This Association “supports and promotes the study and professional practice of the history of dress, textiles, and accessories of all cultures and regions of the world, from before classical antiquity to the present day.” Each edition of the journal contains lengthy scholarly articles, along with numerous book and exhibition reviews. They can be accessed completely free of charge here. My only criticism would be that it would be good to have an index of the articles too. EDIT – I have since been informed that three separates indices are in fact available – one covers the articles, one the book reviews and one the exhibition reviews. lick the relevant link in the blue box on the right on this page. Apologies for not spotting this earlier!

Detail, Yūzen Pattern Dyeing on Silk, a Textile Design and Color Sample for Girls’
Kimono, Early Showa period, circa 1926–1945, © The Private Collection of Keiko
Okamoto, Tokyo, Japan

On Saturday 17 July 2021 the George Washington Textile Museum will be hosting one of its regular Rug and Textile Appreciation sessions. In Silk Stories docent Pamela Kaplan will introduce her project looking at the history of silk production in India and around the world. “The project documents the changing lives of silk farmers and textile producers through photographs, videos, interviews and more.” – Textile Museum website. This virtual event takes place at 11:00 EDT, which is 16:00 BST. It is free, but registration is required.

© Pamela Kaplan

Don’t forget the next OATG event is our talk by Walter Bruno Brix of the German Textile Museum at 18:30 BST on Thursday 22 July 2021. Walter will be talking to us about the museum’s current exhibition Dragons Woven With Golden Threads. This exhibition of around 120 pieces has been curated by Walter Bruno Brix, and contains textiles from the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) to the People’s Republic of China (1949). “Special objects include fragments of an imperial robe from the eighteenth century, a robe with dragon medallions for a noble lady in slit tapestry, two oversized robes for statues of gods, an imperial shroud, a large fragment of a palace carpet made of silk velvet”- museum website. This Zoom talk is also open to non-members for a small (£3) donation. Please click here to register, but hurry as there are not many spaces remaining!

A new exhibition will open on 23 July 2021 at The Russian Museum of Ethnography in St Petersburg. The exhibition is entitled In Harmony with Red: Turkmens and will run until 23 January 2022. It examines the dominance of the colour red in their textiles, carpets, horse and camel decorations, how it was used in ritual items and as part of decorative designs. Click here for more details and several more examples of the exhibits.

Fragment of a Yomud yurt band, nineteenth century. © REM

On Thursday 29 July 2021 the Textile Museum have another film discussion in their regular Fashion on Film series. This time the film in question is Threads – an award-winning documentary by Cathy Stevulak looking at the late Surayia Rahman and her role in transforming traditional kantha embroidery from “patchworks of old clothing to articles of fashion”. When you sign up for this event you will receive a link to watch the 32 minute documentary at your leisure, as well as instructions for joining the program for a group discussion. As the discussion is at 18:00 EDT (23:00 BST) it may be too late for our UK members, but that doesn’t preclude you from watching the documentary.

If you would like to learn more about the story behind this documentary I suggest you visit the ClothRoads website where they have an interesting blog on how it was made, beginning with the maker hearing about “a woman with grey hair who does remarkable embroidery work”.

© Cathy Stevulak

If you are aware of interesting textile-related talks and exhibitions that could be added to this blog please do let me know! I can be contacted here.

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.

Event: Turkish Legacy in Anatolian Kilims

Event date: 5 September 2018 at 18:30

 

 

This lecture by Sumru Belger Krody, senior curator at the Textile Museum, Washington DC shows how nomadic Anatolian women, descended from Turkmen nomads, wove colourful, visually stunning kilims that reveal their culture’s aesthetic preferences for decorating their surroundings. Today, these kilims are the only surviving tangible evidence of their makers’ nomadic lifestyle – a poignant legacy given that women generally did not have an external voice in this patriarchal society. The exhibition A Nomad’s Art: Kilims of Anatolia will be open before the talk.

This lecture is free, but reservations are required. For more details of this event held at the Textile Museum, Washington DC, click here