Event: Bernhard and Erika Bart Talk about Sumatran Songket Weaving for ORTS

© Peggy Reeves Sanday

Event date: Wednesday 13 December, 7pm

This is an Oriental Rug and Textile Society event.

Bernhard and Erika Bart from Switzerland have a personal project to revitalise the art of silk brocade ‘Songket’ weaving. They will talk about their work, research and the culture in which they live. Photos of the Barts have been on the front page of the Jakarta Post with the headline ‘Bernhard Bart and Erika Dubler: Unconditional Love for Songket’. They are bringing textiles to show us.

The talk will be held at St James Conference Room, 197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL.

The Conference Room entrance is in the Church Place passageway, which runs between Jermyn Street and Piccadilly.  There is a wrought iron gate signed ‘Church Hall Conference Room’ leading downstairs.  Drinks and snacks will be served.

Piccadilly Circus tube is 5 minutes’ walk, and Green Park Tube is 10 minutes’ walk.  There is free parking in St James Square after 6.30pm.

Please note this is an Oriental Rug and Textile Society event, but non-members are welcome to attend: £7 single lecture, £5 students, or choose £20 for one year’s membership (11 events).

For more information, visit the website of the Oriental Rug and Textile Society.

News: Why Did Vikings Have ‘Allah’ Woven into Funeral Clothes?

Researchers in Sweden have found Arabic characters woven into burial garments from Viking boat graves. The discovery raises new questions about the influence of Islam in Scandinavia.

The clothing was kept in storage for more than 100 years, dismissed as typical examples of Viking Age funeral clothes. But a new investigation into the garments – found in ninth and tenth-century graves – has thrown up groundbreaking insights into contact between the Viking and Muslim worlds. Patterns woven with silk and silver thread have been found to spell the words ‘Allah’ and ‘Ali’.

The breakthrough was made by textile archaeologist Annika Larsson of Uppsala University while re-examining the remnants of burial dress from male and female boat and chamber graves originally excavated in Birka and Gamla Uppsala in Sweden in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.

To read about this discovery in full, visit the BBC website.

 

Event: With Golden Thread – Revitalisation of Songket Weaving in West Sumatra

Event date: Wednesday 6 December 2017, 6–7:45pm

Talk by Bernhard and Erika Bart

Bernhard and Erika Bart will talk about their twenty years researching Sumatran Songket (brocade) weaving and twelve years spent in charge of weaving at their Palantaloom studio. They will discuss Songket patterns and techniques and will show some old textiles as well as new ones woven at Studio Songket Palantaloom.

Location: The Pauling Centre, 58a Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6QS.

OATG events are free for members and £3 for non-members. Advance booking is recommended.

Should you require disabled access, please do get in touch beforehand to make sure the adequate provisions are made.

For more information, and to book a place at this event, visit the Eventbrite page.

Event: World Ikat Textiles Symposium 2017 – Ties That Bind

Event dates: 1–3 December 2017

The symposium is part of an international exhibition of ikat textiles from 28 countries that first premiered at the Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London in April–June last year.

Symposium paper presentations will be held during the morning sessions every day; afternoon sessions will be devoted to workshops on natural dyes, basketry and weaving.

Venue: Kuching Hilton Sarawak, Malaysia

For registration and information, email edric.ong@gmail.com

For more information, visit the event’s website.

Exhibition: Piña-Seda – Pineapple and Silk Cloth from the Tropics

Exhibition dates: 24 October – 22 November 2017

Learn the history behind the famous cloth used for the Philippine national dress, and the art of its intricate and delicate designs.

The Philippine Embassy in London is currently showing a month-long textile exhibition, entitled PIŇA-SEDA (Pineapple and Silk Cloth from the Tropics), a Hibla ang Lahing Filipino Travelling Exhibition, featuring the Kalibo Aklan Piňa-Seda Weavers and the Lumban, Laguna Piňa-Seda Embroiderers.

This is the first international exhibition developed by the National Museum of the Philippines to promote traditional fabrics from the Philippines. It comprises 12 handmade pineapple and silk textiles, an Aklan foot loom, 8 embroidery samplers, 2 herbarium specimens and 50 associated weaving implements and materials brought from the Philippines. Complementing them are illustrations and texts to convey the uniqueness and intricacy of these revered heritage material used in formal wear.

The exhibition is being held in the exhibition halls of the Philippine Embassy, 10 Suffolk Street, London, SW1Y 4HG.

For more information, contact events@philemb.co.uk or write to Ms. Tess Albano at the Philippine Embassy, mtjalbano@philemb.co.uk

Event: Ali Istalifi Talks about Suzani, Ikat and other Central Asian Textiles for ORTS

Event date: Wednesday 25 October, 7pm

This is an Oriental Rug and Textile Society event.

Ali Istalifi gave the successful lecture on Central Asian Ikat at the SOAS Brunei Gallery World Ikat Textile Symposium in 2016. Born in Afghanistan to a family of dealers for three generations on Kabul’s famous Chicken Street, Ali has a large collection, and unique access to the subject as a fluent speaker of Dari. He will bring textiles to show us.

The talk will be held at St James Conference Room, 197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL.

The Conference Room entrance is in the Church Place passageway, which runs between Jermyn Street and Piccadilly.  There is a wrought iron gate signed ‘Church Hall Conference Room’ leading downstairs.  Drinks and snacks will be served.

Piccadilly Circus tube is 5 minutes’ walk, and Green Park Tube is 10 minutes’ walk.  There is free parking in St James Square after 6.30pm.

Please note this is an Oriental Rug and Textile Society event, but non-members are welcome to attend: £7 single lecture, £5 students, or choose £20 for one year’s membership (11 events).

For more information, visit the website of the Oriental Rug and Textile Society.

Event: Gender Twists in the Weaving, Embroidery and Structure of Shidong Miao Festival Costume – Talk by Iain Stephens

Event date: Saturday 14 October 2017, 2:15–4pm

Talk by Iain Stephens followed by a show and tell session – you are welcome to bring your own Shidong Miao pieces!

This talk will explore the seemingly endless creativity of the Shidong Miao employed on festival jackets. It will share insights into the sexuality of weaving and embroidery as well as essential pattern hierarchies.

Iain Stephens is a currently a master upholsterer, and previously a lecturer of biochemistry and English and tutor of Biblical Hebrew. Iain is an avid collector of Xhosa beadwork, Chinese ethnic minority costume and Taiwanese budaixi puppets. He presently lives on a narrowboat in Oxford.

Before the talk, a viewing at the Eastern Art Study room will display Miao textiles from the Ashmolean collection.

Location: Ashmolean Museum, Jameel Center Study Room 1 (for the viewing) and the Education Centre (for the presentation)

Time: 2.15–3pm (viewing) and 3.10pm (presentation)

OATG events are free for members and £3 for non-members.

For more information, and to book a place at this event, visit the Eventbrite page.

Exhibition: Fibres of Life – Ikat Textiles of the Indonesian Archipelago

Exhibition dates: 15 September – 25 November 2017

The University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG), University of Hong Kong, is pleased to announce Fibres of Life: IKAT Textiles of the Indonesian Archipelago. With the exhibition and the publication of Ikat Textiles of the Indonesian Archipelago, UMAG offers a comprehensive overview of the profusion of ikat styles found across the Indonesian archipelago, accompanied by the first detailed reference book on the subject.

Looking at OATG member Peter Ten Hoopen’s Pusaka Collection from a scholarly point of view, it is worth acknowledging how it illustrates the concept of ‘unity in diversity’, which the young state of Indonesia chose as its motto upon independence. Here, the interwovenness of styles from neighbouring island regions matter, as do their marked individuality and idiosyncrasies. Moreover, it allows for the study not just of the people’s finery, but also of their daily attire, which is lamentably absent in most collections.

An ironic illustration of the effect of this collecting method comes from Ili Mandiri on Flores. As its dark red bridewealth sarongs have been prized and venerated by the local population, this is what most sophisticated collections have aimed to obtain. The simple but lovely indigo sarongs for everyday use have been almost entirely ignored by collectors; hence, they nearly always end up worn to shreds and very few survive – rarer now than the precious and respected, hence eagerly collected, bridewealth sarongs.

What knowledge is conserved about ikat textiles and their use in the Indonesian archipelago consists primarily of the records of missionary and scientific fieldwork, predominantly compiled by non-Indonesians. The coverage is thin – many weaving regions are covered by only one or two sources, and several regions have never been studied in any detail. Much traditional knowledge is being lost, especially in the more remote island regions in the Indonesian archipelago, which require concerted effort if any trace of their culture is to survive. UMAG hopes to contribute to the broader project by means of this exhibition and publication, which show ikat culture through a close reading of examples from over fifty weaving regions and a brief introduction to the conditions, beliefs and customs of the various peoples who have created and used them. The Pusaka Collection reveals the stylistic spectrum of the archipelago’s ikat, while also showing remarkable correspondences rooted in time or sculpted by inter-island cultural exchanges. It is rich in superb and rare ikat textiles, many with few known cognates and some of them probably unique.

For more information, visit the website of the University Museum and Art Gallery, University of Hong Kong.

Exhibition: Diligence and Elegance – The Nature of Japanese Textiles

Exhibition dates: 12 July 2017 – 21 January 2018

Diligence and Elegance: The Nature of Japanese Textiles presents over 50 textiles and garments from the Textile Museum of Canada’s collection of nineteenth and twentieth-century artifacts made in Japan for both everyday and occasional use. Luxurious silk and gold fabrics produced in Kyoto’s professional weaving workshops are juxtaposed with domestic indigo-dyed cotton, plant-fibre cloth, and silk kimonos crafted in an astonishing spectrum of time-honoured techniques – weaving, dyeing, hand painting, gold foil application and embroidery – that exemplify venerable social and cultural values. The exhibition focuses on the highly refined skills and materials by which textiles have been constructed and decorated over centuries, and on how diligence and ingenuity have shaped their timeless beauty. The persistence of traditions seen in such rigorously executed textiles has come to embody the heart of Japanese aesthetics. Every material, colour and technique has a story to tell.

Diligence and Elegance features the contemporary work of Hiroko Karuno and Keiko Shintani, two Japanese-Canadians whose consummate craftsmanship and philosophies are profoundly connected to the evolution of Japanese textile traditions of spinning, dyeing and weaving. Their internationally renowned artistic achievements are testimony to the ethics of labour associated with a lifelong investment of time, practice and precision; they position living traditions as opportunities for personal reflection and the acknowledgement of the significance of collective human accomplishments.

For more information, visit the website of the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Canada.

Event: The Art of Nishiki Weaving in Japan – Preservation and Restoration of Yarn Dyed Textiles, with Amane Tatsumura

Event date: Monday 21 August 2017, 6:45pm

Nishiki-ori brocades are magnificently elaborate and multicoloured figured silk textiles, handwoven on takabata looms, which were introduced to Japan from China over 1,200 years ago. Reflecting the high monetary value of the product, the character for nishiki (錦) is made up of two other characters, 金 meaning gold or money and 帛, meaning silk. The word nishiki has historically been used to describe something of great beauty, in phrases such as ‘nishiki no mihata’ banners flown by imperial troops; ‘kokyo ni nishiki o kazaru’ (lit. decorate the hometown with nishiki brocade) used to describe someone returning home in triumph; and ‘kinshu’ to refer to spectacular autumn leaves (kin is an alternative reading of the character nishiki). However, today nishiki weaving is in real danger, with a lack of skilled craft workers to carry on the tradition.

The Japan Society are delighted to welcome Amane Tatsumura to give the society’s August lecture. Tatsumura, who is actively working to preserve and continue the techniques used in yarn-dyed weaving, will speak about the revival of this tradition. The Tatsumura family has studied the various traditional skills involved in the historic production of woven textiles, such as methods of spinning cocoons and the construction of looms and other equipment, and as far as possible use those techniques in their weaving today. Through these efforts to restore the traditional methods, it has been possible to create employment for craftspeople whose work has been in decline, while preserving techniques and ensuring that these skills are passed on and recorded.

Amane Tatsumura was born in 1974, the oldest son of Koho Tatsumura, one of the leading masters of the art of nishiki weaving in Japan. After graduating from Tokyo Zokei University, he concentrated on the weaving of nishiki brocade, learning how to weave on a takabata loom. Amane Tatsumura has followed in his father’s footsteps in continuing this tradition and has worked to restore the yarn-dyed weaving tradition and promote its growth. He is a special lecturer attached to the Project Faculty of Doshisha University.

This event will be held at:

The Swedenborg Society
20–21 Bloomsbury Way (Hall entrance on Barter Street)
London WC1A 2TH

Places are free, but booking is highly recommended. To reserve your place, please call the Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

For more information, visit the website of the Japan Society, London.