The Handbook of Textile Culture

In recent years, the study of textiles and culture has become a dynamic field of scholarship, reflecting new global, material and technological possibilities. This is the first handbook of specially commissioned essays to provide a guide to the major strands of critical work around textiles past and present and to draw upon the work of artists and designers as well as researchers in textiles studies.

The handbook offers an authoritative and wide-ranging guide to the topics, issues, and questions that are central to the study of textiles today: it examines how material practices reflect cross-cultural influences; it explores textiles' relationships to history, memory, place, and social and technological change; and considers their influence on fashion and design, sustainable production, craft, architecture, curation and contemporary textile art practice.

This illustrated volume will be essential reading for students and scholars involved in research on textiles and related subjects such as dress, costume and fashion, feminism and gender, art and design, and cultural history.

Cover image: Anne Wilson, To Cross (Walking New York), 2014. Site-specific performance and sculpture at The Drawing Center, NYC. Thread cross research. Photo: Christie Carlson/Anne Wilson Studio.

Janis Jefferies is Professor of Visual Arts and Research Fellow at the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Hazel Clark is Research Chair of Fashion, Parsons, The New School for Design, New York, USA.
Diana Wood Conroy is Professor of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia.

Section 1: Textiles in the Expanded Field
Theoretical Perspectives, Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
New Approaches to Textile Design, Hazel Clark, Parsons, The New School for Design, USA
Views from Australia and the Asia Pacific, Diana Wood Conroy, University of Wollongong, Australia
Curating Textiles: Stuff That Matters, Sara Martinetti, France, Alice Motard, Raven Row, UK, Alex Sainsbury, Raven Row, UK, and Seth Siegelaub (deceased)
Textiles and Architecture, Bradley Quinn, USA
Patchworking Ways of Knowing and Making, Kristina Lindstrom and Asa Stahl, Malmo University, Sweden
Making Known: The Textiles Toolbox - Psychoanalysis of Seven Types of Textile Thinking, Claire Pajaczkowska, Royal College of Art, UK

Section 2: Textile, Narrative, Identity, Archive
Introduction, Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Binding Autobiographies: A Jewishing Cloth, Katya Oicherman, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel
Materials, Memories and Metaphors: The Textile Self Re/collected, Solveigh Goett, University of East London, UK
Archives of Cloth: Shadows of the Past in Re-Visioning Textiles, Diana Wood Conroy, University of Wollongong, Australia
Lived Lives: Materializing Stories of Young Irish Suicide, Seamus McGuinness, Ireland

Section 3: Textiles and Globalization
Introduction, Hazel Clark, Parsons, The New School for Design, USA
Performing Globalization in the Textile Industry: Anne Wilson and Mandy Cano Villalobos, Lisa Vinebaum, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
Changing Perceptions of Curatorial Practice in South Asian and Commonwealth Textiles, Jasleen Dhamija, India
Quilts for the Twenty-First Century: Activism in the Expanded Field of Quilting, Kirsty Mairi Robertson, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Transforming Malaysian Hand Woven Songket in the Contemporary World, June Ngo Siok Kheng, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia
Creative Resilience Thinking in Textiles and Fashion, Mathilda Tham, Beckmans College of Design, Sweden
Use Your Illusion: Dazzle, Deceit and the 'Vicious Problem' of Textiles and Fashion, Otto von Busch, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Section 4: Textiles and the Curatorial Turn
Introduction, Janis Jefferies, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Curating Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance, Matilda McQuaid, Cooper Hewitt, USA
Social Fabric: Textiles, Art, Society and Politics, Christine Checinska, University of East London, UK and Grant Watson, Institute of International Visual Arts, UK
Innovation in Australian Indigenous Fibre, Margie West, Australia
Kaunas Biennial: Spindling from Textile to Public Culture, Ed Carroll, Blue Drum, Ireland
A Global Stage: Curating Textiles from the Asia Pacific, Ruth McDougall, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia
Envisioning Fibre in the Cultural Heritage of Hangzhou, China, Shi Hui and Xu Jia, China Academy of Art, China
The Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials 1962-1995, Giselle Eberhard Cotton, Fondation Toms Pauli, Switzerland

Section 5: Textile Technologies and the Sensorial Turn
Introduction, Diana Wood Conroy, University of Wollongong, Australia
The Fabric of Memory - Towards the Ontology of Contemporary Textiles, Sara Diamond, OCAD University, Canada
Indigo Dyeing in the Land of Its Origin: History Unknown, Smritikumar Sarkar, University of Burdwan, India
Feeling: Sensing the Affectivity of Emotional Politics Through Textiles, Agnieszka Golda, University of Wollongong, Australia
Reviving Kapiak: Understanding the Material Identity of Barkcloth in a Melanesian Society, Graeme Were, University of Queensland, Australia

Section 6: Developments in the Field of Textiles, Cloth and Culture
Interviews with Annet Couwenberg, Diana Guerrero-Macia, Valerie Kirk, Kay Lawrence, Judith Leeman, Sarah Lindsay, Joan Livingstone, Rowland Ricketts, Patrick Segura, Jenni Sorkin, Lisa Vinebaum, Fo Wilson and Anne Wilson
Bibliography
Index