A Companion to Textile Culture

A lively and innovative collection of new and recent writings on the cultural contexts of textiles

The study of textile culture is a dynamic field of scholarship which spans disciplines and crosses traditional academic boundaries. A Companion to Textile Culture is an expertly curated compendium of new scholarship on both the historical and contemporary cultural dimensions of textiles, bringing together the work of an interdisciplinary team of recognized experts in the field. The Companion provides an expansive examination of textiles within the broader area of visual and material culture, and addresses key issues central to the contemporary study of the subject.

A wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the subject are explored—technological, anthropological, philosophical, and psychoanalytical, amongst others—and developments that have influenced academic writing about textiles over the past decade are discussed in detail. Uniquely, the text embraces archaeological textiles from the first millennium AD as well as contemporary art and performance work that is still ongoing. This authoritative volume:

• Offers a balanced presentation of writings from academics, artists, and curators
• Presents writings from disciplines including histories of art and design, world history, anthropology, archaeology, and literary studies
• Covers an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range
• Provides diverse global, transnational, and narrative perspectives
• Included numerous images throughout the text to illustrate key concepts

A Companion to Textile Culture is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, instructors, and researchers of textile history, contemporary textiles, art and design, visual and material culture, textile crafts, and museology.

Jennifer Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. Now retired, she was Deputy Director at the Whitworth Art Gallery, holding one of the finest collections of historical and contemporary textiles in the UK. Harris has researched and published in the fields of fashion, textiles, and avant-garde craft for more than thirty years. Her book 5000 Years of Textiles, first published in 1993 and reprinted several times, continues to be a standard text in the field.

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Series Editor Preface

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Section 1: Histories and Frameworks

Introduction

1 Margarita Gleba, Unraveling the Fabric of the Past: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Archaeological Textiles

2 Robert DuPlessis, Textile Cultures in the Early Modern World

3 Meredith G. Clark, Rewriting Textile Culture with Woven Words: “Ora es tu hilar” by Chilean Poet Cecilia Vicuña

4 Eiluned Edwards, Branding tradition: the commercialization of hand embroidery in Gujarat

5 Adrienne D. Hood, ‘The Real Thing’: How Object Analysis Unlocks Meaning and Enriches Documentary Evidence

Section 2: Textiles, Trade and Global Culture

Introduction

6 Angela Sheng, Reading Textiles: Transmission and Technology of Silk Road Textiles in the First Millennium

7 John Picton, West Africa: Technology, Tradition and Lurex Revisited

8 Chris Spring, Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa

9 Naazish Ata-Ullah, Zeb Bilal and Shehnaz Ismail, Remaking Tradition in Art and Design in Pakistan

Section 3: The Social Fabric: The Politics and Poetics of Cloth

Introduction

10 Paul Sharrad, Fabricating Identity: Textiles in the Pacific

11 Maureen Daly Goggin, Stitching (in) Trauma: Constructing Identity in Thread Behind Prison Bars

12 Alexandra Kokoli, Creative Tensions: Making (it), unmaking, and making do in textiles informed by feminism

13 Christine Checinska, Spinning a Yarn of One’s Own

14 Valerie Behiery, Pictures and Polemics:  Muslim Veiling Practices in Contemporary Art

15 Lisa Vinebaum, The Subversive Stitch Revisited

Section 4: Conceptual Boundaries

Introduction

16 Virginia Gardner Troy, Modernism’s Roots in the Domestic, Decorative and Vernacular Through Textiles

17 Jennifer Harris, Material Strategies: Cloth and textile metaphors in modern and contemporary art

18 Maxine Bristow, Pragmatics of attachment and detachment: a constellatory re-inscription of textile

19 Akiko Moriyami, Japanese Textile Culture – the example of Junichi Arai and five other creators

20 Atta Kwami, Stories of Innovation: Fabrication in Africa and Beyond

Section 5: Reception and Representation

Introduction

21 Janis Jefferies and Lee Weinberg, Around the World in 80 Biennials: Curating Lausanne, Hangzhou, Kaunas

22 Elizabeth Kalbfleisch and Janet Catherine Berlo, Indigenous Textiles of North America: A Century of Exhibitions

23 Karin E. Peterson and Leisa Rundquist, Valorizing Gee’s Bend Quilts: Affinity, Adjacency, and the Modern Eye

24 Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Performing the Political in Oceanian Textile Cultures: Collectivity, syncretism and globalization

Index

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