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 exploredtechnological, anthropological, philosophical, and psychoanalytical, amongst othersand 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:

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 book5000 Years of Textiles, first published in 1993 and reprinted several times, continues to be a standard text in the field.

Acknowledgments xi

List of Figures xiii

Series Editors Preface xvii

Notes on Contributors xix

General Introduction 1

Part I Histories and Frameworks 7

1 Unraveling the Fabric of the Past: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Archaeological Textiles 11Margarita Gleba

2 Textile Cultures in the Early Modern World 27Robert S. DuPlessis

3 Rewriting Textile Culture with Woven Words: Oro es tu hilar by Chilean Poet Cecilia Vicuña 45Meredith G. Clark

4 Branding Tradition: The Commercialization of Hand Embroidery in Gujarat 61Eiluned Edwards

5 The Real Thing: How Object Analysis Unlocks Meaning and Enriches Documentary Evidence 83Adrienne D. Hood

Part II Textiles, Trade, and Global Culture 105

6 Reading Textiles: Transmission and Technology of Silk Road Textiles in the First Millennium 109Angela Sheng

7 West Africa: Technology, Tradition, and Lurex Revisited 127John Picton

8 Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa 145Chris Spring

9 Remaking Tradition in Art and Design in Pakistan 165Naazish AtaUllah, Zeb Bilal and Shehnaz Ismail

Part III The Social Fabric: The Politics and Poetics of Cloth 181

10 Fabricating Identity: Textiles in the Pacific 187Paul Sharrad

11 Stitching (in) Trauma: Constructing Identity in Thread Behind Prison Bars 201Maureen Daly Goggin

12 Creative Tensions: Making (It), Unmaking, and Making Do in Textiles Informed by Feminism 219Alexandra Kokoli

13 Spinning a Yarn of Ones Own 235Christine Checinska

14 Pictures and Polemics: Muslim Veiling Practices in Contemporary Art 257Valerie Behiery

15 The Subversive Stitch Revisited 275Lisa Vinebaum

Part IV Conceptual Boundaries 299

16 Modernisms Roots in the Domestic, Decorative, and Vernacular Through Textiles 303Virginia Gardner Troy

17 Material Strategies: Cloth and Textile Metaphors in Modern and Contemporary Art 317Jennifer Harris

18 Pragmatics of Attachment and Detachment: A Constellatory Reinscription of Textile 333Maxine Bristow

19 Japanese Textile Culture: The Example of Junichi Arai and Five Other Creators 353Akiko Moriyama

20 Stories of Innovation: Fabrication in Africa and Beyond 371Atta Kwami

Part V Reception and Representation 391

21 Around the World in 80 Biennials: Curating Lausanne, Hangzhou, Kaunas 395Janis Jefferies and Lee Weinberg

22 Indigenous Textiles of North America: A Century of Exhibitions 417Elizabeth Kalbfleisch and Janet Catherine Berlo

23 Valorizing Gees Bend Quilts: Affinity, Adjacency, and the Modern Eye 435Karin E. Peterson and Leisa Rundquist

24 Performing the Political in Oceanian Textile Cultures: Collectivity, Syncretism, and Globalization 459Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll

Index 475