Digital technologies, the design process and tapestry weaving: from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary.

Digital technologies, the design process and tapestry weaving: from the ordinary to the extra-ordinary.

Jane Freear-Wyld

Why digital?
In 1998 we took delivery of our first scanner in the Art department of the Coventry secondary school where I taught in the UK. We’d had a couple of very basic BBC computers for several years which, thankfully, had recently been up-dated. Computer manipulation programmes were becoming more user-friendly, the earliest ones certainly hadn’t been; and our newer computers no longer crashed at the drop of a hat, losing all the work because no-one was in the habit of saving anything until the very end of a lesson.

So, we’d got this scanner. We knew how to plug it in, we could switch it on, but that was about it. I volunteered to spend a day during the October half term holiday, hopefully working out how to use it, and writing ‘the idiot’s guide to scanning’, never realising for one second what a life-changing decision this was to be.

Ring of Brodgar, The Orkneys
A couple of months earlier I’d spent 3 weeks of the summer holiday travelling around Scotland and the Orkney Islands visiting and photographing prehistoric stone circles – a theme I often return to. I’d got masses of photos, some of which I’d been using to make photo montages a la David Hockney, one of my heroes, but nowhere near as brilliantly as his.

I selected a few photos at random and set about working out how this wretched machine worked, which only took a couple of hours to sort out. I’d got some time left so I thought I’d have a go with this new-fangled all-singing, all dancing Adobe program we’d recently bought and see what that could do as I knew I’d soon have to use it in my teaching.

Unfortunately I never thought to save any of the manipulations at the time but, thankfully, I did print some of them out although I don’t have the whole sequence.

The results I got from manipulating were so dramatic and exciting that I instinctively knew this was the way forward. After a childhood accident, when I nearly lost two fingers, I find drawing and painting really difficult because it’s virtually impossible to make my hand do what my eyes and brain are telling it to, and drawing for any length of time is very painful.

Here was a way for me to design the sort of tapestries I wanted to weave, and from designs I hadn’t seen any other weaver producing. I just loved this pixellated design, especially the movement and colours. I thought building up a design using squares and rectangles would be fascinating, but could be problematic in terms of weaving technique. I knew I wanted to work on – for me – a large scale, but all those slits would make the actual fabric of the tapestry unstable, rather like the body of a ripped concertina.

Luckily at the time I was taking monthly workshops with the Scottish weaver Joan Baxter when she had a studio at Welbeck, in the north Midlands. She showed me the ‘sew-as-you-go’ technique, which I later modified. It does take longer to weave a tapestry but gives excellent results, and I’m not sure I could have faced sewing up all those slits once a large tapestry had been cut off the loom anyway.

“Ring of Brodgar: No.4”, completed in 2000, is 103 X 152cms and, like most of my tapestries, has an 8 strand Appletons crewel wool weft on a No. 12s cotton warp.

What dawned on me yesterday during Diana’s presentation was that my pixels are simply a twentieth century version of the Roman tesserae. I find pattern drafts for cloth, such as rosepath and honeysuckle, fascinating, and I made a series of small pieces based on some of those pattern drafts a couple of years ago. I haven’t included them because I felt they were completely different from the works I’m showing today. What I now realise is they’re not different at all because the tesserae shape is the common factor.

The next thing we bought at school, a few months after the scanner, was a digital camera. I cannot even begin to explain the feeling of utter luxury in immediately seeing the photo I’d just taken. Whilst in Scotland I’d taken over 30 reels of 35mm film, with a number of photos not being worth the paper they were printed on. Now I was able to delete, or keep, an image at will.
I’ve had my own digital camera for several years and rarely print out, although I’m rigorous in archiving every image onto CD. In terms of consumables, once you have the memory cards, digital is so much cheaper than film, and more convenient in the speed at which images can be ready to work with.

Reflections: Chicago
Reflections, whether in water or on buildings, is another recurrent theme running through my work. My husband and I have visited Chicago a couple of times, and I just love the tower blocks there.

On our first trip I took photos of those glass-fronted buildings with interesting reflections, sometimes groups of buildings or, as with this image, a detail. I particularly like the way the character of the building changes with each manipulation. From this group of buildings I cropped a detail to work on. Unfortunately I only have a couple of the print outs of manipulations I made.

”Skyscraper: No. 1” completed in 2002, 26 x 30.5cms, evolved from the second manipulation and is a cotton and silk weft on a fine cotton warp.

On our second trip we took quite a long city tour and passed by a quite low but wide, mirror-fronted building with a gas station, burger bar and other buildings reflected in it. Poor John just looked at me and said: “We’re going to have to go and find this building, aren’t we?” But I’m afraid he really didn’t need an answer.

I decided to crop single windows, or two or three adjacent windows, from the images then manipulate to see what would happen. After several false starts with other cropped windows, I was amazed by the colours that appeared this time. I’d never worked with reds before, so this would certainly be a challenge.

”Window Series: No. 2” is 97 x 188cms, and was completed in 2003. I really enjoyed weaving this piece, although it fast became known as ‘The Monster’ as it very quickly took over my life. The squares and rectangles were much smaller than those on the Brodgar tapestry, and it was a really engrossing experience watching the design grow.
I liked the design resulting from these two windows, where the colours are so different from the previous tapestry. I’d never woven a diptych before and was surprised to find it wasn’t that difficult working on two separate warps, side by side. Each piece of “Window Series: Nos 3 & 4”, completed in 2006, measures 58 x 101cms.


Reflections: Pool Series
Swimming pools, especially if they are lined with tile patterns, are such wonderful things. The pool at the school where I taught was a particularly fine example, with a checkerboard pattern in the deep end and a wall along the length of the pool with floor to ceiling windows. The combination of tile patterns and the sun shining through the windows onto moving water creates some exquisite effects.

I took a crop from this photo of the sun shining onto the surface of the water, then tried a range of effects, especially experimenting with colour in the last three. I next took a small crop from the chequerboard section, and rotated it by 180 degrees. “Pool reflections: No 1”, 6.5 x 13cms was completed in 2005, using a linen, cotton, silk and lurex weft on a cotton warp. I love the colours and was interested in experimenting with raising the black shapes, using a double warp technique and lightly stuffing the resulting shapes.


RE:DESIGN

When I first began designing digitally I’d simply sit at the computer, clicking away until I came up with a design I liked; only then did I save it. But I would often manipulate for too long, and what I’d come to realise was that I needed to be meticulous in saving every step in the process. I also began printing out the whole series, in order, so that I could see the complete sequence. Very often it wasn’t the last manipulation I’d use as a design, which I would have missed had I not saved each step.

For the touring show: ‘RE:DESIGN’ members of the exhibiting group Coventry Contemporary Crafts linked with another member to produce a piece of work based on that member’s work. My partner was the ceramicist, Pauline Upton, renowned within the group for her quirky pots. Initially I had no idea how to approach this partnership.
I began by taking photos of different views of her ceramics and, back in the studio, simply sat at the computer and looked through the images. I soon realised it was the surfaces that interested me most, not the shapes. I decided to take a crop, or ‘slice’, from the body of the cylindrical pot ‘Calm Sea’, to see what would happen when I manipulated it using a combination of Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop 4.
Whilst designing digitally can sometimes be tedious, generally it’s so exciting and often the most unlikely images yield the most promising designs. Some of the resulting manipulations are quite astonishing. It was the green slice I particularly liked, so I decided to pixelate it to see if it could work as a design. This reinforced the importance of saving each step in the process.

I could see the original design was very complex, and would take more time than I had available to weave. I tried pixellating the image using various sizes of squares but, in order to be able to weave this design in the time available, the squares would need to be quite big. This, I felt, resulted in the essence of the original design becoming somewhat compromised. I tried cropping the original design hoping, when pixellated, it would retain that ‘essence’ I was looking for.
I repeatedly experimented with different crops but, at the time, I still wasn’t happy; and felt that ‘essence’ I was looking to retain just wasn’t there, especially after pixellating the crops.

‘Torn Rock’ looked interesting; again I took a slice from what I felt was an interesting area of the pot. Why this particular slice? There was something about the shapes and range of tones that looked promising. And the very first manipulation more than fulfilled that promise.

In the end it was the second to last manipulation which became the design for “Surface Slice”. As I wasn’t happy with any of the other designs I’d worked on, I decided to move away from squares and rectangles to weave a tapestry full of fluid, organic shapes. ”Surface Slice”, completed in 2005, measures 117 x 208cms. Although I love my squares and rectangles it made a refreshing change to weave such wonderful swirling shapes.

Reflections: Scarf Slices
The RE:DESIGN exhibition travelled to three venues in all, and at each venue I photographed the show for the Coventry Contemporary Crafts portfolio. For the final venue several members decided to produce more work, with a new partner. At the second venue a Barbara Fidoe scarf was lit by a small spotlight at exactly the right angle to cast a lovely shadow-cum-reflection, which I just couldn’t resist.

When I began manipulating the ‘Scarf Slice’ I immediately got this incredible image. I brightened, rotated and cropped it, resulting in a potentially very promising design. I tried again using a different effect, which really enhanced the reflection. I rotated the slice, and continued manipulating. I love the vibrancy of the colours. It’s all too plain to see the completely different results I got this time, although I used the same program but different effects.

Time to make new work, as usual, was an issue so I experimented with cropping areas from the design. I wondered what would happen if I added a mirror image of this last crop, making it twice the size. I rotated it and created a negative image of it. I’ve been paper weaving using manipulated printouts since 2005, and decided this could be quite a successful Print Weave. In the end I produced a series of print weaves for the final RE:DESIGN show, but came back to this design in 2007. “Colour 5”, completed in 2007, is 143 x 111cms.


Metamorphosis
It’s interesting that not only do my pixels link with Roman tesserae but another speaker has also used the word ‘metamorphosis’ A close up of beautiful stones on a wet Clovelly beach in Devon was the starting point for “Metamorphosis”. I’d already manipulated this image, producing two different Print Weaves as part of the ‘TaP…off the wall’ touring show. TaP [Textiles and Paper] is a Midlands based textile group I’m involved with.

I took a small crop then changed this into a negative version. I knew “Metamorphisis” would be a quartet of small tapestries, and that I wanted to experiment with combining squares and rectangles with more flowing, organic shapes. I pixellated the original crop, made the image the finished size of 25 x 25cms, and repeated this with the negative version. I then printed the original and pixellated versions out, and experimented with combining them.

I decided to begin with the original crop, which I first rotated by 180º, and gradually change it into the negative pixellated version. This means not only do the colours change from positive to negative, but the shapes also change from flowing to pixellated. “Metamorphosis”, completed in 2007, is a quartet of pieces.


In conclusion

Because I use digital technologies the design possibilities are endless, and I see the effect on both my designs and weaving technique as incredibly positive. What is so exciting about designing digitally is knowing my designs are mine. Even if two people were to manipulate the same image using the same program, the results would be completely different. Whilst like all of us I am influenced by other weavers and artists, I do not want to merely imitate or reproduce someone else’s work – I want my work to be distinctly mine.

There will always be elements of what has become my ‘signature style’ of squares and rectangles in my designs, but this won’t ever remain static. I’m only too aware design style can be mimicked and weaving techniques learnt, but knowing my designs are completely unique to me is a significant benefit of using digital technologies.
Over the years I have refined my working methods, now often working on ‘slices’ from digital images, and ensuring each manipulation is saved giving me a full overview of the whole design/manipulation process.

New technologies are central to my work but it’s still the process of tapestry weaving I love, and why I’m an artist/weaver. For me, tapestry is painting with colours mixed from threads providing the means to interpret a digitally produced design. Although crucial, new technologies are a means to an end - ensuring I can spend my days sitting quietly at my loom, listening to the radio, creating tapestries from the boxes of yarn around me, completely oblivious to anything else.

Hints for Digital Manipulation by Jane Freear-Wyld

Apologies if I’m teaching Grandma how to suck eggs…..

Having chatted to delegates after I’d presented my paper several said they’d like a few general tips and hints, so here goes.

1] Always have your digital camera on the highest setting when taking photos, even though you won’t get as many photos on a memory card. You can always reduce the resolution [number of pixels per inch] on a photo, but you can’t increase it without drastically reducing the actual size of your image.

Taking photos at your camera’s highest resolution should mean you could send an image to a magazine, or have it printed in a catalogue, at a high resolution – usually around 375dpi [pixels per inch]. But you can also reduce the resolution to 72dpi if you want to e-mail it, or add it to a website. If you’re doing this it’s a good idea to reduce the actual size of an image, making the longest side 10 – 15cms. Don’t forget to make sure the proportions of your image stay the same – the box you’ll need to tick varies from program to program. On my Paint Shop Pro program the instruction is Maintain aspect ratio, and on Adobe Photoshop 4 it’s simply Proportions.

However, if you want to alter the proportions of an image you now know you don’t need to tick this box, and you simply type in the width and height measurements you want.

2]. Save your photo as a tif or tiff, [tagged image file or tagged image file format], before you start manipulating – these are both the same format, so don’t panic! Your camera will probably save your photos as jpegs, and at 72dpi.

It’s really important you save your photos as tiffs before you begin manipulating because every time you save a jpeg file it loses some of its ‘quality’. However, this doesn’t happen to a tiff image. You’ll probably have noticed the size of you image is quite large, maybe as much as 80 cms on the longest side. At this stage don’t worry about the image size.

3] Every time you manipulate an image save it. Open a folder and give it a title, then save all your manipulations into this folder. I’ve found the best way is to number each manipulation file, then add the name of the effect I’ve used, eg: 1 Photo; 2 Sharpen; 3 Coloured foil; etc. I always save the actual image as ‘number 1’. Sometimes I might crop the image - this just means cutting a section, or slice, of it which looks interesting. I would also number and save the crop too.

4] When you’ve finished manipulating, print all the images out on a small scale, perhaps 5 or 6 cms on the longest side. I then stick them into a sketchbook in manipulation order, and label each manipulation with its individual file name and the series with the folder name - this means I can then easily find a particular image file. I also add written comments/notes if feel I want to.

I find it’s much easier to look through hard copies of the manipulations rather than having to open all the individual files on the computer. It’s often useful to look through the manipulations in the order you did them, and sometimes I’ll go back to one manipulation and try new manipulations from that image.

5] You don’t have to make computer manipulation complicated! I rarely use layers, I just use the effects most of the time. Knowing how to use layers can be useful, but it really isn’t essential. All the manipulations included in my presentation were done just using the effects I have on the two programs I use.

If you get the chance to go on a photo manipulation course do it if you want to, but don’t forget you don’t have to because you can use simple effects and still get stunning results.

6] Printing out - make sure you size your image before you press that print button! I also have my printer set so that I always get a Print Preview before it prints, which saves an awful lot of expensive photo paper.

Paint Shop Pro makes sizing an image really straightforward. I simply press File, then Page Setup from the drop-down menu and a window appears showing me a print preview. I can alter the Orientation of the image to Portrait or Landscape; the Size of the paper I’ll use; and whether I want the image to Fit to page [fill the paper the image is to be printed on] or reduce the size; and Position the image onto the paper in either the Centre on page or any other place.

Adobe Photoshop 4 isn’t quite so user friendly. I have to press Size, then Photo Size and alter the width and height of the image I want to print. Then I go to File, and press Page Setup for the Orientation and Size of the paper.

7] You’ll then need to set your printer Properties. You can usually access this from Page Setup, or Printer, depending on the program you’re using. You’ll get lots of options but don’t panic about it as you can ignore most of them.

Paper/Quality lets you set the Size of paper you’re printing on, and the Type of paper – eg plain, photo, thin card, etc, etc. You can alter the Print quality to Fast [lowest quality and uses least ink], Normal [standard] or Best [highest quality, uses most ink]. If you’re using photo paper Best is always used. If you want a good quality print on general printing paper use Best, although the quality of your general printing paper is important – poor quality paper will still give you a poor quality print even when using Best. I now buy white paper of about 100g/m² for general use. The make of paper varies as I buy whichever brand is on special offer at the store.

The Basics menu will let you set the Orientation of your paper if you haven’t already done so, the Number of copies you want and Print preview.

The Colour menu will also let you print in Black and white or Sepia if that’s your choice.

8] Archiving your images and manipulations. Because your photos and manipulations are of a high resolution this means they can use up lots of memory if you’re saving them either on your hard drive, or on a memory stick so archiving them is the best solution.

I regularly burn my original photographs and folders of manipulations onto CDs, which are then stored in a ring binder folder. However, a word of warning as I recently decided I had so many CDs which were only half full that I would reduce the number of CDs by re-burning everything onto fewer CDs. Unfortunately, somewhere, along the line I ‘lost’ a really important image. Well, to be honest I know exactly where it is, but being in Coventry’s huge household rubbish incinerator wasn’t really that helpful……

Happy manipulating!

The Loop by Kirsty Darlaston

Tapestry2008 Conference paper By Kirsty Darlaston

This talk is a brief outline of my journey to the research that I am currently undertaking for my PhD at the South Australian School of Art. The research project is an investigation of some of the social and cultural meanings of textiles/crafts and making. As part of the research I am conducting a community tapestry project to gather data about textiles and making.

Currently, I have just finished stage 1 of this tapestry project, where I have been interviewing different cultural groups from around the City of Charles Sturt, in South Australia, about their textiles practices, memories and stories, using the notion of textiles as holders of social, cultural and personal stories. I have used the information gained in these interviews to design a tapestry based on the textiles of the many different cultural groups that make up the area. The City of Charles Sturt has the second largest amount of different cultural groups of any of the councils in Adelaide. I am planning to set up the loom in the Woodville library when I return to Adelaide.

I will just briefly explain the slides that accompany my talk today.

The slides that I am playing in the background are a mixture of three sets of images. The first set is from the community interviews that I have just finished; they feature photographs of people and their textiles. This set also includes slides of community interviews that I undertook as part of the Moonee Valley Tapestry Flag Project that I did in 2006, which I will refer to a bit later.

The second set of images is a series of basic textile units: stitches, loops and knots that I am using to illustrate the idea of the loop that will become clearer throughout this talk.

The final set are historical images, paintings, prints and photographs of people making textiles, these are the images of textiles/craft making that have been handed down us of what textile makers look like.

These images will just play in a loop as I speak.

To begin with I would like to give you a short history of my artistic practice and how it has lead to my current research. My PhD research brings together two areas of long-standing interest. In art school during my undergraduate degree I was interested in artworks that fore grounded interaction and the bodies of the viewer and maker, by both inviting and denying physical interaction. An example of this is my installation Descry, which included woven tapestry, parts of plants and Braille, enticing the viewers hand to touch, but at the same time prohibiting it through the placement of the work in a formal gallery setting.

My Masters thesis took this further through exploring the idea of the interactive loop-
This research looked at artists’ who make artwork using electronic medical visualising technologies such as ultrasound and scopic cameras, to explore new possibilities beyond the gaze model of viewing artwork. The gaze-model involves distancing the body from the artwork, privileging the more intellectually based sight and distance, over the proximity of the other senses. I was interested in more interactive ways of experiencing art, that weren’t predicated on the gazes’ subject/object relationship; ways that worked through these binaries and moved beyond them. The thesis looked at bodies interacting: the body of the artwork, interacting with the bodies of the artist and viewers.

This research developed a communicative model of interacting with art, which was based on both feminist theory and the work of theorists Deleuze and Guattari. Within this model subjects take on mutating shapes and meanings in relation to each other, they change and exchange, finding their forms through communication. It was here that I first explored the idea of the interactive loop, an idea used by cyber theorists to explain interaction between humans and machines. The interactive loop involves the loss of some of the subject’s own subjectivity in interactions, allowing space for the subject to become partially caught up in the logic of another. This has been observed by new media artist Louise Wilson, in her artworks that explored scientific experimentation; here she noted that over time experimental subjects are informed by the experiment and vice versa.

At the same time that I was doing this research I was working on a Commonwealth Games cultural project in the City of Moonee Valley, in Melbourne. This project, organised by the local council, was based on textiles as carriers of material histories and memories and involved interviewing many different social and cultural groups in the area about textiles objects that are meaningful to them. The objects that surfaced ranged from Eritrean painted goatskins, through to a Kiss fan jacket to Tuvalu woven headbands. A third of the slides showing behind me today are a selection of the people that I interviewed for the project, with their textile objects. All objects were photographed with their owners and their stories recorded.

I then bought together a core group from the local community to create a tapestry design. Using all of the information gathered and maps of the area to form collages, we designed a flag that featured a lyrical map of the area, with textiles motifs as the map marks. I then went on to weave this tapestry at the local library in Moonee Ponds. During this final stage at the loom, I was privileged to meet many more community members and hear their personal stories, in a more informal, conversational setting than the community interviews.

Over the long process of weaving the flag I became very interested the dialogues that I was having with the public at the loom and how my performance as a working weaver and community artist facilitated these conversations. As I wove I would explain the process that I had undergone with community members to come up with the design; as such I became a proxy voice for the community members that I had consulted with, imparting the importance of the textiles objects to them, retelling their stories, affirming their place on the map. The textile object is a universalising form that connected most people who entered the space and I heard many tales of textiles practices 'in the old country', tales of skills being passed on, tales tinged with the loss of old ways, cultural meanings and the waning of use of skills.

What I was finding was a complex concert at work on the stage of the loom; a performance that touched on the history of textiles, communities, culture and nostalgia, a process that unfolds in a new space and opens up the previously closed, intimate areas of making. I began to think that by allowing the community onto the stage of the making/weaving that I could be creating a new form of interacting with artwork that involved multiple stories and multiple makers.

This where these two potted histories converge, in interaction and in dialogue and in a loop of communication, which I will explain in more detail later. For my PhD research I am running a community tapestry project in a similar format to the Commonwealth Games project, but I will record the conversations that I have at the loom with the public and analyse them in relation to textiles/craft theory, performance theories and theories of interaction.

In the exchanges at the loom in previous projects there is often someone’s hand reaching out to almost caress the tapestry. Although not quite touching, it is as if the people are actually touching; there is an ‘aura’ of warmth, connection and knowledge in the gesture. The hand often belongs to someone who has made textiles themselves, or someone who may have memories of a family member weaving, sewing or making.

I have been thinking of this gesture as a figure in the way that Roland Barthes uses the word figure in the introduction of A Lovers Discourse. “These fragments of discourse can be called figures. The word is to be understood, not in the rhetorical sense, but rather in its gymnastic or choreographic acceptation… the body’s gesture caught in action and not contemplated in repose…[1]” The figure of the arm reaching out to touch the tapestry is a text that can be read as expressing cultural, personal and social meanings and relationships.

The figure of the arm is not disembodied or without context. The arm is firmly embedded in an interactive relationship that I define as a loop. Within the loop are the body of the weaver/researcher; the bodies of the public (represented by the person who is reaching out to touch the tapestry); the body of the tapestry, in the process of being woven; and the context of the local library. I have recontextualised the idea of the loop from cyber theorist Sadie Plant’s who discusses the “cybernetic loop” in the writing of William Gibson:
“watching kids playing video games in the arcades and realizing there is a cybernetic loop which gets established between the player and the game and it is no longer simply a unilateral one-way process of looking at an image. What were thought of as subject and object become wrapped in what Deleuze and Guattari would call a complex assemblage.[2]”
The relationship that Plant discusses here is no longer that of viewer and viewed, but shifts to an interactional relationship, where the subject becomes both viewer and viewed. This shift moves from a linear relationship to a more circular non-hierarchic formation that allows for a freer flow of energy between the points that form it. The loop does not privilege any one point more than any other. Textiles, as you all know, are often made of a series of loops, all interacting to form a cloth.

The responses from the public, as I was weaving the Moonee Valley Tapestry seemed to fit into two categories- firstly there was a sense of awe for the skills, from those who had little or no experience with making. Secondly, there was the complicit response of having been inside the concentrated space of creation. The responses can be divided by the markers of outside, the position of the viewer and inside , the position of the viewed.

My research uses Autoethnography as an “… approach that recognizes the interwoven-ness of objects, texts, imagers and technologies in peoples’ everyday lives and identities. It aims not to simply ‘study’ peoples’ social practices or to read cultural objects and performances as if they were texts, but to explore how types of material, intangible, spoken, performed narratives and discourses are interwoven with and made meaningful in relation to social relationships, practices and individual experiences.[3]” The voices of the community will become part of the research text, intertwined with readings, and theories, in a model similar to that used by Luce Giard in her Doing-cooking[4] research. Giard conducted a series of interviews, which she uses for the goal of hearing women’s voices: “Their sole intention was to hear women speak: to talk about the very activity that is generally accorded no attention. Thus we can learn from them, and them alone, how they represent their role and ability, if they take an interest in their savoir faire, and what pride they take in finding a personal way to fulfill an imposed task.[5]” Textile/craft practice, like cooking, is a marginalized practice and one aim of the research project is to give voice to public thoughts and experiences of textiles/craft.

Deleuze and Guattari posit a nomadic art or an aesthetic model of interacting with art that closes the gap between historical gaze and the closer, perhaps blurred space that they call the fold. Their model involves close range viewing and a haptic method of interacting with art, where the senses become confused and our attention shifts from the framed formal borders of the cloth’s pattern into the malleable fold or drape of the textiles. I would re-write this as shifting from the final monolithic product to the intimate space of making, from the cloth to the individual loops that connect and interact to make the cloth. Here the hand reaching to almost touch tapestry resurfaces, with partially made tapestry allowing a closeness that complete sealed artworks may not. The figure of the hand is joined by the woman touching her heart as she speaks of forty years of making; she is joined by the woman, who with a roll of the eyes, counts on her fingers the number of items that she hand-made for her dowry in Bosnia; they are connected to the man who smooths the cloth of his kamiz as he talks about the heat in his home country; all of these bodies are joined by the body of the weaver moving slowly along the span of the tapestry.

The process of this research will create many loops, all of which have equal value and equal opportunity to proliferate as the written thesis. The written document of the thesis will exist as one loop in a cloth of many. To research using a generative model is to allow for a research that will not draw definite conclusions or find answers; a research that is open-ended, that continues to grow rhizomatically, through the interpretations and stories told by all involved. This is an open ended research, as it will be shaped by the data collected; it is also an open ended project as it involves the stories of many people and proliferates itself through these stories across many networks of connection.



[1] Barthes, R. (1977). A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. London, Penguin Group, p.3-4
[2] Plant, S, Quoting Gibson, W. (1996) “Coming into Contact”, Mellick A. Touch. Sydney, Artspace Visual Arts Centre Ltd, p.34
[3] Pink, S. Op. Cit. p.6
[4] Giard L, “Doing-Cooking”, de Certeau, M; Giard, L; Mayol, P. (1998) Living and Cooking, The Practice of Everyday Life, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, p.149
[5] Ibid

Coptic Fabrics and The Fauves by Nancy Arthur Hoskins

Figure 1
Three Dancers on a Yoke
Egypt, Coptic
Fragment from Albert Gayet album
Tapestry weave: linen and wool
4 1/4" x 8" (10.9 x 20.4 cm)
Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Helen S. Poulsen Collection
Acc. #83.7-56
Photo by R, Nicol

Figure 2

A Portrait of a Woman with Earrings

Egypt, Coptic

Fragment from Albert Gayet album

Tapestry weave: linen and wool

4 1/2" x 3 3/4" (11.5 x 9.5 cm)

Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Helen S. Poulsen Collection Acc. #83.7-62

Photo by R. Nicol

ANU Art Forum Lecture 7-05-08

The display of brash, color-splashed paintings at the Salon d'Automne in 1905 both astonished and amused Parisians. The exhibiting artists became known as the Les Fauves — the wild beasts. The name long outlasted the brief movement known as Fauvism, but the trend setting colorists influenced the course of twentieth century art. Among those exhibiting were Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Georges Rouault, and others. Scholars have explored the explosive work of the Fauves searching for clues to the break in custom and conformity from academy art. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the contemporaneous interest in Japanese and Primitive art that preceded the first Fauve exhibit are generally acknowledged as influential. Another factor—the impact of Coptic tapestry art—is less well known. Art historians tend to dismiss the importance of textile art and few are even aware of the seemingly insignificant events that preceded the startling work of the Fauves.

The French archeologist Albert Gayet had a "sensational tableau" of textiles from his excavations at Antinoé, Egypt at the Exposition Universelle de Paris 1900. A relatively unknown painter, struggling to support his art and family, was hired to paint "miles of garlands and flowers" to decorate the exhibition halls. This was Henri Matisse. Always a collector of textiles that caught his fancy -- embroideries, prints, and bits of luxury silks-- he added Coptic fragments to his horde.

This article is not intended to be comprehensive on the complex connection between Coptic tapestry art, the Fauves, and other artists, but will provide some clues for curious art historians and tapestry scholars. The scene shifts from Coptic Egypt to turn of the century Paris when a French archaeologist, an Armenian antiquarian, and all of the Fauves-to-be were there.

The Coptic Period
The Coptic Period (late 3rd Century A.D. to mid-7th Century A.D.) is an Egyptian era sandwiched between the time of the Pharaohs and the Muslims. In present usage a Copt is a Christian Egyptian, but in the early medieval world it denoted an indigenous Egyptian in contradistinction to the Greek, Roman, Persian, and Arab conquerors. There is a Coptic language which is the ancient Egyptian language written with a Greek alphabet, a Coptic church that honors St. Mark as its first pope, and a contemporary Coptic population of 6,000,000. With a government ruled from Rome and Byzantium and an ancient pagan culture overlaid with classical Greco-Roman and later Christian ideals, a distinctly different style of art called Coptic—expressed primarily through tapestry—flourished for hundreds of years. Because of the dry desert climate and the Christian burial practice of dressing and wrapping the deceased in clothing and cloth, thousands of these textiles have survived.

Coptic Cloth
The typical Coptic cloth is a combination of tabby (plain weave) and tapestry, sometimes called inserted tapestry. Tapestry decorations were used on clothing and on secular and sacred cloths. There were also wall hangings of tapestry. Found in Egypt and in a few other sites, this type of cloth was worn and probably woven all over the Roman Empire. Although tapestry is the most common technique used, there are weft-loop weaves, brocades, embroideries, knits, sprang, tablet weaves, and rare woolen taquetés (weft-faced compound tabby) and silk samitums (weft-faced compound twill).

The Phases of Coptic Art
The conquest and colonization of one country by another creates a rich cultural brew that transforms indigenous art. During the late antique world the canonical art of ancient Egypt was infused with Classical and then Christian art. Tapestries produced during the Coptic Period are testimony to that transformation of style. Though Coptic scholars use different descriptive terms, they generally agree that the style of the tapestries and other pictorial textiles can be sorted into these broad categories: Early Coptic, Middle Coptic, and Late Coptic.

The Early Coptic (late third century to fourth century A.D.) is dominated by Greco-Roman influence with themes drawn from nature and mythology. Dionysian dancers in arboreal settings are a favorite theme. Subtle modeling with blended colors can be seen in the painterly polychrome portraits. Fluency of line is evident in the monochrome tapestries of face, figures, endless knot, and interlace motifs sketched with white linen threads on dark fields.

The Middle Coptic (fifth to mid-seventh century A.D.) is categorized by the abstraction of naturalistic elements. Color areas, no longer blended, are separated by heavy outlines or juxtaposed. Faces and figures are stylized. Christian saints and symbols begin to replace the pagan iconography.

The Late Coptic or Early Islamic (mid-seventh to twelfth century A.D.), in which geometric patterns and calligraphic motifs supersede figurative art. Because of the manner in which these textiles were collected accurate dating is difficult. Textiles considered Coptic in style and technique continue to be woven in the early centuries of Islamic Egypt and are included in most museums’ Coptic collections.

Essentially the style shifts from “classicism, an awareness of the physical world and the technical skill to capture that world in a realistic or idealized form to expressionism, the distortion, exaggeration, or radical simplification of form to intensify their emotional impact” (Trilling 1982).
Polychrome and monochrome harmonies were used throughout all phases and portraits and some popular themes -- especially dancing figures and interlace patterns -- persisted. While there was continuity throughout the Coptic Period in the construction, composition, content, and palette of the tabby-tapestries there were profound changes in the iconography and in the style of rendering faces, figures, and narrative vignettes as familiar Greco-Roman motifs and themes were imbued with Christian messages.

Antinoé
Once a glorious and grand Greco-Roman city graced a Nile river site in middle Egypt. One entered the city through a magnificent triple arch. There were marble temples and broad colonnaded avenues. The Emperor Hadrian founded the city he called Antinoöpolis in A.D. 130 to memorialize the site where his beloved boy Antinous drowned. Egyptians of Greek descent colonized the city. Their language and culture were Greco-Roman. The city flourished during the centuries when ideals and art slowly segued from Classicism to Christianity. The city faded a few centuries after the Islamic conquest of Egypt. Eventually even the architectural ruins of this ancient city were destroyed and Antinoöpolis seemed to disappear. Now the site of Antinoöpolis is a barren plain surrounded by stark rocky hills with a small mud village called Sheik Abada.

Antinoé, as the city was called by the French, would only be known through legend and a few drawings of its ruins done during Napoleon's 1811 expedition to Egypt, if it were not for Albert Gayet -- who became known as the Archeologist of Antinoé. Gayet excavated in Antinoé from 1895 until 1912. He collected mummies, grave goods, and thousands of fabrics, which were exhibited annually in Paris and published a long list of books and articles about the artifacts of Antinoé. The tapestries were especially rich in color and content. Gayet considered his work "the resurrection of a world to rival the discovery of Pompeii." He dreamed of a special museum to preserve the relics of that "efflorescent civilization." But, eventually the findings of his digs were disbursed and he died a disappointed man.

His legacy, however, lives on. Today the fabrics and fabulous mummy portraits found by Gayet are scattered in public and private collections around the world. I have examined over 60 different collections. Each thread is still connected to the culture in which it was created. When pieced together these fragments reveal a very personal story of textile traditions, tastes, and technology. Antinoé, instead of a mythical lost city like Atlantis, can be understood as the lively and colorful society is once was. Imagine walking down an Antinoé street on market day with everyone dressed in handspun, hand-dyed, handwoven cloth.

Albert Gayet and the Coptic Tapestry Albums
Since 1983 my Coptic research has been focused on a collection of Coptic fragments in a pair of albums autographed by Albert Gayet. They are at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington (fig. 1 & 2).

Gayet (1856-1916) was a protégé of the notable Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. His activities are important to review. During his early career he worked at Pharaonic sites, but the 1896 excavation season was spent at the site of ancient Antinoé. His sponsor Emile Guimet, the founder of the Musée Guimet in Paris, thought that the site might contain “vestiges of the civilization and some scientific surprises” (Thompson, D. L. 1982). Guimet sponsored the first of Gayet's expeditions to Antinoé and many others that followed.

The few temple remnants from the Pharaonic period that preceded the founding of Antinoé occupied most of Gayet's time in his first and second expeditions there. Near the end of the second season he discovered four cemeteries that he identified as Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Byzantine, and Coptic. He gathered the grave goods and textiles. He brought back to Paris an assortment of artifacts and textiles that were displayed in 1897 at the Musée Guimet. His discoveries in Antinoé and the description of the exhibited material were published by the museum that same year. This set the precedent for the long list of Gayet's expeditions, excavations, exhibitions, and publications of Coptic art fabrics and artifacts.

There were exhibits at the Musée Guimet in 1897, 1898, 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1907, 1908, and 1912. A 1905 exhibit was held at the Petit Palais. Archival exhibit photos show the vitrines filled with an assortment of items: mummies, plaster masks, mummy paintings, pottery, lamps, shoes, statuettes, hair nets, painted shrouds, and textiles.

In 1900 Gayet had an exhibit at the Paris Exposition Universelle. The textiles, displayed in “sensational tableaux” arranged by Gayet at the Palais du Costume, were reported as being “one of the most decidedly interesting features of the Exposition” (Paris Exposition 1900). The costume exhibit was “for the glorification of feminine fashion from the nineteenth century back through history to the Late Antique world.” Gayet considered his work “the resurrection of a world to rival the discovery of Pompeii.

The colorful, highly stylized Coptic tapestries shown during all of the Gayet exhibits were unlike anything seen before in Paris.

Two 1901 events are important to mention. Gayet followed the success of his display at the exposition with a sensational discovery—the mummies of Thaïs and Sérapion. The mummies were featured in a macabre display at the Musée Guimet along with the season's other acquisitions. Thaïs and Sérapion were not anonymous souls, they were already well known through literature and music. Thaïs was a legendary fourth century A.D. Egyptian courtesan of great beauty and Sérapion a monk who encouraged her conversion to Christianity. The story of Thaïs, a sinner who became a saint, survived the centuries to become the heroine of an 1890 novel by Anatole France, a 1894 opera by Jules Massenet, a 1911 play by Paul Wilstatch, and five silent films produced between 1911 and 1917 in France, Italy, and America. “When Anatole France gave his Thaïs to the light, even the sex-worn brain of Paris received a new sensation. Recently a savant [Gayet] discovered the body of Thaïs in Antinoé” (France 1902). Even the president of France came to see the mummy of Thaïs lying in state at the Musée Guimet (Calament 1989). The pivotal episode in Gayet's career was the discovery of Thaïs and Sérapion. It enthralled the enthusiastic public and the press, but ultimately brought the scrutiny of his skeptical and less gullible peers. His aggressive archeological methods were criticized, his discovery of Thaïs questioned.

A 1901 sale of Gayet's Coptic textiles and artifacts was held at the Musée Guimet. Forty lots, some containing as many as five hundred items, were auctioned off to public and private collections (Calament 1989). Thousands of other fabrics were eventually donated to French museums. Gayet, disillusioned at the end of his life, regretted the dispersion of his Antinoé artifacts and textiles. Though scattered in private and public collections around the world, each thread is still connected to the culture in which it was created. When pieced together these fragments reveal a very personal story of textile traditions, tastes, and technology. Antinoé, instead of a mythical lost city like Atlantis, can be understood as the lively and colorful society it once was.

Discovering The Fauve Connection
During my research on Coptic fabrics, which began in 1974, a single sentence in a book about Eastern Christianity caught my attention, “… the feeling of movement and the sense of liveliness in the stylized human and animal figures [in the tapestries] became a source of inspiration for some of the most notable modern masters, including Matisse, Derain, and Picasso” (Atiya 1968). The footnote cited a catalog Coptic Art by N. B. Rodney. Could it be that there was a connection between my favorite phase of modern art and the fabrics of Coptic Egypt? I searched for more information. Requests through Inter-Library Loan for the Coptic Art catalog were unsuccessful. Later, I found a Coptic textile in a college collection I was examining that had been donated by N. B. Rodney and found her address. I wrote to Rodney. She kindly lent me her personal copy of the exhibit catalog and has since provided helpful information. In the catalog she wrote, “The strong black outlines and brilliant flat colors used by…Matisse and Derain are obviously related to the pictorial techniques of the ancient Coptic weavers. The same analogy can be made in the paintings of Rouault. There is no doubt that these men were fascinated by and loved—and some collected—Coptic textiles” (Rodney 1955).

Coptic art as inspiration for the Fauves was acknowledged in a 1939 exhibit catalog The Sources of Modern Painting and in two other books: Matisse by Pierre Schneider and Coptic Fabrics by M. H. Rutschowscaya (Institute 1939, Schneider 1984, Rutschowscaya 1990). Scholars, who dismiss the Coptic connection as unimportant, must not be aware of the rich visual repertoire to be discovered in the textile art of Roman and Byzantine Egypt.

Dikran Khan Kelekian,
Nanette Rodney, the author of Coptic Art uses the surname Kelekian in more recent letters. She reported that Matisse and Derain owned Coptic tapestries knowing that they had purchased their fabrics from her grandfather Dikran Khan Kelekian, the connoisseur, collector, and dealer in Eastern antiquities. Kelekian (1868-1951) was a Turkish born Armenian, and eventually an American citizen. He opened galleries in New York City in 1893, in Paris in 1895, and in Cairo in 1912 to display and sell “Persian” [Arab, Turkish, Islamic] art and antiquities. Kelekian guided the purchases of wealthy art connoisseurs. Their collections eventually enriched those of many major American museums including the Walters Art Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Boston Fine Arts Museum, and the Freer Gallery (Simpson 2000). He exhibited textiles and other artifacts at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1895), the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (1904), and the Exposition des arts Musulmans held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (1903). He published numerous sale catalogs of textiles, rugs, and ceramics to lure potential buyers. He wrote that to visit his shop was like spending time in “the enchanted atmosphere of the Arabian Nights” (Jenkins-Madina 2000).

Of more importance for tracing the tangled threads of the Coptic/Fauve connection, is that Kelekian served as a juror for the exhibits at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. I suspect, but have not been able to verify, that Gayet and Kelekian knew one another. Their interests and activities certainly overlapped. At some time early in his career, perhaps after seeing the popularity of Gayet's exhibits or at the Musée Guimet sale, Kelekian acquired Coptic textiles for his personal collection and for sale. Time and time again, when I am examining the documentation on a Coptic or Islamic fragment in a museum collection, Kelekian will be cited as the donor or source of acquisition.

The cosmopolitan Kelekian also had an avid interest in modern painting and appreciated the affinity between past and present art. He was acquainted by 1893 with Mary Cassatt, who painted a portrait of his son (Jenkins-Madina 2000). By 1910 he owned a collection of works by Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Vuillard, Picasso, Derain, and Matisse (Simpson 2000). He promoted and sold paintings by these artists and in turn sold some of them Coptic fabrics.

Henri Matisse
Matisse, the most famous of the Fauves, had a lifelong interest in fabrics. He was born in a “tiny tumble-down weaver's cottage in the textile town of Le Cateau-Cambrésis” (Spurling 1998). His childhood was spent in Bohain, a city where homeweaving on both rustic and complex Jacquard looms complimented a textile industry that produced high fashion fabrics for France's haute couture houses.

As an art student in Paris in the 1890s Matisse began “a little museum of samples with scraps and snippets of embroidery or tapestry-work purchased from secondhand stalls” (Spurling 1998). A few years later his studio was described as being filled with lengths of fabrics, embroidered cloths, and bits of tapestry (Spurling 1998). Camille Joblau, mistress and mother of his first child Marguerite, was a seamstress in a hat shop. After marriage (1898), the family income was supplemented with his wife Amelie's millinery shop. She did needlepoint and hired out to do restoration work on tapestries. Fabrics had always been a quotidian part of his life. Hilary Spurling's book The Unknown Matisse, which follows his life and career up to 1908, is filled with references to his familiarity with and affection for fabrics. His taste in textiles was eclectic and ranged from printed toiles to Persian rugs. A visitor to his studio described it as “filled with tattered wall hangings” (Schneider 1984). Matisse's interest in textiles is evident in so many of his pattern rich paintings. However, his interest in Coptic tapestries is rarely recognized.

It is certainly possible—even probable—that Matisse and his Fauve friends might have attended Gayet's exhibits at the Musée Guimet. What can be clearly documented is that Matisse was in desperate financial straits in the winter of 1900. After tramping through the snow looking for work he was hired to paint “garlands of laurel leaves” to decorate the Grand Palais for the 1900 Exposition Universelle (Flam 1995). “There,” according to his son-in-law George Duthuit, “Matisse probably discovered the Coptic tapestries from Antinoé displayed by Albert Gayet. They had attracted a great deal of attention. Matisse was deeply interested in them” (Schneider 1984).

Matisse, at some point in time, added Coptic tapestries to his textile collection, some of them purchased from Kelekian. Hilary Spurling reports that their present whereabouts is unknown (letter to author 2002). Matisse did own one of Gayet's books, Exposition Universelle de 1900, Palais du costume, Le Costume en Égypte du IIIe au XIIIe siècle d'apres les fouilles d'Albert Gayet (letter to author 2002).

Another exhibitor at the 1900 Exposition Universelle was Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). His sculptures were on display in his own personal pavilion (Spurling 1998). He began a collection Coptic fabrics. They are now at the Rodin Museum in Paris. That same year Matisse, who was working on sculpture, called on Rodin at his studio.

If you are familiar with the fabrics of Coptic Egypt, especially the portraits and scenes of dancers in arboreal settings you will see echoes of their style in many of Matisse's Fauve paintings. Only a few are mentioned here: Self Portrait 1906, Marguerite 1906, Portrait of Sarah Stein 1916, Head of Laurette 1916, and Le Bonheur de Vivre 1905-06. The Monk 1903 is hauntingly reminiscent of Sèrapion. I suggest studying Pierre Schneider's Matisse and John Klein's Matisse Portraits. Both are filled with examples of paintings that are nuanced with Coptic tapestry art. Even late in life when Matisse did gouache cut-out designs like his 1953 Negress and Large Decoration with Masks one can recognize a common motif from tabby-tapestry cloths—the crossed-rosette. Matisse did design three tapestry cartoons with Polynesian themes that were woven at Gobelins (Schneider 1984).

Matisse, His Art and His Textiles: The Fabric of Dreams was the title of a 2004 exhibit and catalog by Spurling and other Matisse scholars that featured Matisse’s portraits and pattern-rich paintings along with relevant textiles and costumes from his personal collection. Many floral, striped, and patterned fabrics and costumes from the Matisse archives can readily be identified in his paintings and sketches. Less obvious – but nevertheless significant – was the influence of the insouciant, color rich, stylized tapestries from Coptic Egypt. I dream of another exhibit that would feature portraits, pastoral scenes, and Dionysian dancers by Matisse with inspirational tapestries by the artisans of Coptic Egypt.

Andre Derain
Andre Derain (1880-1954), who worked closely with Matisse in the period of painting preceding the 1905 Fauve exhibit, was also a collector of Coptic fabrics. “He copied them over and over” (Rodney 1955). I have not yet been able to locate his collection, which also included an encaustic mummy painting. Derain painted portraits and scenes of Dionysian dancers not unlike those found in the Egyptian tapestries: Self Portrait 1914, La Dance 1905-06, and Dancers in Bucolic Scenes. A 1919 Pencil Portrait by Derain was sold by Kelekian.

The stunning dissonant, intense palettes; the flat, segmental, heavily outlined shapes; and even the Greco-Roman themes—as transformed by their confrontation with provincial Christianity—found new life in portraits, nudes, and lyrical landscapes by the wild beasts.

Georges Rouault
Georges Rouault (1871-1958) was a fellow student with Matisse in 1895. He did exhibit with the others at the infamous Salon d'Automne of 1905, but is considered a pseudo-Fauve. He initially trained in the art of stained glass—which in itself has a connection with Coptic art via a Romanesque route — Rouault's faces and figures are outlined with strong dark strokes filled with segmental, textured colors. In The Holy Face Christ's face is framed with a decorative border similar to those on many tapestry portraits. In his Pierrot the garment worn can be recognized as the same type of tunic as those found in Coptic Egypt.

Marsden Hartley
Two American artists were also interested in Coptic tapestries. Kelekian showed Coptic textiles to his friend Marsden Hartley (1877-1943). Hartley was “completely bowled over by them” (Rutschowscaya 1990). Inspired by the textiles he painted a number of portraits he considered “archaic and representative of the genius of antiquity” (Robertson 1995 and Rutschowscaya 1990). These portraits painted by Hartley in the late 1930's have the “hardiness of gaze” and the “earnestness of approach” he found in the Coptic tapestries (Robertson 1995). In the last three years of his life he could finally afford to purchase from Kelekian five fragments. He considered them “classics in great painting” (Rutschowscaya 1990).

Mark Tobey
In 1978 I examined the Coptic collection at the Seattle Art Museum and found two fragments donated by Mark Tobey (1890-1976) that had been sold to him by Kelekian. As a former resident of Seattle, I had long appreciated Tobey's paintings. His white writing style I found especially intriguing. After discovering his Coptic fragments, I wondered if Tobey had studied the countless monochrome tapestries enriched with white linen sketching wefts. Tobey is quoted as saying, “Above the horizon has come the beauty of Byzantine art . . . the art of the Copts, and of the orient. We must have an understanding of these idioms of beauty, because they are going to be a part of us” (Fuller n.d.). I am still searching for more clues to Tobey's interest in Coptic art.

Conclusion
It is beyond the scope of this article to investigate other Fauve and Expressionist artists, but I must mention that August Macke's 1912 painting of Saint George reiterates a theme and pose common in Coptic textile art.

Those who create with hands and heart are not always aware of the sources of inspiration as they envision a new composition. Some subliminal scene may have been dormant for years, suddenly to spring forth as a fully realized concept. This may have been the case with Matisse, Derain, Rouault, Hartley, and Tobey.

The artist/weavers of Coptic Egypt left a legacy of over a hundred thousand fabulous fabrics scattered around the world. The obligation now is to glean what we can from them by investigation and art-historical inference. The scholar who is interested in tying together the course of twentieth century art with Coptic tapestry art will discover a tantalizing trail of thrums.

References
Atiya, Aziz S. 1968. A History of Eastern Christianity. London: n.p.
Calament, Florence. 1989. “Antinoé: histoire d'une collection dispersée.” La Revue du Louvre. 5/6. 336-342.
Flam, Jack. 1995. Matisse on Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
France, Anatole. 1902. Thaïs. Translated by Ernest Tristan. London: Greening and Co.
Fuller, Richard E. n.d. Tobey‘s 80. Seattle and London: Seattle Art Museum, University of Washington Press.
Gayet, Albert. 1898. Catalogue des objets recueillis a Antinoé pendant les fouilles de 1898 et exposés au Musée Guimet du 22 mai au 30 juin 1898. Ministére de l'instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts. Musée Guimet. Paris: Ernest Leroux. _____ 1900. Exposition Universelle de 1900, Palais du costume, Le Costume en Égypte du IIIe au XIIIe siècle d'apres les fouilles d'Albert Gayet. Dessins de Ch. Emonts. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
_____ 1902. Antinoé et les Sépultures de Thaïs et Sérapion. Paris: Societé Française d'Éditions d'Art.
Hoskins, Nancy Arthur. 2003. “Coptic Fabrics, the Fauves, and a Few Other Artists.” International Tapestry Journal. September pp. 3–8
_____ 2004. The Coptic Tapestry Albums and the Archaeologist of Antinoé, Albert Gayet. Seattle and London: Skein Publications in association with University of Washington Press.
Institute of Modern Art. 1939. The Sources of Modern Painting. New York: Wildenstein and Co., Inc.
Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn. 2000. “Collecting the ‘Orient’ at the Met: Early Tastemakers in America.” Ars Orientalis, volume XXX. 69-89.
Klein, John. 2001. Matisse Portraits. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Musée Rodin. 19 October 1995. Letter to author.
Paris Exposition Reproduced from the Official Photographs taken under the supervision of the French Government. 1900. M. Barr, official photographer. New York, Akron, Ohio, and Chicago: The R. S. Peale Co.
Robertson, Bruce. 1995. Marsden Hartley. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in association with the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute.
Rodney, Nanette B. (Kelekian). 1955. Coptic Art: Exhibition of Coptic Art by the Olsen Foundation. Guilford, Conn: Olson Foundation.
_____ 29 April 2001. Letter to author.
Rutschowscaya, M. H. 1990. Coptic Fabrics. Paris: Musée du Louvre.
Schneider, Pierre. 1984. Matisse. New York: Rizzoli.
Simpson, Marianna Shreve. 2000. “A Gallant Era: Henry Walters, Islamic Art, and the Kelekian Connection.” Ars Orientalis. volume XXX. 91-111.
Spurling, Hilary. 1998. The Unknown Matisse, A life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869-1908. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. _____ 1 February 2002. Letter to author.
_____ 1 October 2002. Letter to author.
_____ 6 October 2002. Letter to author.
_____ 2005. Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour. 1909-1954. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Trilling, James. 1982. The Roman Heritage, Textiles from Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean 300 to 600 AD. Washington, D. C.: The Textile Museum.
Nancy Arthur Hoskins 2660 Valley Forge Drive Eugene, OR 97408 nhoSKEIN@pcisys.net 541-505-9434

Hello From Michelle

Hello
I am wanting to say I very much enjoyed the Master class with Susan and Archie from the 29th April to the 1st may 2008 . I learned a lot and came away inspired to continue with the 4 selvage technique and no cartoon which gave myself a drive to see what I will come up with now. This type of warping up a loom requires me to be more patience yet the results is great. I would encourage anyone to do a class with Susan and Archie as they are lovely people who share willingly their knowledge with passion and enthusiasm to others.

The exhibitions that where on at ANU and around Canberra, which incorporated tapestry was wonderful to see.
Thank you Michelle

Speech by: Kommaly Chanthavong May 2nd 2008

Kommaly Chanthavong and guests (including Khenthong Nuanthasing, Ambassador,Embassy of the Lao P.D.R.) at the reception, School of Art Gallery

Kommaly Chanthavong, Director Lao Sericulture Company trading as Mulberries and Phontong Camacraft Handicrafts Cooperative
Tapestry 2008 Reception, Australian National University, School of Art, Canberra, Australia.

Sabaidee… greetings
Your Excellency, distinguished guests, ladies & gentlemen.

Thank you for coming this evening.

Weaving is an integral part of Lao culture. It is an honour for me to be here tonight as a sister of Lao women weavers.

I was born in Hua Phan, Sam Neu. A province in Laos known for the traditional craft of raising silk worms, reeling silk and cotton fibres, creating natural dyes and for its many complex weaving techniques.

I started weaving when I was five years old. In Laos, the art and skill of weaving has been passed on from generation to generation, from mother to daughter. It’s a skill we learn from our family. The patterns and motifs are woven on wooden floor looms in humble surroundings. They signify who we are, our dreams, our hopes and the natural world around us.

Tonight, I see exquisite Lao tapestry weavings from my sister weavers hanging in the Gallery. The weavings represent the country side of our people – the flowing rivers and streams, the lightening and storms of the mountain skies of Laos.

In 1975, after the civil war, I saw the women from my home town in Vientiane, displaced by war and desperately poor. I gathered 10 women weavers and began the Phontong weaving group. We wove textile to sell in the Morning Market and for the government uniforms.

In 1990 the Phontong Handicraft Cooperative joined with CamaCraft. We worked with Hmong people in re-crafting traditional Hmong embroidery, appliqué and batik techniques to create income generating activities to improve the standard of living.

My desire was to go back to my home land of northern Laos and help my people. My vision was a silk farm, to produce our own traditional silk fibres. In 1993 after two year study and research the Lao Government granted me 40 hectares of land in Xieng Khoung province to start a model farm for sericulture – a project to help rebuild the economy of village communities using our Lao traditional practice of raising silk worms and producing silk fibre.

Today the Lao Sericulture Company’s Mulberries label and Phontong/Camacrafts support over 200 villages involving over 3,000 people. We train young people in silk farming, creating natural dyes and weaving. Our interdependent farming system ensures that all by-products are used nothing is wasted in the production of organic silk fibres. We are accredited to the International Fair Trade Association.

The Lao tapestry – weaving dreams and aspiration exhibition is an important event. It signifies the survival of an artistry central to the people of Lao. Valerie Kirk has been an instrument, not only in contributing to preserving our weaving traditions but she has openned the way to new creativity, inspiration, hopes and dreams for Lao women. She has gathered these exquisite art works of Lao women weavers. Together, these woven landscapes unite us with women weavers in Australia and other countries. Thank you Valerie. Thank you Gordon Bull, for inviting me and my daughter Boby to the Australian National University’s School of Art 2008 Tapestry Exhibition.

Thank you.

MULBERRIES

Kommaly Chanthavong

Kommaly Chanthavong from the sustainable business,"Mulberries" in remote northern Laos demonstrated the technique of reelingsilk from cocoons in boiling water to strands of fine silk.

Lao women have been synonymous with weaving for centuries and weaving is an important part of a woman’s daily life. Lao mothers have passed their silk reeling and weaving skills onto their daughters. Rather than receive formal education, young girls were taught to plant mulberry trees, reel, raise silk worms and produce natural dyes, weave silk thread, embroider and spin cotton thread. Cloth patterns going back thousands of years are still used and adapted. Each has a different meaning or interpretation and is varied by colours and personal ideas and taste.

After years of war and diplomatic isolation, Lao is slowly moving towards regional integration. However, it faces serious challenges of poverty and food security, especially among the subsistence farming communities which form the bulk of the population.

Unexploded ordinance casualties, particularly among children who scavenge the metal for recycling, occur frequently. Lao youth and ethnic minority women are trafficked, particularly to Thailand for sexual and financial exploitation. Employment for women, especially in the villages and outside main commercial areas, is limited.

One way for women to remain in the villages is to use their weaving knowledge and skills to produce lengths of fabrics – especially scarves – for sale to tourists and to an international export market.

In 1976 Kommaly Chanthavong, who had learnt weaving from her mother as a child, invited a small group of weavers to form the Phontong Weavers. The group functioned as a simple cooperative by sharing what they had and what they made. Old looms, technical knowledge, money and time were all donated to the group and the resulting products sold in Morning Market in Vientiane, the capital of Lao.

“I learned the traditional techniques of Lao weaving and the use of natural dyes practiced in my home town in a northern, mountainous province in Laos. The town is known for its complex supplementary and non-supplementary weaving and its wooden straddled handlooms,” Kommaly said.

In 1977 the success of the group caught the Government’s eye and they were asked to weaver the numerous ribbons needed for uniforms for officers, soldiers and police officers. The additional business enabled the weavers to expand their operation and they began working in the villages around Vientiane.

In 1985 the group became legally incorporated as the Phontong Handicraft Cooperative and is the only surviving self-sustaining handicraft cooperative in Laos today. Kommaly was elected as director and has created legal structures around the group that are economically sustainable as non-profit handicraft projects.

With her husband, Kommaly established the Lao Sericulture Company in the northern province of her home town. “For two years, we undertook research and a feasibility study in Thailand, Vientiane and investigated Japanese silk farming methods. We established a model farm in silk production and weaving and cattle-raising on 40 hectares of land.”

Through Lao Sericulture many villagers are employed undertaking different steps of the production of silk worms through to designing and weaving scarves. Farmers raise cattle and use the manure to fertilise the plants. Cuttings from the mulberry trees are transplanted in the fields and watered twice daily for three to six months. The silk worms are fed three times a day and kept in sanitary conditions in the rearing house for 28 to 30 days of the silkworm cycle until the time when they begin to spin their cocoons.

Natural dyeing is also a labour intensive, traditional art, using locally available resources and expertise. Plants are used for dyeing, and other plants attract insects. The nests and by-products of the insects are gathered and used to create dyes.

“Lao silk worms produce a finer, more delicate fibre than Thai or Chinese silk worms. However, I have developed a hybrid worm that gives a thicker, stronger fibre. I have also developed a special piece of equipment to combine reeling and spinning the silk to be done in one process rather than two separate steps,” Kommaly said. Reeling is the term for separating the raw silk fibre from the cocoon, using a pampas whisk, which is then spun onto a winder. The golden coloured cocoons bob around in boiling water until they are picked up for reeling.

Kommaly is deeply serious about the sustainability of the farm, confirmed by Kelly Leonard, a graduate of the Textiles Workshop at the School of Art, who went to the remote area where the farm is located to become an artist in residence. “I had to learn about organic farming,” she said. “I expected to work freely on my own work, but I had to distribute the cow poo to the mulberry plants and chop mulberry leaves to feed the silk worms three times a day for weeks before I was allowed to use the silk and weave a piece of my own.”

Kommaly was nominated among 1000 women for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for artistic excellence and her contribution in strengthening the social and economic position of Lao women and their families.

In February this year her exhibition and display at Melbourne’s 2008 Sustainable Living Festival received considerable interest from the Australian public.

During the Tapestry Symposium at the ANU School of Art beginning on Friday, Kommaly will be selling work from the Lao Sericulture Company under the Mulberries Label. The works will include indigo blue silks, naturally dyed lengths of fabric with supplementary weft – rich, colourful designs that are very similar to embroidery – which could be used as fabric hangings or decorative items. She will also have a range of contemporary designs in scarves and wraps. All will use Lao motifs and patterns.

“I now use heirloom motifs and contemporary designs to produce silk weavings which are central to Lao culture and its handcraft industry today.”

To celebrate World Environment Day 2008, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney will present an illustrated talk on "Sustainable Traditions from silk farming to Lao textiles" with Kommaly Chanthavong, Lao Master Weaver and her daughter Boby Vosinthavong on Wednesday 4 June from 12.30-1.30pm and Sunday 8 June from 2.00-3.00pm. This talk is part of the Powerhouse Museum 2008 Adult Learning Program and will be free with museum admission.