awayuq

on the fringes

My first attempt at replicating a khipu. I've been working with these artifacts for a couple of years now, and the more I analyze their data the more I am convinced that to truly understand them, I have to replicate some. This tiny example is done with commercial cotton yarn; I haven't yet gotten to the point of spinning my own fine cotton singles, though I may someday. Right now I'm curious about several things:

--what is the most efficient way to make a short cord? By looking at the ends of complete cords, we can tell that they were not cut off of some long piece, but rather each cord was created separately from a bundle of looped singles. The singles were twisted tightly then allowed to ply back on themselves. Not so hard if the cord is arm length or shorter, but what's the easiest was to make a cord of say a couple meters?

--The twist angle on existing artifacts is about 45 degrees. Really. Do you know how tightly you have to twist the singles bundle in order to get it to ply back to 45 deg? More than a lot. A humongous amount. I twisted those experimental cords until you could have opened a bottle of wine with them, but the finished cords still aren't steep enough.

--Some cords change color half-way down the string. Not by painting or dying, but through the cord formation process. How would you do that?

-- How much time does it take to make one of these things? I'm frequently asked that question by people who have just been introduced to khipu. The answer is-- I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. From this tiny experiment my guess is that they had some very efficient working methods, but I also believe that speed was less important than doing it correctly. Cords can get very complex and sloppiness is one thing you don't tend to see in these objects. Btw most khipu have around 30 - 40 dangly cords; some have hundreds.

In general I find that trying to replicate something gives me a new understanding of its construction, even if my replication is unsuccessful. Textiles often suffer from a host of assumptions, among which is the presumption that "it's cloth or string, it can't have taken too much intelligence to do". I am convinced that textiles are vessels of some of the most sophisticated thought to come out of human culture.

do textiles change the way we think?

I had the opportunity to give an overview of Andean textiles to some students this week. It was a lot of fun. I love to talk about textiles, and the techniques from the Andes are amazing. Living in isolation from other ancient civilizations, they independently invented just about every weaving structure known, as well as several found nowhere else. Their techniques of knotting, netting, sprang, twining and looping are similarly remarkable. The civilizations of the Andes never developed writing texts on a flat surface (they did have means of non-verbal long-distance communication, a long and involved topic). I think this may be because they have so few flat surfaces-- their world is desperately vertical. Why would you invent a wheel if there's no smooth place for it to roll? Why would you invent something which takes place on a planar surface, when you don't have much experience of planes?

Be that as it may, I think it is clear that some of the most sophisticated thinking of ancient times went into these textiles. Not just the structural techniques, but the placement of pattern, a clear understanding of the yarn required for a certain effect. Textiles were the intellectual tools they had.

Do a culture's textile techniques affect the way they think?

How might you think of the world differently if you didn't have pencil and paper, only yarn to work with?

What would your world be like if everyone you met knew the weave or knit structure of every visible article of clothing you wore? And understood the connotations?

How would you record ideas if yarn were your primary medium?

why

Mothheaven has a post in which the question came up, “why knit?”

For me, this question naturally proliferates into “Why weave? Why spin? Why sew?”

My first answer: intellectual challenge.

We all know there are challenges in creating things, through knitting sewing spinning crochet macramé kumihimo or whatever medium. There are challenges of fit, of proper use of fiber, of gauge or sett, of design. In addition to all those though, there are many other largely unrecognized problems in the field of textiles. I use “problems” here without negative connotation, but in the mathematical sense, to mean some sort of question or situation in which the answer or resolution is not immediately clear.

Did you ever wonder why woven fabrics stay together? Or did it ever occur to you that there could be interlacements that could fall apart? There’s a mathematical algorithm for determining whether a fabric will be whole. It’s not out of reach, but it’s not trivial.

Are weaving drawdowns alluring to you? Some mathematicians have studied the geometry of common weave structures (see for instance The Geometry of Fabrics, Branko Grunbaum (With G. C. Shephard) in "Geometrical Combinatorics", F. C. Holroyd and R. J. Wilson, eds. Pitman, Boston-London-Melbourne 1984, pp. 77 - 98. Google Grunbaum for more). It turns out that from a mathematical point of view, one can ask questions about weave structures that are not easy to solve. You may have wondered too why so many supposedly brand-spanking new cellular automata designs look like—weaving patterns! A fact which I believe the author of this book overlooked. Compare some of these to crepes in Oelsner.

How many different kinds of braids can you make with 15 strands? How do you measure the energy in a piece of yarn, and is it possible to calculate what effect this will have on cloth? How do you cut a piece of cloth most economically to make a garment? How do you cut a given garment from narrow cloth? How many color and weave effects are possible using plain weave with two colors and a 10-end repeat? How do you create all the plane symmetries in a woven or knitted cloth?

If mathematics and geometry and symmetry leave you cold, you can find innumerable historical, anthropological or ethnographic questions. What happened in the New World when sheep were introduced? How did the desire for certain colors of dye fuel the passion for exploration? How was the thread for Columbus’ sails spun? How did guilds form? What happens when two different textile traditions meet? How did weaving technology influence the development of computers? If you don’t care about the past and only look forward, you might be interested in questions of how to spin spider silk , or how to develop a loom that will produce triaxial weaving, or what kinds of new fiber combinations will allow devoré.

And these are just a sparse handful of the myriad of questions surrounding textile techniques and practices. Making and researching textiles requires intelligence, dedication and skill. The truly great textile workers I have known are people with all these traits and at least one more: they love a challenge.

why not.

Some things which are not reasons why I weave/knit/spin/sew:

--“It saves money.” You must be laughing already.

--“To make money.” Good luck.

--“It’s such a spiritual experience.”
Yes, it can be, just as chopping wood can be, or doing dishes, or walking or painting or making clay pots. I’ve certainly been hit by profound experiences while creating something. But, like any other creative endeavor, textiles require practice to achieve technique. Practice is just that—practice. Repetition, experimentation, failure, redesign, struggle to capture an idea. Practice can be spiritual, but it can also be immensely frustrating. Weaving or knitting or spinning does not guarantee a spiritual experience any more than sitting on a zafu guarantees enlightenment.

--“I feel so connected to all the women through history who wove/knit/spun/sewed for their families…”
Bogus. The idea of women as domestic decorations who do handwork while sitting by a cozy fire is surprisingly recent. Women have most often been excluded from the organizations where textile innovation was taking place. Much of what we perceive as women’s work probably wasn’t, for large portions of history. And when it was women’s work, it was *work*. Strenuous, dull, never-ending every daylight moment work. The personal touches and beautiful stitching we love to admire on old textiles were probably far rarer than we’d like to believe. Feeling connected to other textile producers in whatever era is wonderful, but in my opinion should be based on respect for execution and technique, rather than misconceptions about gender and the reality of trying to clothe a family with one’s own hands.

--“It’s so basic, it really reconnects me with the essentials of life.”
With all the faddishness, high fashion patterns, outrageously expensive yarns and fabrics and trinkets out there, I find it hard to sustain this argument. How far removed is the yarn in your LYS from the back of an idealistic sheep in some scenic field? Is large-scale sheep farming or cotton agriculture really a simple thing in our culture? If it makes you feel connected, I suggest this is because of attitudes you bring to it, and not inherent in the practice itself.

--“It brings me in touch with the indigenous people of (your favorite third world area) and how close to the earth they are; how whole and pure their life is.”
I don’t know why I find this so exasperating—I hear it quite often and it almost always irritates me. I don’t know a lot about third world cultures, but I do know that the dirt, squalor, disease and poverty are things that few of us would choose. They may be close to the earth, because they have to be, but they are not therefore immune from alcoholism, political scandals, or other detritus we may abhor in our own culture. I think it’s wonderful that by weaving or spinning we have a better understanding of what skills are required to survive, and can better appreciate the expertise that goes into indigenous dress of all kinds. But fondling a ball of cashmere in a warm well-lit yarn store is a far, far cry from walking barefoot on a steep dusty rocky mountain path with a child on your back, spinning dirty fleece while you climb, not because you want to but because you have to. Well-intentioned as we may be, sitting at a nicely polished loom in our leisure hours doesn’t give a very accurate picture of sitting day after day in the dust, manipulating a set of sticks and string. Being a knitter or spinner does not give us an automatic understanding of a foreign culture and the complexities it contains.
I think it’s wonderful and entirely appropriate to learn about indigenous techniques and to honor them and value them. But the comparison to western fiber workers stretches a bit too thin for my comfort. Our assumptions about the purity, simplicity and pleasures of a subsistence lifestyle tend to be way off the mark. Even our appreciation of their work brings thorny issues—should they then change their designs and colors to be more attractive to our eyes? Should they make cheaper, coarser things so that they can produce more? Once we know about them, they are already facing pressures from a larger world, pressures that threaten the very lifestyle we idealize. The wholeness we love to find begins to erode the moment our culture touches theirs.

And by the way, the “you” above is a purely fictitious non-specific you. No offense intended to anyone. My day to be opinionated.

feast

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the Draped in Dragons exhibit. It is a small show, about eight robes, but worth seeing if you like Chinese art or can be stupefied by ultra-fine tapestry. Many of the stunning designs are executed in embroidery, but some are done in silk tapestry at a sett so fine you’d think from the surface it was muslin. Chinese art is not among my favorites, but as a textile lover I could appreciate the immense labor and skill that went into these robes.

Since I was there, I stopped by the recently opened Art Deco exhibit to see if they had tickets available, and they did, so I indulged in an unanticipated stroll through history. I think this exhibit is well done. I enjoy seeing pieces of life that are not just pictures: tea sets, dressing tables, rugs and elevator grilles. Ordinarily I don’t think of Art Deco as extending into the late 30’s, but I suppose it does. Seeing all the objects together, and the furniture grouped as it might be in a living room, brought another perspective to my perennial enjoyment of England-between-the-wars mystery novels. I can imagine Bertie Wooster in this environment too.

There are six or seven dresses, all evening wear, examples of haute couture. (No Erte, I was sad to note). A Chanel though, with elaborate beading, and a pink bias-cut sheath with fluttery sleeves… seeing the way those fabrics cling, I understand why girdles would be important. The most astounding dress was a pink floor-length gown, with drapery on the bodice and a draped panel on the skirt. Moving closer to it, you could see that it was entirely encrusted with beads, top to bottom. All sewn on by hand, no doubt. You have to be quite close before you realize that the drapery isn’t drapery, it’s trompe l’oeil pleats done entirely by shifting the angles of the beads! Accurate down to the hemline, which is cut in a squiggled edge, as pleats would appear.

It turned out to be a great day for clothing inspiration. What’s the sound you make when you find a resource that speaks eloquently to one of your favorite subjects? A squeal, a gasp, a jump of incredulity and pure excitement… insert two here. Last time I was at the museum (far too long ago) I saw a book which appealed to me, and for months now I’ve been planning to buy it next time I saw it. It is Historical Fashion in Detail and it’s a gold mine for anyone who loves clothing construction. Not only are there line drawings of the jackets and dresses, showing all the seams, but the full-color photos are gorgeous. The chapters are arranged by topics such as “Cuffs”, “Shoes and Gloves”, “Lace and Openwork”. This is the kind of book that makes you realize that a button is not just a button, braid is much more than a long strip of stuff, and “dress” doesn’t really begin to address the variety of shaping that’s possible. I was very happy to buy it yesterday, doubly happy when I found that I got the last copy on the shelf.

But it gets better. While locating that book, I found this one: Dress in Detail from Around the World.. The layout is similar to the one above, but this volume has garments from all over the globe! India, Africa, Korea, China, Japan, Eastern Europe, Palestine… Some are old, some are new. Many might be called “ethnic”, but they should not be overlooked on that account. The details and construction are amazing. There’s even a Japanese jacket in gauze weave! Again I confess to a great weakness for the line drawings—all the seamlines are shown, so that you can tell where the gussets go, how the sleeves were pieced together, how the collar was cut, where the pockets are. There’s no better inspiration for making clothing from narrow widths than looking at these garments and seeing how other cultures have addressed the same problem. Darts and curved armsyces are not the only solutions to fitting the human form. You can clearly see too how often just one small touch can elevate a feature from ordinary to intriguing: a gathered skirt is just a gathered skirt. But a skirt set into cartridge pleats where it joins the bodice, with perhaps one row of featherstitching in a contrasting color… beautiful.

I’m thrilled to add this to my library. I expect it will be inspirational for many many years to come.

Further good news: China Leaves is done! Washed and waiting. I like it. Unfortunately I only have two yards of it, 19” wide. I wonder where I could find ideas about what to do with that?

Cambridge History of Textiles

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to discover in a local library The Cambridge History of Western Textiles. This is a relatively recent book, published a year ago. For various reasons I am becoming more and more interested in the history and development of textiles, and the brief browsing I've been able to do through these two volumes is tantalizing. No book, even with 1400 pages, can cover all aspects of this subject in detail, but it will at least be a starting point for further research. I am very glad to see a collection like this--I've long wished for the textile equivalent of those "History of Art" or "History of Architecture" tomes.

At this point in time it is easy for us to forget what a poweful force textiles were in European history. Right now we take for granted the availability of cloth of all weights and all colors and all fibers. There was a time when competition for certain dyes was fierce; when cotton was a novelty; when in planning an ocean expedition, one had to give thought to commissioning the sails. The yarn for which would have all been spun on a drop spindle. I'm looking forward to learning more about these topics, which right now are blurred into the rest of my vague conception of European history.

I'm especially interested in the state of textiles at the time the New World was being discovered. Three features in particular: lace, knitting, and ornamental borders.

Early colonial portraits in Peru show conquistadors wearing lace cuffs and collars; lace is especially prominent in clerical portraits. Where did this lace come from? Was it ever made in Peru? Did indigenous people ever come in contact with it?

Religious paintings from the same time often show figures in robes with borders. This is not surprising, being the style of the age, but what is interesting is that the painted borders are remarkably similar from painting to painting. There's a type with gold scrollwork leaves, and a type with diamonds. There are intricate twill borders being woven today in the highlands of Peru, and I think they are evidence of european techniques meeting indigenous aesthetic. I'd like to find more information on just what kind of woven trims were in use in the 1500s and 1600s.

And knitting... a structure that seems so obvious today, even has connotations of home crafting... it boggles me that the Peruvians, with all their incredibly intricate textile structures, never discovered knitting themselves. They only began to knit when the Spanish began bringing knitted items. And I wonder who, in that mess of soldiers and priests and adventurers and (ahem) women, was actually knitting? And in what style? And where did they learn it? From the Moors? How did they hold the yarn?

I hope these books will have some answers. Even if not, I'm bound to pick up some interesting ideas on the path from ancient Egyptian linen to Marimekko.

huilloc hat

This summer I visited a village with some outrageous textiles I particularly like. There are pictures here. Some people asked about the hats, which are described in a little more detail in this post. At the time I didn't have a picture of the top of a hat, and I now offer you this one, so you can see what I mean about it being decorated with braid. This is a hat bought in the market of the village. The people who live there were buying them too, so I presume it is the same as what they are wearing in the pictures. Though of course new, and therefore brighter and not dirty.

ancient sequins

The day before yesterday I visited a museum of gold here in Lima. They have a vast collection of metal artifacts from all periods in Peruvian history, but also a good representation of ceramics and some textiles. There are lots of coastal textiles made in cotton plain weave which in comparison to the elaborate embroideries and tapestries and double clothes are rather ordinary. But this museum had some of these plain cotton textiles-- covered with little plates of gold! Tiny squares of gold about a centimeter square, with tiny holes punched in, stitched all over the cloth. Wow. It was certainly impressive. Definitely made me have second thoughts about "plain" textiles. There were quite a few tunics with such gold ornamentation, mostly in little square flakes, but occasionally in large circles, or in figurative shapes.

It reminded me that a textile is not complete after the weaving or knitting... it is only complete when it has been finished and trimmed and is fulfilling its intended purpose.

curving paper

I happened across a NYT article this morning called Cones, Curves, Shells, Towers about a mathematician who studied origami. Not, as the article points out, the origami of simple "animal" shapes for which you find instructions in a package of squares of colored paper. Rather, an extension of these principles to nested shapes, elegant figures, curved creases. He discovered some mathematical properties of paper folding, and the article states that the study of technical folding now touches on fields such as computational geometry, number theory, coding theory and linear algebra. This list immediately perks up my mental ears-- coding theory, khipu? linear algebra, weaving? number theory, texels and terraces? Does technical folding have anything to teach us about textile planes and possibilities?

I encourage you to go look at the pictures of his sculptures before the article is taken off line. I wish I could fold paper like that! It brought to mind The Art Of Manipulating Fabric, a fabulous reference for all kinds of tucks, pleats, darts, ruches and more. Fabric is, after all, planar (at least sometimes). Origami depends on the stiffness of paper for the forms to keep their shape, but even so... perhaps it is time to consider some artistically folded sleeves. Or curved pintucks.

symmetry at first glance

This morning my copies of "Symmetry Comes of Age" arrived. How exciting! I've only had a chance to leaf through the book, but I'm very pleased. It's a heavy hardbound volume, thick paper, good photos and illustrations. The layout is nice; each contribution has a different little motif above the title on the first page, related to the pictures within that section. I'm trying to be objective. Here's the disclaimer: I have an article in this book! It is thrilling to finally have something I wrote be between hard covers. And in such illustrious company! How did I ever make it into a volume with these people?

--Ed and Chris Franquemont, Andean weaving experts ("Learning to Weave in Chinchero")
--Mary Frame, Andean textile expert
--Branko Grunbaum, mathematician who co-authored the most complete book ever on plane symmetries
--Paulus Gerdes, mathematician who studies geometry and art in Africa

In all truth, I think it will be an important volume to that small group of people who care about the cultural practice of symmetry. As a textile person, I'd certainly read it for the Franquemonts and Mary Frame; there's also a piece on turkish weaving, and a piece which I believe discusses Shipibo cloth (upper Amazon). This is a book to spark many ideas.

My article is "Creating Symmetry On the Loom", an analysis of plane symmetry patterns and how to recreate them structurally with a floor loom. Hexagonal arrangements are not discussed, but the article outlines how to achieve any of the other 12 plane symmetries by manipulating the threading, tie-up and treadling. Only four shafts are required. Since western use of symmetry emhasizes the bilateral, I think it's interesting to know how to create rotations and glides in fabric structure, not just reflections. It can lead to fabrics with a familiar feel, but surprising details.