Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.2012094
T. Smit
The production of silk was an important aspect of the economy of Islamic Sicily that the Norman count and then kings of Sicily worked to maintain. The production of silk survived along with other economic practices of Islamic Sicily, such as irrigation techniques and land use. Silk continued to move along the trade routes of the Central Mediterranean into the twelfth century. While those connections were disrupted by unrest and revolt at the end of the twelfth century, they survived in some form until the mid-thirteenth century. It was only the expulsion of Muslims from Sicily that ended these connections.
{"title":"Weaving Connections: Sicilian Silk in the Medieval Mediterranean","authors":"T. Smit","doi":"10.1080/00404969.2021.2012094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00404969.2021.2012094","url":null,"abstract":"The production of silk was an important aspect of the economy of Islamic Sicily that the Norman count and then kings of Sicily worked to maintain. The production of silk survived along with other economic practices of Islamic Sicily, such as irrigation techniques and land use. Silk continued to move along the trade routes of the Central Mediterranean into the twelfth century. While those connections were disrupted by unrest and revolt at the end of the twelfth century, they survived in some form until the mid-thirteenth century. It was only the expulsion of Muslims from Sicily that ended these connections.","PeriodicalId":43311,"journal":{"name":"TEXTILE HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44283243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.2007672
Clare Rose
School uniforms are, as Kate Stephenson points out in her introduction, a ‘widely identifiable and understood symbol of the British education system’ (p. 1). They are also a topic of current discussion, as schools seek to maintain the principle of uniformity while accommodating the modesty codes of religious adherents, the identity of non-gender-conforming students and the limited budgets of lowincome families. An examination of the origins and principles of school uniforms is thus both timely and necessary. School uniforms present a challenge for the historian, as their origins lie at opposite poles of the social spectrum: charitable institutions for poor or orphan boys, and private academies for young gentlemen. Additionally, for a phenomenon that is widespread in contemporary Britain, it can be difficult to separate out historical practices from those that are familiar today. Stephenson starts with a detailed account of the charity schools founded from the sixteenth century, examining how the clothing provided for their ‘poor scholars’ was both a gift and a way of publicising the foundation and the generosity of its donors. As she recognises, the meaning of these uniforms changed over time as the required garments became outdated. Stephenson also discusses the distinctions between charitable foundations, with some (like Christ’s Hospital in London) being recognised for its academic achievements, while others remained true to their original aims of training children for a life of service. A further distinction not considered by Stephenson is found in the Workhouse schools set up from the 1840s, whose institutional clothing was deliberately stigmatising. Stephenson goes on to discuss the reformation of private schools such as Eton and Winchester in the mid-nineteenth century, in order to provide not only the learning required to enter Oxford or Cambridge, but also the self-discipline and esprit de corps needed to rule the Empire. As she recognises, the insistence on large wardrobes of clothing suitable for team sports and formal occasions, as well as study, reinforced the reputations of schools as elite institutions while acting as a barrier to parvenu or insolvent parents. A different dynamic was present in the elite girls’ schools founded in the late nineteenth century, as they were educating girls for professions that were mostly closed to them. Thus, their ethos was idealistic, even quixotic, and strongly imbued with feminism. In practical terms, this meant an emphasis on sports and gymnastics, and on clothing that was not too tight or cumbersome while remaining ‘ladylike’. Stephenson uses school archives and unpublished photographs to provide a nuanced discussion of the different solutions proposed by different schools, from the fashionable dresses of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and the ‘djibbahs’ of Roedean to the gymnasium tunics of St Leonards. The latter were the forerunners of the pleated ‘gym slip’, which was first introduced to elite
{"title":"Kate Stephenson, A Cultural History of School Uniform","authors":"Clare Rose","doi":"10.1080/00404969.2021.2007672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00404969.2021.2007672","url":null,"abstract":"School uniforms are, as Kate Stephenson points out in her introduction, a ‘widely identifiable and understood symbol of the British education system’ (p. 1). They are also a topic of current discussion, as schools seek to maintain the principle of uniformity while accommodating the modesty codes of religious adherents, the identity of non-gender-conforming students and the limited budgets of lowincome families. An examination of the origins and principles of school uniforms is thus both timely and necessary. School uniforms present a challenge for the historian, as their origins lie at opposite poles of the social spectrum: charitable institutions for poor or orphan boys, and private academies for young gentlemen. Additionally, for a phenomenon that is widespread in contemporary Britain, it can be difficult to separate out historical practices from those that are familiar today. Stephenson starts with a detailed account of the charity schools founded from the sixteenth century, examining how the clothing provided for their ‘poor scholars’ was both a gift and a way of publicising the foundation and the generosity of its donors. As she recognises, the meaning of these uniforms changed over time as the required garments became outdated. Stephenson also discusses the distinctions between charitable foundations, with some (like Christ’s Hospital in London) being recognised for its academic achievements, while others remained true to their original aims of training children for a life of service. A further distinction not considered by Stephenson is found in the Workhouse schools set up from the 1840s, whose institutional clothing was deliberately stigmatising. Stephenson goes on to discuss the reformation of private schools such as Eton and Winchester in the mid-nineteenth century, in order to provide not only the learning required to enter Oxford or Cambridge, but also the self-discipline and esprit de corps needed to rule the Empire. As she recognises, the insistence on large wardrobes of clothing suitable for team sports and formal occasions, as well as study, reinforced the reputations of schools as elite institutions while acting as a barrier to parvenu or insolvent parents. A different dynamic was present in the elite girls’ schools founded in the late nineteenth century, as they were educating girls for professions that were mostly closed to them. Thus, their ethos was idealistic, even quixotic, and strongly imbued with feminism. In practical terms, this meant an emphasis on sports and gymnastics, and on clothing that was not too tight or cumbersome while remaining ‘ladylike’. Stephenson uses school archives and unpublished photographs to provide a nuanced discussion of the different solutions proposed by different schools, from the fashionable dresses of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and the ‘djibbahs’ of Roedean to the gymnasium tunics of St Leonards. The latter were the forerunners of the pleated ‘gym slip’, which was first introduced to elite ","PeriodicalId":43311,"journal":{"name":"TEXTILE HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43513096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.2007682
L. K. Williams
Maya Stanfield-Mazzi’s Clothing the New World Church: Liturgical Textiles of Spanish America, 1520-1820 (2021) is the first broad survey that highlights some essential threads in the social and material history of textile production and usage within the context of the Catholic Church in Spanish America. This review highlights the publication’s contribution in interdisciplinary research in the field.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.2037916
R. Neal
sonal style. At an average of forty-five minutes focusing on one interview subject, Cvetkovic is able to plumb the depths of their personal experience in dressing: all three subjects cite their fathers as catalysts for early interests in clothing. The conversational and unscripted edit of these discussions allows the telling parts of oral testimony, the pauses and the exclamations, to speak volumes. The pleasure or distaste the interviewees feel for certain garments, the excitement about the discovery of a new inspiration is captured in the tenor and content of their telling. Episodes ‘#32 Scott Fraser Simpson’ and ‘#33 Andr e Larnyoh’ spend time examining the cultural touchpoints they consider stylish (examples include Miles Davis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Mod scene in Brighton and Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film The Talented Mr Ripley). In ‘#39 Fred Nieddu’, the subject’s varied prior experience, working in multi-brand retail shops and apprenticing in different tailoring houses, coheres in his current practice where he insists on an open mind toward construction techniques, drawing from outside the traditional British methods of Savile Row. The strength of both podcasts ultimately lies in using oral testimony to highlight how the individual, personal experience of dress can speak to larger societal constructs. Articles of Interest episode ‘#10 Suits’ begins and ends with Rae Tuturo of custom suit maker Bindle & Keep discussing the sense of self they found in suiting and how they parlayed that into a business that aimed to dress any gender. Episode ‘#3 Pockets’ questions what tools might be necessary for us to carry if we lived in a more equitable society — would housekeys matter if there were no fear of theft driving us to lock our doors? In episode #33 of Handcut Radio, Cvetkovic posits that style inspiration should not be drawn just from the dress habits of an individual, but also their wider ethics and behaviour. Toward the end of that same interview, Larnyoh poses an open question to the audience, formed from his own experience feeling isolated in the world of tailoring and luxury: why are black designers and style personalities not included at the forefront of ‘menswear’? While taking different approaches, Articles of Interest as a narrative journey through concepts of dress and Handcut Radio as the musings and autobiographies of dressed individuals, both podcasts provide profound insights into the experience and meaning of being dressed.
个性风格。Cvetkovic平均花45分钟专注于一个采访主题，能够深入了解他们个人的穿着体验：三位受试者都认为他们的父亲是早期对服装感兴趣的催化剂。对这些讨论的对话式和无脚本编辑使口头证词的讲述部分、停顿和感叹得以充分表达。受访者对某些服装的愉悦或厌恶，以及对发现新灵感的兴奋，都体现在他们讲述的基调和内容中。第32集《斯科特·弗雷泽·辛普森》和第33集《安德雷·拉尼欧》花时间研究他们认为时尚的文化接触点（例如迈尔斯·戴维斯、让-米歇尔·巴斯奎特、布莱顿的国防部场景和安东尼·明格拉1999年的电影《天才雷普利先生》）。在《#39 Fred Nieddu》中，受试者之前在多品牌零售店工作和在不同裁缝店当学徒的各种经历，与他目前的实践相一致，他坚持对建筑技术持开放态度，借鉴了萨维尔街传统的英国方法。这两个播客的优势最终在于使用口头证词来强调个人的个人着装体验如何与更大的社会结构对话。《感兴趣的文章》第10集《西装》以定制西装制造商Bindle&Keep的Rae Tuturo开始和结束，讨论他们在西装中发现的自我意识，以及他们如何利用这种自我意识来打造一家旨在为任何性别着装的企业。第三集《口袋》提出了一个问题，如果我们生活在一个更加公平的社会中，我们可能需要携带什么工具——如果不担心被盗会驱使我们锁门，钥匙会重要吗？在Handcut Radio的第33集中，Cvetkovic认为，风格灵感不应该仅仅来自个人的穿着习惯，还应该来自他们更广泛的道德和行为。在同一次采访即将结束时，Larnyoh向观众提出了一个悬而未决的问题，这个问题是他自己在剪裁和奢华世界中感到孤立的经历形成的：为什么黑人设计师和时尚人士没有被纳入“男装”的前沿？虽然采用了不同的方法，《感兴趣的文章》是一个通过着装概念的叙事之旅，《Handcut Radio》是穿着者的沉思和自传，但这两个播客都对穿着的体验和意义提供了深刻的见解。
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.1947590
Zara Kesterton
The period 1770 to 1830 witnessed a ‘revolution’ in fashion in western Europe. This was typified by the introduction of the women’s gauzy neoclassical gown, the sleekness of which starkly contrasted with the expansive paniers of the preceding century. It was this period of sartorial transition that formed the focus for the Lewis Walpole Library’s exhibition ‘Artful Nature: Fashion and Theatricality 1770–1830’. Like so many exhibitions in 2020, ‘Artful Nature’ was forced to close earlier than intended as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, curators Laura Engel and Amelia Rauser have created a comprehensive online resource, which is the subject of this review, enabling a global audience to view the exhibit. The website provides multiple images of each object on display, with links to the item description in the museum’s online database. There is also a short film by the curators discussing exhibition highlights and an accompanying brochure is available to download. The physical exhibition fitted into one room at the Walpole Library, but nevertheless contained a wealth of content that has translated well to the online context. While the online exhibition is no substitute for in-person visits, viewers can perhaps take in more information as they browse the website at their leisure, rather than jostling for space with other visitors. Divided between six thematic sections, ‘Artful Nature’ considers the blurring of boundaries between ‘naturalism’ in women’s dress and behaviour in the age of sensibility, and the art required to create an apparently ‘natural’ aesthetic. The display draws on the interdisciplinary backgrounds of its two curators: Rauser has published on political satire and fashion in eighteenth-century Europe and is the author of The Age of Undress (Yale, 2020); literary historian Engel has written extensively on actresses as fashion icons. Theatricality is an integral part of this exhibition, which argues that the acting profession embodied the transgressive fluidity between artifice and nature, sensibility and sexuality—a fluidity that was also a hallmark of the neoclassical gown. The engraving used to publicise the exhibition is G. M. Woodward’s Art of Fainting in Company (Fig. 1). This image aligns fashionable society with both sensibility and artifice as the young woman collapses in a staged pose which best shows off her elegant dress. The online visitor emerges with a sense of the complexities of representing femininity and fashion in this period. Engel and Rauser argue in the exhibition brochure that they aim to show how ‘women embraced the “anti-fashion” of neoclassical dress as a way to represent their own artistic agency and to deflect traditional criticisms of women as flighty, unserious, or deceptive’. While this claim is expanded upon in their lengthier publications, female agency through dress is a more subtle undertone in the images presented here. The overarching impression from the majority of male-penned images is
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.2007677
L. Taylor
ferent Atlantic locale and a textile medium that is understood broadly through written sources. The first chapter’s exploration of the English writer Virginia Ferrar’s seventeenth-century texts on silkworm production in the colony of Virginia includes exciting archival discoveries and an astute analysis of Ferrar’s published writing, marginalia and drawings. It deftly demonstrates how an English woman used her gendered authoritative understanding of textiles to contribute to colonial knowledge production. The notion of textiles as ‘women’s work’ and the ways in which that facilitated female participation in colonial projects is also explored in later chapters on homespun in colonial New England, the fashions of enslaved and free Creole women in the Caribbean and silk embroidered samplers and globes in the early American Republic. Skeehan shows that, by expanding what counts as a text, we may likewise expand who counts as an author. The intersection of textiles with economic and political systems that sustained, and were sustained by, colonial and racial ideologies is explored throughout the book, including chapters focused on the global cotton trade and Latin American woven textiles. In situating textiles alongside literary texts, Skeehan aims to ‘complicate what we mean by the practice of letters, and ... rethink which authors and what texts constitute the corpus of early American literature’ (p. 3). It is a laudable and methodologically interesting project. Ultimately, however, I think it is one that is mainly intended to contribute to literary history. While the book offers nuanced analysis of a wide range of specific written texts, from business letters to novels, textiles are mostly simply described, usually as a category or type. Discussion of actual examples of textiles are few, and they are afforded little contextualisation or substantive interpretation. Citations to scholarship on specific types of textiles are equally thin. Asserting that textiles are ‘material texts’, though apparently intended to elevate the humble textile, has the effect of subsuming visual and material expression entirely to the logic and hermeneutics of the text. Though Fabric of Empire clearly wants to believe that ‘the textile can speak’ (to invoke Gayatri Spivak), the book never really speaks its language. The overriding claim that textiles, too, are bearers of meaning is unlikely to be revelatory to readers of this journal. As such, despite Skeehan’s aim to challenge dominant narratives and decentre disciplinary norms, the book curiously ends up reinforcing the disciplinary boundaries it seeks to dissolve.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.1948196
Nikolaos Vryzidis
Bracha Yaniv’s monograph on synagogal textiles, originally published in Hebrew in 2009, and translated here by Yohai Goell, is the first English-language publication to investigate this somewhat under-explored aspect of material culture. The book’s importance is self-evident, and it should become essential reading for students and scholars of Judaica and religious textiles in general. The attention synagogal textiles have attracted so far is surprisingly limited, especially considering the role that Jews played in textile-related professions throughout the centuries, and so this book addresses a pressing void in the existing literature. Its contents are divided into three sections, with the first providing a substantial foundation on the subject. The first chapter discusses the evolution of synagogal textiles in correlation with Jewish religious practices. As the written sources are fragmented and earlier objects scarce, the difficulty of creating a diachronic narrative is addressed by exploiting visual sources as well, mainly though not exclusively Western. The second chapter offers an overview of the fabrics and techniques preferred for religious use, in relation to the wider cultural context. This chapter focuses on embroidery, a much-appreciated craft in Europe especially during the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. The author is very informative on the Jewish tradition of embroidery, a lesserknown activity of the community compared to weaving and the textile trade. From an anthropological point of view, it is interesting that the reuse of women’s garments as ceremonial textiles was acceptable. Notably, this is a practice that textile historians have documented in other religions as well (for example, Christianity, Buddhism), and has continued until relatively recently. Thus, this chapter illuminates how the ceremonial use of textiles reflected a diasporic community’s integration into different societies. This approach of pointing out both common and divergent elements emerges in the rest of the book, as well as in the third chapter, which is dedicated to the Torah wrapper and binder. The fourth chapter, dedicated to the Torah mantle, brings forward another thought-provoking argument: that each community’s clothing not only affected the types of fabric used in the synagogue, but also the way the specific ceremonial veil (the mantle) was cut, suggesting a most intriguing association between ceremonial textiles and secular costume. The fifth chapter examines the adornment of the Torah ark curtain and valance, including both generically secular designs and Jewish motifs like the Gateway to Heaven, cherubim, the crown, the Temple and its vessels, and other examples. Overall, Yaniv makes the point that synagogal textiles probably constitute the most authentic expression of Jewish material culture as most craftsmen involved in their manufacture were Jewish. In addition, the symbolism conveyed in certain textiles nurtured the prevalence of signif
{"title":"Bracha Yaniv, Ceremonial Synagogue Textiles: From Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Italian Communities","authors":"Nikolaos Vryzidis","doi":"10.1080/00404969.2021.1948196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00404969.2021.1948196","url":null,"abstract":"Bracha Yaniv’s monograph on synagogal textiles, originally published in Hebrew in 2009, and translated here by Yohai Goell, is the first English-language publication to investigate this somewhat under-explored aspect of material culture. The book’s importance is self-evident, and it should become essential reading for students and scholars of Judaica and religious textiles in general. The attention synagogal textiles have attracted so far is surprisingly limited, especially considering the role that Jews played in textile-related professions throughout the centuries, and so this book addresses a pressing void in the existing literature. Its contents are divided into three sections, with the first providing a substantial foundation on the subject. The first chapter discusses the evolution of synagogal textiles in correlation with Jewish religious practices. As the written sources are fragmented and earlier objects scarce, the difficulty of creating a diachronic narrative is addressed by exploiting visual sources as well, mainly though not exclusively Western. The second chapter offers an overview of the fabrics and techniques preferred for religious use, in relation to the wider cultural context. This chapter focuses on embroidery, a much-appreciated craft in Europe especially during the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. The author is very informative on the Jewish tradition of embroidery, a lesserknown activity of the community compared to weaving and the textile trade. From an anthropological point of view, it is interesting that the reuse of women’s garments as ceremonial textiles was acceptable. Notably, this is a practice that textile historians have documented in other religions as well (for example, Christianity, Buddhism), and has continued until relatively recently. Thus, this chapter illuminates how the ceremonial use of textiles reflected a diasporic community’s integration into different societies. This approach of pointing out both common and divergent elements emerges in the rest of the book, as well as in the third chapter, which is dedicated to the Torah wrapper and binder. The fourth chapter, dedicated to the Torah mantle, brings forward another thought-provoking argument: that each community’s clothing not only affected the types of fabric used in the synagogue, but also the way the specific ceremonial veil (the mantle) was cut, suggesting a most intriguing association between ceremonial textiles and secular costume. The fifth chapter examines the adornment of the Torah ark curtain and valance, including both generically secular designs and Jewish motifs like the Gateway to Heaven, cherubim, the crown, the Temple and its vessels, and other examples. Overall, Yaniv makes the point that synagogal textiles probably constitute the most authentic expression of Jewish material culture as most craftsmen involved in their manufacture were Jewish. In addition, the symbolism conveyed in certain textiles nurtured the prevalence of signif","PeriodicalId":43311,"journal":{"name":"TEXTILE HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46009866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.2007673
S. Sloboda
the jumpers of the secondary modern (as recollected by Roy Hattersley on p. 113), as between school clothes and workers’ overalls. The increase in the percentage of children in full-time education probably contributed to the current ubiquity of school uniforms, but the mechanism needs clarifying. Another issue not fully examined is the simplification of uniform garments in state schools, apparent from the 1960s, to grey, navy or black main garments (usually with red and black trim) distinguished only by the school logo. Indeed, the difference between the purple serge or green tweed garments required by private schools and the grey or black polyester of state schools is not only aesthetic, but also economic. When school trousers and tunics are available at low cost from supermarkets and high street stores, it is harder to cast them as exclusive or exclusionary. Her vagueness over these issues undermines Stephenson’s otherwise able summary of the debates over uniform wearing in contemporary Britain. Ironically, one of the book’s strengths — its close engagement with the archives of historical institutions — ends up limiting its exploration of the fuller educational and cultural landscape. The school experience of the majority of the population also requires further study to establish its distinctive historiography.
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