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 : 2021-06-23DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2021.1913470
S. Bendall
By 1700 tailors no longer dominated England’s garment marketplace, as stay-makers, mantua-makers and seamstresses now produced key items of female dress. The demise of the tailoring monopoly was a complex process involving many factors. This article examines an aspect of this transition that has been previously overlooked in histories of garment production: farthingale-makers and body-makers. These trades emerged at the start of the seventeenth century to make foundation garments that shaped the fashionable silhouettes of England’s women. This article presents a case study of the number, location, reputation and eventual demise of farthingale-makers and body-makers in the Drapers’ and Clothworkers’ Companies of London from 1600 to 1700. The story of these trades shows a growing diversification within garment-making during the seventeenth century, where both demand and opportunity allowed entrepreneurial tradesmen to break away from traditional systems of production, ultimately paving the way for the diverse textile marketplace of the eighteenth century.
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Pub Date : 2020-12-07DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2020.1767438
F. Rhodes, P. Rhodes
This article concerns surviving examples of late medieval embroidered conventional flowers. The flowers are classified in terms of their structure. Photographs of typical examples are included. The count of surviving examples shows that four of the surviving types occur more frequently than the others. Of these four, two have clear Christian iconography, while the other two derive from classical devices. The distribution of variations within the types raises questions about how the variation in the designs arose, and how the embroidered flowers were traded.
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Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2020.1841432
Vanessa Jones
tradition and resists Western notions of fast fashion, while simultaneously being entirely modern (Fig. 4). ‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’ made clear how much depth and richness there is to be found in the study of kimono. While it is often understood as a traditional garment, frozen in time, the exhibition presented kimono as simultaneously traditional and entirely relevant to contemporary Japanese society. While the basic construction of kimono has remained unchanged over centuries, the exhibition demonstrated that styles, trends, the way they have been worn and what they signify have changed enormously. A kimono’s decorative motifs might reference poetry or literature or might feature visual puns or word play. These were, and continue to be, a demonstration of the taste and discernment of the wearer, a way of alluding to cultural reference points beyond mere decorative surface, while at the same time allowing for the enjoyment of that surface in its own right. In a similar way, visitors to this exhibition were able to enjoy the sheer visual beauty of the many wonderful objects but could also, if they chose, use them as a starting point for further exploration into Japanese culture, both past and present.
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Pub Date : 2020-11-28DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2020.1835240
E. Bastin
Mrs Emily Margaret Tinne was a hoarder, collector and keeper of clothes. At her death in 1966, some sixty-two tea chests containing decades of clothes and accessories were donated to Liverpool Museums, with further items added by her daughter in the early 2000s. The resulting 750 items comprise the largest collection in the United Kingdom of clothing belonging to one individual, and ‘An English Lady’s Wardrobe’ was the largest exhibition of these items to date. The exhibition mainly reflected the clothing worn by Mrs Tinne in the years 1910 to 1939, but it also included some items belonging to her children and their servants. Set in the glorious high-ceilinged rooms of the Walker Art Gallery, the exhibition was airy, bright and spacious. Period films were projected onto the walls, which not only gave a glimpse into contemporary leisure activities, but also provided a demonstration of how clothing was worn and moved on real bodies. Panels of text and photographs introduced the Tinne family at the start of the exhibition, along with a video of Mrs Tinne’s granddaughter talking about her recollections of her grandmother. This was a reminder that these clothes are from the recent past, and that her descendants still have an interest in the collection. It was immediately apparent from this first room that this exhibition was as much an exploration of social history as it was about textiles. This aspect was immeasurably enhanced by some 1,300 letters from members of the Tinne family dating from 1923 to 1951, on loan to the Gallery. Excerpts from the letters decorated the walls, and added a personal slant to the items on display. For example, in 1937 Philip Tinne wrote to his son, ‘[Emily] has got a fierce new hat with purple and crimson rosettes in front. I can’t stand it ...’. Mrs Tinne frequently bought items and never wore them. Indeed, many of the items still have the shop tags, allowing a fascinating insight into where she shopped and how much items cost. Panels of illustrations, photographs and text depict the individual stores where Mrs Tinne shopped, ranging from the exclusive to department stores in the city (Fig.1). By examining the retail environment Mrs Tinne would have known, the exhibition had a very real sense of the local and, in many cases where buildings are still extant, the recognisable. The clothing has been extremely carefully conserved and the seventy-three outfits were displayed on mannequins custom-built for each item. As the collection ranges across nearly forty years, even the casual observer could see the way in which Mrs Tinne’s body changed with age and over the course of seven pregnancies. The garments shifted from the slim proportions of her youth, to the more robust sizes of her older age. As the exhibition was arranged by type of clothing, rather than chronologically, the various sizes in close proximity to each other were a pertinent reminder that not all clothing was created for fashion models and the very slim. Arra
Emily Margaret Tinne夫人是一位囤积者、收藏者和服装管理员。1966年她去世时,大约62个装着几十年衣服和配饰的茶盒被捐赠给了利物浦博物馆,她的女儿在21世纪初又增加了一些物品。由此产生的750件物品构成了英国最大的个人服装收藏,“英国女士衣橱”是迄今为止最大的此类物品展览。展览主要反映了蒂恩夫人在1910年至1939年期间所穿的衣服,但也包括一些属于她的孩子和他们的仆人的物品。展览坐落在沃克美术馆(Walker Art Gallery)辉煌的高天花板房间里,通风、明亮、宽敞。时代的电影被投影到墙上,这不仅让我们得以一窥当代的休闲活动,还展示了衣服是如何在真实身体上穿着和移动的。展览开始时,一组文字和照片介绍了Tinne一家,还有一段Tinne夫人的孙女谈论她对祖母回忆的视频。这提醒我们,这些衣服是最近的,她的后代仍然对这些藏品感兴趣。从第一个房间里可以立即看出,这次展览既是对社会历史的探索,也是对纺织品的探索。1923年至1951年,Tinne家族成员借给画廊的约1300封信件极大地加强了这一方面。这些信件的摘录装饰了墙壁,并为展出的物品增添了个人风格。例如,1937年,菲利普·廷恩(Philip Tinne)在给儿子的信中写道:“(艾米莉)有一顶凶猛的新帽子,前面有紫色和深红色的玫瑰花结。我受不了…”。Tinne夫人经常买东西,从不穿。事实上,许多商品仍然有商店标签,这让我们可以深入了解她在哪里购物以及商品的价格。由插图、照片和文字组成的展板描绘了Tinne女士购物的各个商店,从市内的专卖店到百货公司(图1)。通过考察Tinne女士可能知道的零售环境,展览对当地有着非常真实的感觉,在许多建筑仍然存在的情况下,对可识别的东西也有着非常现实的感觉。这些服装被精心保存,73套服装被展示在为每件物品定制的人体模型上。由于这些藏品跨越了近四十年,即使是不经意的观察者也能看到Tinne夫人的身体在七次怀孕期间随年龄变化的方式。这些衣服从她年轻时的苗条比例变成了她老年时更结实的尺码。由于展览是按服装类型安排的,而不是按时间顺序安排的,各种尺寸的服装非常接近,这提醒我们并非所有的服装都是为时尚模特和非常苗条的人设计的。按类型排列服装,如日礼服、外套和晚礼服,也有明显的优势,可以展示两者的时尚
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Pub Date : 2020-11-28DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2020.1835242
Z. Hendon
explored within the artificiality of the exhibition space. In the exhibition space, the theatricality of fashion came to the fore, particularly in the exaggerated features of Georgian court dress on display. The lavish examples of a white silk sack-back dress and a gentleman’s court suit, both c. 1775, were paired and set in front of a mock Palladian entrance that encased angled mirrors, emphasising the performativity of high society. The caricatures of James Gillray were another key feature of the exhibition, with a large selection of prints assembled from the Donald Coverdale Collection. These provided our main insight into the world of Georgian celebrity and the dual role of women such as Lady Sarah Archer and the Duchess of Rutland as both trendsetters and targets of satire. Gillray’s 1810 set of three images, Progress of the Toilet (The Stays, The Wig and Dress Completed), which satirises the lengthy and unnatural stages of women getting ready for the evening, were the first items on display in the house and set the tone for the rest of the exhibition: fashion, in all its layers and excess, was on show to be marvelled at and ridiculed in equal measure. By stressing the artificiality of fashion, however, the exhibition allowed the social satires of Gillray and of contemporary commentators in newspapers and periodicals to provide the main framing of our interpretation. As such, it did little to counter well-worn narratives that treat eighteenth-century consumers, particularly women, as a part of a hopelessly ‘fashion-addicted society’. We gained only rare glimpses of the very real emotional connections such material culture can reflect and forge. A stay busk from the 1790s, for example, was intriguingly inscribed with the unattributed initials ‘E.P.’ and a heart-shaped plaque, suggestive of its potential role as a love token. A pair of brown brocade latchet shoes, meanwhile, with golden guineas attached to the soles to bring luck and prosperity as she walked into marriage, were worn by a Miss Thorpe in the 1740s for her wedding day. These tantalising moments of personal connection helped to breathe life into the exhibition, in which the fantasy of fashion was often abstracted from the reality of the people who consumed it. As a showcase of the dramatic developments in style across the Georgian era, the exhibition was an undeniable success. It brought together a sumptuous range of clothing that provided a feast for fashionlovers and lived up to its tag line of ‘extravagant, excessive, often extreme but always exciting’.
在展览空间的人为性中进行探索。在展览空间中,时尚的戏剧性脱颖而出,特别是在展出的格鲁吉亚宫廷服装的夸张特征中。一件奢华的白色丝绸麻袋连衣裙和一件绅士宫廷套装,都是1775年的作品,它们被搭配在一起,放在一个模拟帕拉第亚风格的入口前,入口内装有角度镜子,强调了上流社会的表演。詹姆斯·吉尔雷(James Gillray)的漫画是展览的另一个重要特色,其中有大量来自唐纳德·科弗代尔(Donald Coverdale)收藏的印刷品。这些作品提供了我们对格鲁吉亚名人世界的主要见解,以及女性的双重角色,如莎拉·阿切尔夫人和拉特兰公爵夫人,既是潮流引领者,也是讽刺对象。吉尔雷于1810年创作的三幅作品《厕所的进展》(the Progress of the Toilet,《停留》、《假发》和《完成的礼服》)讽刺了女性为晚上做准备的漫长而不自然的阶段,这是展览中展出的第一批物品,也为展览的其余部分奠定了基调:时尚,在其所有的层次和过剩中,被展示出来,既让人惊叹,也让人嘲笑。然而,通过强调时尚的人为性,展览允许吉尔雷和当代报刊评论员的社会讽刺为我们的解释提供主要框架。因此,它并没有对那些将18世纪的消费者,尤其是女性,视为无可救药的“时尚上瘾社会”的一部分的陈腐叙述做出什么改变。对于这种物质文化所能反映和形成的非常真实的情感联系,我们只获得了难得的一瞥。例如,18世纪90年代的一幅街头画上,有趣的是,上面刻着一个未注明出处的首字母“E.P.”还有一个心形的牌匾,暗示着它可能是爱情信物。与此同时,在18世纪40年代,索普小姐在结婚那天穿了一双棕色的锦缎锁扣鞋,鞋底上贴着金色的几内亚币,为她的婚姻带来好运和繁荣。这些诱人的个人联系时刻有助于为展览注入活力,在展览中,时尚的幻想往往从消费它的人的现实中抽象出来。作为格鲁吉亚时代风格戏剧性发展的展示,这次展览取得了不可否认的成功。它汇集了一系列奢华的服装,为时尚爱好者提供了一场盛宴,并实现了其“奢华,过度,经常极端但总是令人兴奋”的口号。
{"title":"‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK, 29 February–18 March and 27 August–25 October 2020","authors":"Z. Hendon","doi":"10.1080/00404969.2020.1835242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00404969.2020.1835242","url":null,"abstract":"explored within the artificiality of the exhibition space. In the exhibition space, the theatricality of fashion came to the fore, particularly in the exaggerated features of Georgian court dress on display. The lavish examples of a white silk sack-back dress and a gentleman’s court suit, both c. 1775, were paired and set in front of a mock Palladian entrance that encased angled mirrors, emphasising the performativity of high society. The caricatures of James Gillray were another key feature of the exhibition, with a large selection of prints assembled from the Donald Coverdale Collection. These provided our main insight into the world of Georgian celebrity and the dual role of women such as Lady Sarah Archer and the Duchess of Rutland as both trendsetters and targets of satire. Gillray’s 1810 set of three images, Progress of the Toilet (The Stays, The Wig and Dress Completed), which satirises the lengthy and unnatural stages of women getting ready for the evening, were the first items on display in the house and set the tone for the rest of the exhibition: fashion, in all its layers and excess, was on show to be marvelled at and ridiculed in equal measure. By stressing the artificiality of fashion, however, the exhibition allowed the social satires of Gillray and of contemporary commentators in newspapers and periodicals to provide the main framing of our interpretation. As such, it did little to counter well-worn narratives that treat eighteenth-century consumers, particularly women, as a part of a hopelessly ‘fashion-addicted society’. We gained only rare glimpses of the very real emotional connections such material culture can reflect and forge. A stay busk from the 1790s, for example, was intriguingly inscribed with the unattributed initials ‘E.P.’ and a heart-shaped plaque, suggestive of its potential role as a love token. A pair of brown brocade latchet shoes, meanwhile, with golden guineas attached to the soles to bring luck and prosperity as she walked into marriage, were worn by a Miss Thorpe in the 1740s for her wedding day. These tantalising moments of personal connection helped to breathe life into the exhibition, in which the fantasy of fashion was often abstracted from the reality of the people who consumed it. As a showcase of the dramatic developments in style across the Georgian era, the exhibition was an undeniable success. It brought together a sumptuous range of clothing that provided a feast for fashionlovers and lived up to its tag line of ‘extravagant, excessive, often extreme but always exciting’.","PeriodicalId":43311,"journal":{"name":"TEXTILE HISTORY","volume":"51 1","pages":"242 - 247"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00404969.2020.1835242","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43142209","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 : 2020-11-28DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2020.1835247
C. Ness
This small but engaging exhibition presented dressing for occasions in and around Birmingham from 1850 to the present day. It was one of a series of displays created recently by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery with the intention of inviting the public to help shape the displays of the future after planned renovations. A typical Victorian-era museum, it has at its core the social history of the city, its people and industries, but has become tired and outdated. It is hoped that visitor experience and feedback will prove valuable in helping shape the design and content of future new gallery spaces and exhibitions. As dress and textiles had not previously been privileged here as the basis of an exhibition, this clothing-based exploration of local history and culture was trialled with a view to expanding the idea in the future. The size and fairly simple design of the displays reflected the experimental nature of the enterprise. Most of the objects of dress and accessories had never been out of storage. In common with many social history museums, the dress collection had previously been used simply as support for their exhibitions. Problematically, and often typically for regional museums, dress and textiles at Birmingham were collected as decorative art rather than for their own social history. Sadly, this means that there is most often little or no information to accompany the garments, making it difficult to achieve local context when planning exhibitions. Nevertheless, curator Rebecca Unsworth achieved a fair amount with the limited contextual evidence to hand, supplementing often meagre information with local research to present relevant, contextual storytelling. Using as a basis for the displays garments with some local provenance, the colourful exhibition explored the different ways local residents, officials and business people presented themselves for formal functions, parties and nights out on the town from 1850 to the present day. Twelve carefully chosen outfits covered some of the ways shopping choices and habits have changed over the years, along with social and cultural changes in Birmingham. A demure 1860s silk evening dress made a small display with a glamorous 1930s beaded evening dress worn to a banquet by a lady mayoress (Fig. 1). A larger display opposite aimed to illustrate a broader retrospective of the types and styles of occasion wear from the collection, representing different areas of the local community over the decades. A spectacular gold embroidered 1930s court dress uniform, worn by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was presented in conjunction with a 1940s Norman Hartnell cocktail dress worn by Hartnell’s sister, who co-founded a dance school in Birmingham (Fig. 2). A 1959 party dress was sadly the only representation of children’s clothing. However, as it was made from nylon it represented the new synthetic fabrics bursting onto the market of the period that made dressing-up more affordable. A bright gold brocade e
{"title":"‘Dressed to the Nines’, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 7 December 2019–4 September 2020","authors":"C. Ness","doi":"10.1080/00404969.2020.1835247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00404969.2020.1835247","url":null,"abstract":"This small but engaging exhibition presented dressing for occasions in and around Birmingham from 1850 to the present day. It was one of a series of displays created recently by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery with the intention of inviting the public to help shape the displays of the future after planned renovations. A typical Victorian-era museum, it has at its core the social history of the city, its people and industries, but has become tired and outdated. It is hoped that visitor experience and feedback will prove valuable in helping shape the design and content of future new gallery spaces and exhibitions. As dress and textiles had not previously been privileged here as the basis of an exhibition, this clothing-based exploration of local history and culture was trialled with a view to expanding the idea in the future. The size and fairly simple design of the displays reflected the experimental nature of the enterprise. Most of the objects of dress and accessories had never been out of storage. In common with many social history museums, the dress collection had previously been used simply as support for their exhibitions. Problematically, and often typically for regional museums, dress and textiles at Birmingham were collected as decorative art rather than for their own social history. Sadly, this means that there is most often little or no information to accompany the garments, making it difficult to achieve local context when planning exhibitions. Nevertheless, curator Rebecca Unsworth achieved a fair amount with the limited contextual evidence to hand, supplementing often meagre information with local research to present relevant, contextual storytelling. Using as a basis for the displays garments with some local provenance, the colourful exhibition explored the different ways local residents, officials and business people presented themselves for formal functions, parties and nights out on the town from 1850 to the present day. Twelve carefully chosen outfits covered some of the ways shopping choices and habits have changed over the years, along with social and cultural changes in Birmingham. A demure 1860s silk evening dress made a small display with a glamorous 1930s beaded evening dress worn to a banquet by a lady mayoress (Fig. 1). A larger display opposite aimed to illustrate a broader retrospective of the types and styles of occasion wear from the collection, representing different areas of the local community over the decades. A spectacular gold embroidered 1930s court dress uniform, worn by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was presented in conjunction with a 1940s Norman Hartnell cocktail dress worn by Hartnell’s sister, who co-founded a dance school in Birmingham (Fig. 2). A 1959 party dress was sadly the only representation of children’s clothing. However, as it was made from nylon it represented the new synthetic fabrics bursting onto the market of the period that made dressing-up more affordable. A bright gold brocade e","PeriodicalId":43311,"journal":{"name":"TEXTILE HISTORY","volume":"51 1","pages":"254 - 257"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00404969.2020.1835247","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45232667","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}