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My chosen object is a woven shawl that began from a failure. The weft here, composed of baby alpaca wool, was originally the warp of another weaving. My good friend picked up this soft brown wool in Bolivia some years ago. She has since passed.
Pha hol is the name for an ikat-patterned silk cloth woven among ethnically minoritized Khmer communities in today's Thailand, especially in Surin and Buriram provinces. Hol is "the Queen of Surin silk" many say -- the most beautiful, locally meaningful pattern. Calling hol a Queen draws attention to its creation and use primarily by women.
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This time, the trip to the Netherlands reminds me of my life in Palestine.
At our first meeting for the In Situ Graduate School, Textile and Dyes as Transnational, Global Knowledge in Leiden the Netherlands, each participant shared an object, image, textile, etc. that holds meaning for particular reasons. I decided to share a pin that I purchased in Chicago, IL at the Silver Room boutique. The pin features Patrick Kelly (1954-1990), an African American fashion designer who came to fame in France, and was the first American designer to be admitted to the Chambre syndicale du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode.
This screenshot was taken on the webpage of an online shop, called 'Ethnostalgic', on the popular e-commerce platform Etsy. On this platform, shops from all over the world are given the possibility to sell their products to far away customers and communicate with them. The products on sale on the platform are often handmade or locally made, and these qualities are usually remarked in their descriptions in order to increase their value. With this sale model, Etsy has established itself has a successful platform for the trading of local products.
The two textiles shown side by side, are Ajraks-- the blue silk one is from Karachi, Pakistan and the blue-red is a wool-silk scarf produced in Bhuj, India. While deeply visually similar, the textiles are produced in two countries, that though border each other, are divided by political conflict that does not allow trade or travel between the two countries-- even to conduct research. The blue silk scarf is mine and the blue-red scarf belongs to Meera Curam.
In the winter of 2021 while visiting family in Pakistan, I was searching the carpet stores of Islamabad for an affordable rug to take back to Toronto. Islamabad, with the highest number of foreign diplomats in Pakistan, is full of art and craft stores in central locations which cater mainly to non-Pakistanis. As compared to stores which target locals, these craft stores have a well-curated collection of ‘authentic-looking’ craft that appeal more to Western palates.
While browsing through the items at the shop at the textile research center, a pile of indigo-dyed silk pocket squares caught my eye. The print was familiar, resembling what I have seen often in textile shops and worn by the women in South Africa, a fabric best known as Shweshwe.
This is my ‘misar’, a beautifully red and black tie-dyed silk scarf that was handed down from my nani, my maternal grandmother to my mum and is now kept close to me in my home. This ‘misar’ represents the bundles of fabrics that travelled with Indian migrants as they moved across the world, specifically in my case, on the ships that brought the first passenger Indians from Gujerat to the shores of Natal, South Africa.
The art form of Mata Ni Pachedi is something that I had not come across before; it was awe-inspiring not only for its complex design, meticulous patterns and precision of practice, but the story of the community of makers and users.
Having visited an antique convention in the Hague a few months ago, I found this postcard being sold that was labeled as being from Leiden. Supposedly a postcard of the city painted in 1934 by artist Bernard van Vlijmen (1895-1972) as indicated on the bottom left corner initials of B.V.Vlijmen, the watercolor art is drawn from the perspective of someone overlooking the cityscape, half of the painting being the city streets and its buildings with people walking by, and the other half being a canal, with everything being interconnected by bridges and walkways.
The Indigo Dyeing Tradition in Daboya: Notes from the Field
Daboya is a semi-urban community in the Savanna Region of Ghana. It is well noted for its organic indigo textile dyeing and weaving tradition which dates back to over three centuries. Before the introduction of synthetic dyes, Indigo was the foundation of most textile traditions in West Africa. In Ghana, most of the traditional smock dresses and related fabrics that are worn are produced in Daboya. Below, I present an account of the indigo dyeing process as observed in Daboya in May 2022.
Femmes for Freedom (FFF) is a feminist organization founded by Shirin Musa in the Hague, Netherlands, in 2011. It aims to defend girls’ and women’s rights and advocate against gender-based violence, particularly, marital captivity (Femmes For Freedom, 2022). FFF noticed that several women victims that reached out to them for help had met their husbands through matrimonial sites, which is a variation of standard dating websites. However, the main focus is on those wanting marriage, instead of simply dating (Soneji, 2022).
The photograph seen here is of the Insular Ice and Cold Storage Plant during its final stages of completion located in Ermita, Manila, Philippines. Inspired by one of Mesha Murali and Surajit Sarkar's accession cards for the Centre for Community Knowledge (CCK)'s Delhi Memory Archive (see related links for the original accession card), I felt inspired to look towards some old photgraphs of Manila from the American colonial period to find some of, what they refered to as "the relational and intangible aspects of the everyday urban experience". This is one such photograph.
In this photograph from the Missouri Historical Society archive, titled by author Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) as “As God made them… Pierre Chouteau”, it depicts 4 Bontoc Igorot (an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous Filipinos from the Cordillera region of the Philippines) boys as they dance what is most likely the Ballangbang, a cultural dance performed during mass celebrations and social gatherings.
Attached here is an archival photograph from the Missouri Historical Society of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, specifically of indigenous Filipinos from the Cordillera region of northern Luzon known as the Igorots. Titled by American photographer Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) as “Mrs. Wilkins teaching an Igorrote boy the cakewalk at the 1904 World’s Fair,” the photographs presents two people in the image, the eponymous young Igorot boy dancing with Vienna opera singer Mrs. George S. Wilkins, as she teaches him the cakewalk, a popular dance of the time period.
Clad in polka dots,
Eyes glitter despite wet toes,
Exchanging this love.
After days of rain, the sunlight
shimmers – dappled shadows dance.
Living tradition,
Colors bleed transformation,
An elsewhere awaits.
What do our bodies know that
text cannot articulate?
Shuttling asleep,
Lines collapse past and future.
Who holds the power?
Resisting capture, its wings
flutter, fighting off the pin.
Pictured in the first photograph is pictured the champorado, a Filipino dessert dish made of sticky rice and tablea (tablets of ground roasted cocoa beans) and topped with milk and sugar. The champorado is often served for breakfast or merienda (afternoon tea), and is served alongside dried fish as a salty balance to the dessert’s sweetness.
The first photograph is one that depicts a Jacquard loom print card, a piece of cardboard that has been punctured with holes in order to consistently replicate a complex design on a weaving loom. This particular print card would have been used to create handmade Dutch damask linen in the 19th century, as part of the W.J. van Hoogerwou & Zonen mill whose pieces are currently located at the Textielmuseum in Tilburg, Netherlands. One such product of damask linen would be a tablecloth, which was also on display nearby.
