University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings Textile Society of America 2010 The Fiber of Our Lives: A Conceptual Framework for Looking at Textiles’ Meanings Beverly Gordon University of Wisconsin - Madison,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf Part of the Art and Design Commons Gordon, Beverly, "The Fiber of Our Lives: A Conceptual Framework for Looking at Textiles’ Meanings" (2010). Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 18. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/18 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Textile Society of America at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE FIBER OF OUR LIVES: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR LOOKING AT TEXTILES’ MEANINGS BEVERLY GORDON
[email protected] I have been fascinated for decades with all of the meanings that fiber and cloth can hold—they are a universal part of human life, and fill an almost endless number of roles in our practical, personal, emotional, social, communicative, economic, aesthetic and spiritual lives. I have worked at finding meaningful ways to both explain textiles’ importance, and organize and synthesize the many disparate ideas that are part of this phenomenon. The following is the holistic framework or conceptual model I have developed that can be used to articulate and compare the meanings of textiles of any given culture or historic period. It is designed to be as inclusive as possible—to allow us to think about textiles and the roles they play in human consciousness and through the full range of human activities and concerns.