The Bay Area forum for artists, Textile Arts Council aficionados & collectors of weaving, rugs & tapestries, baskets, costume & wearable art April 2008 Upcoming Programs and Announcements All programs are held in the Koret Auditorium at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Volume XXIII, Number 2 Tea Drive, San Francisco. Admission to the programs is FREE to TAC members, $10 for non-members and $5 for FAMSF members and students with I.D. No additional Museum admission fee is necessary. You may enter the auditorium from the garage level or the main floor entrance between the main and side doors to the Museum. Saturday, April 12, 2008, 10 a.m. In this lecture, Naeda Robinson will focus MacEDONIAN VIllaGE DREss: on the declining use of village garments and GOING, GOING, GONE their associated traditions and the effects of these changes on the lives of women With Naeda Robinson in remote mountain villages around Bitola. This presentation is based on field research Her presentation will include slides of the undertaken by Naeda Robinson that began in impressive wedding ensembles and what 1991 when she traveled to the former remained of dowry items in villages in 1995 Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to and from the 2000-2006 Macedonian Dress train teachers of English under a U.S. Project as well as actual garments she Information Service program. For years, collected while doing her research. Please Naeda had heard rumors of the wonderful join us for what promises to be a lively and traditional dress of Macedonia with its rewarding look at Macedonian traditional exquisite weaving and embroidery. So clothing. wherever her teacher training assignments Saturday, May 10, 2008, 10 a.m. took her she asked about narodni nosli, national dress. But her questions CROssING STITchES AND about where she might find examples CROssING BORDERS: IU MIEN of Macedonian costumes were always EmbROIDERY IN A GlObal answered in vague terms. “Only people in COmmUNITY the mountain villages still have them,” she With Sandra Cate was told. The Iu Mien (Yao), an ethnic group of Undeterred, Naeda developed an Southeast Asia, are renowned for their Macedonian woman Earthwatch project in 1995 that put her in intricate embroidery. In Laos and Thailand displays a kosula made as part of her dowry. contact with the Ethnographic Museum in Bitola, they use colorful and densely patterned an ancient city in the southwestern part of the embroidery to decorate clothing, especially country, which became the home base for women’s costumes. In this presentation, her subsequent research. The original project Dr. Sandra Cate will consider the ongoing was to document and catalog garments in the relevance of Iu Mien traditional clothing, Bitola Museum. As she uncovered more and which reflects the many changes these more information about the village people, people—in both California and Southeast their traditions, their garments, and the role of Asia—have encountered. As refugees and women, however, the project expanded. And Fine Arts migrants adjusting to new environments, as the project grew, the documentation also Museums of many of the women have put away the San Francisco became more comprehensive, finally resulting clothing that marked them as Mien. In Laos in a book, Macedonian Village Dress: Going, and Thailand they now wear the tube skirt, de Young Going, Gone (Skopje, Macedonia: Gutenberg or phaasiin, of the lowland ethnic groups. In Legion Press, forthcoming). Programs continue on page 3, col. 1 of Honor 1 From the Chair April 1, 2008 Spring greetings to you all! The cherry trees are heritage and supporting them accordingly. *A document fabric is blooming in Golden Gate Park as I write this; it’s Hopefully, more will follow. a true reproduction one of my favorite annual events. of a textile that has Certainly ancient cultures also inspire and been documented by a How did your love of textiles start? Mine started inform current culture. I am a fan of “Project museum as originating early, as I suspect yours did. My grandmother, Runway” and I love that TV has become an at a particular date Lenore, was a fearless sewer, making herself ally in the renewed interest in sewing, knitting, (or date range). Often Chanel-style suits and jewelry to adorn them. and designing with fabric. The interior design the makers have the She once swathed her bedroom with ruffled business is also very active in this arena. original looms and the peach-colored moiré in every possible place Everywhere I look, I see the old and the original print screens fabric could be put. She traveled extensively and new mixing, and I love it. In my work, I sew in their archives and always brought back exotic wonders as gifts for both modern and antique fabrics. I see new they use these to the family: embroidered slippers from Turkey, silk fabrics using ancient designs from African and make the modern scarves from Italy, and more. Mayan cultures set in modern architecture, “document” textile in with handmade light fixtures and often with I designed and made my own doll clothes by the same way it was antique textiles framed as the artwork they hand and on a toy chain-stitch machine when made 100 or more are. Trevira and microfibers are very hot in I was in grammar school. I started sewing my years ago. Several the design business, and are being made own clothes on my first real sewing machine old companies—F. to mimic natural fibers in all their variety but when I was in junior high. In high school, I Schumacher, Stroheim without the vulnerability to sun damage, which started painting plain fabric with Rit dyes for my and Romann, is something very useful for upholstery and creations, and I wore fresh flowers as earrings. Brunschwig & Fils, sheer or outdoor curtains. I also get to work on When I was in college I did a lot of Macedonian Scalamandré to natural fiber document fabrics*, items with 200 dancing, loving the music and especially loving name a few—have or more years of history. I have sewn fabrics the embroidery on the examples of traditional been manufacturing made with spun steel, fiber optics, metallic clothing we saw in books. I also traveled to fabrics for more than threads, and triple weaves with crazy fibers Guatemala and fell in love with the traditional 100 years and have from everywhere in the world. Modern fabric weaving and embroidery there. My love of textiles samples, dye formulas, companies are looking to textile museums was woven into my heart at an early age and has jaquard patterns, etc. to inspire new lines. Donghia, for example, always seemed to be part of me. for all the fabrics they a fabric company that makes textiles for made over the years. The lecture on Macedonian village dress, coming interiors, drew inspiration for a whole line from Someone wanting to up on April 12, is a special treat and, as you samplers in the Rhode Island School of Design produce an authentic can see from my early textile experiences, is a Museum of Art. subject especially dear to my heart. This lecture, period interior, say How did your love of textiles begin? Think as well as the ones on the embroidery of the lu for a movie or just about how to share and nurture that love in the Mien and the story of kimono, all feature beautiful because they like next generation. ancient textile arts. Many of the techniques were the era, could order developed for sacred and celebratory purposes, Cheers, document fabrics of course. Often in ancient, nonliterate societies accurate for the time. Laurel Sprigg they were a way to record social status, tribal TAC Chair history, and family lineage. It is our modern challenge to find ways for these ancient traditions to be incorporated in the global economy so that the few makers left can earn a living in a way that nurtures the meaning and cultural value of their textile work. Some governments are actually establishing these arts as part of their national TAC Newsletter 2 Programs continued from page 1 considered haregi, or Sunday wear, for use only on special occasions. In her California they wear Western clothing. talk, Betsy Sterling Benjamin will look at Thus the centrality of embroidery as a not only the history but also the fashion marker of ethnicity and gender, that is, of kimono and the craft that produces as something that Iu Mien women do this wearable art. She will show images and wear, seems to have faded. Yet of some of the most beautiful kimono the global trade in such needlework; in existence, created as the highest infrequent but spectacular displays of artistic expression of the revered Ningen Iu Mien dress, such as at the King Pan’s Kokuho, or Living National Treasures. Birthday Festival in Oakland in the fall; the circulation of videos; and continuing conversations about their needlework among Mien women themselves, suggests its shifting, but still relevant, function in Mien culture. Following Mien women through local celebrations and a journey back to Laos, we will consider lu Mien woman embroidering in Ban Phon Khan, key changes in stitches and color palette Laos, 2006. and the shift from embroidering clothing left 30 years before. Dr. Cate’s research to decorating such objects as small interests generally focus on the material purses and aprons. We will also look and expressive culture of Southeast at how Mien embroidery exchanges Asia in such diverse manifestations negotiate relations between those living as Buddhist temple murals, festival in the United States and family members scrolls, the markets in silk and minority still in Southeast Asia, the status of Mien needlework, contemporary art, and in their nation of residence, and their traffic jams in Bangkok.