Crafting Textiles in the Digital Age

by Nithikul Nimkulrat

Author	: Nithikul Nimkulrat
Publisher	: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages	: 364
Release	: 2016-09-08
Genre	: Design
ISBN	: 1474286208

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In an era of increasingly available digital resources, many textile designers and makers find themselves at an interesting juncture between traditional craft processes and newer digital technologies. Highly specialized craft/design practitioners may now elect to make use of digital processes in their work, but often choose not to abandon craft skills fundamental to their practice, and aim to balance the complex connection between craft and digital processes. The essays collected here consider this transition from the viewpoint of aesthetic opportunity arising in the textile designer's hands-on experimentation with material and digital technologies available in the present. Craft provides the foundations for thinking within the design and production of textiles, and as such may provide some clues in the transition to creative and thoughtful use of current and future digital technologies. Within the framework of current challenges relating to sustainable development, globalization, and economic constraints it is important to interrogate and question how we might go about using established and emerging technologies in textiles in a positive manner.

Crafting Textiles

by Frances Pritchard

Author	: Frances Pritchard
Publisher	: Oxbow Books
Total Pages	: 353
Release	: 2021-10-13
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 1789257603

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New research into the techniques of tablet weaving, sprang, braiding, knotting and lace is presented in this lavishly illustrated volume written by leading specialists from Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and USA. Drawing inspiration from the pioneering work of Peter Collingwood, this publication explores aspects of these craft skills in the prehistoric, Roman, and medieval world through scientific, object-based analysis and 'research through making'. Chapters include the growth of patterned tablet weaving for trimming garments in prehistoric Central Europe; recently identified styles of headdress worn in the Roman Rhineland and pre-Islamic Egypt; Viking-age Dublin as a production center for tablet-woven bands; a new interpretation of the weaving technique used to make luxurious gold bands in the twelfth to late thirteenth centuries; and the development out of plaiting of bobbin lace borders in gold and silver threads from the fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. Practical experiments test methods of hand spinning and the production of figure-hugging hose in ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. A typology of braid and knotting structures in late medieval Europe is also set out for the first time. Diagrams, illustrations, and photographs enrich each chapter with a wealth of visual source material. The work is the outcome of recent discoveries of archaeological textile finds from excavations as well as fresh examination of material recovered in the past, or preserved in treasuries. Early textiles form an increasingly popular subject of interest and this publication, which is a landmark in the study of various specialized textile techniques, aims to provide the reader with a better understanding of these virtuoso craft skills in antiquity.

Crafting Textiles

by Frances Pritchard

Author	: Frances Pritchard
Publisher	: Oxbow Books
Total Pages	: 240
Release	: 2022-01-15
Genre	: Social Science
ISBN	: 178925762X

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New research into the techniques of tablet weaving, sprang, braiding, knotting and lace is presented in this lavishly illustrated volume written by leading specialists from Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and USA. Drawing inspiration from the pioneering work of Peter Collingwood, this publication explores aspects of these craft skills in the prehistoric, Roman, and medieval world through scientific, object-based analysis and 'research through making'. Chapters include the growth of patterned tablet weaving for trimming garments in prehistoric Central Europe; recently identified styles of headdress worn in the Roman Rhineland and pre-Islamic Egypt; Viking-age Dublin as a production center for tablet-woven bands; a new interpretation of the weaving technique used to make luxurious gold bands in the twelfth to late thirteenth centuries; and the development out of plaiting of bobbin lace borders in gold and silver threads from the fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. Practical experiments test methods of hand spinning and the production of figure-hugging hose in ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. A typology of braid and knotting structures in late medieval Europe is also set out for the first time. Diagrams, illustrations, and photographs enrich each chapter with a wealth of visual source material. The work is the outcome of recent discoveries of archaeological textile finds from excavations as well as fresh examination of material recovered in the past, or preserved in treasuries. Early textiles form an increasingly popular subject of interest and this publication, which is a landmark in the study of various specialized textile techniques, aims to provide the reader with a better understanding of these virtuoso craft skills in antiquity.

Crafting an Indigenous Nation

by Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote

Author	: Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote
Publisher	: UNC Press Books
Total Pages	: 163
Release	: 2019-01-10
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 1469643677

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In this in-depth interdisciplinary study, Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote reveals how Kiowa people drew on the tribe's rich history of expressive culture to assert its identity at a time of profound challenge. Examining traditional forms such as beadwork, metalwork, painting, and dance, Tone-Pah-Hote argues that their creation and exchange were as significant to the expression of Indigenous identity and sovereignty as formal political engagement and policymaking. These cultural forms, she argues, were sites of contestation as well as affirmation, as Kiowa people used them to confront external pressures, express national identity, and wrestle with changing gender roles and representations. Combatting a tendency to view Indigenous cultural production primarily in terms of resistance to settler-colonialism, Tone-Pah-Hote expands existing work on Kiowa culture by focusing on acts of creation and material objects that mattered as much for the nation's internal and familial relationships as for relations with those outside the tribe. In the end, she finds that during a time of political struggle and cultural dislocation at the turn of the twentieth century, the community's performative and expressive acts had much to do with the persistence, survival, and adaptation of the Kiowa nation.

Crafting a Future

by Archana Shah

Author	: Archana Shah
Publisher	:
Total Pages	: 0
Release	: 2021
Genre	: Sustainability
ISBN	: 9789391125226

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- A book that maps down the journey of the tradition of textile and crafting - Locates the culture of craft in the pages of history - A guideline to the generations to explore the field Crafting a Future is a heartfelt celebration of artisans and their vocational skills. Each region in India has its own distinctive raw materials, craft techniques, textiles, motifs and color palettes, and through her well-researched narrative enriched with numerous stories, Archana Shah demonstrates the diversity and true value of handcrafted textile processes. She believes that handspun, handwoven fabrics made using indigenous fibers and natural materials for dyeing will help create a unique identity for handcrafted textiles, and suggests ways to repurpose the abundant artisanal talent available across the country to rejuvenate this sector. These tenets are woven throughout the book, which is broadly divided into three sections based on natural fibres: cotton from plants, silk from insects and wool from animals. This resonates with Gandhiji's concept of developing khadi and village industries to rejuvenate the rural economy, and stimulate development through a bottom-up approach. Beyond its beauty and heritage value, artisanal production is eco-friendly, has a negligible carbon footprint and fulfils most of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It has the potential for creating dignified employment opportunities for millions of people in their own regional location, so that they are not compelled by economic constraints to abandon their ancestral professions and migrate to urban slums to earn a meagre livelihood as unskilled laborers. In essence, the book focuses on artisans, their aspirations and fulfilment in their work. It also draws upon their traditional wisdom to address two of the most serious challenges that we face today: growing unemployment and climate change.

Fray

by Julia Bryan-Wilson

Author	: Julia Bryan-Wilson
Publisher	: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages	: 335
Release	: 2021-02
Genre	: Art
ISBN	: 0226077829

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In 1974, women in a feminist consciousness-raising group in Eugene, Oregon, formed a mock organization called the Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society. Emblazoning its logo onto t-shirts, the group wryly envisioned female collective textile making as a practice that could upend conventions, threaten state structures, and wreak political havoc. Elaborating on this example as a prehistory to the more recent phenomenon of “craftivism”—the politics and social practices associated with handmaking—Fray explores textiles and their role at the forefront of debates about process, materiality, gender, and race in times of economic upheaval. Closely examining how amateurs and fine artists in the United States and Chile turned to sewing, braiding, knotting, and quilting amid the rise of global manufacturing, Julia Bryan-Wilson argues that textiles unravel the high/low divide and urges us to think flexibly about what the politics of textiles might be. Her case studies from the 1970s through the 1990s—including the improvised costumes of the theater troupe the Cockettes, the braided rag rugs of US artist Harmony Hammond, the thread-based sculptures of Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña, the small hand-sewn tapestries depicting Pinochet’s torture, and the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt—are often taken as evidence of the inherently progressive nature of handcrafted textiles. Fray, however, shows that such methods are recruited to often ambivalent ends, leaving textiles very much “in the fray” of debates about feminized labor, protest cultures, and queer identities; the malleability of cloth and fiber means that textiles can be activated, or stretched, in many ideological directions. The first contemporary art history book to discuss both fine art and amateur registers of handmaking at such an expansive scale, Fray unveils crucial insights into how textiles inhabit the broad space between artistic and political poles—high and low, untrained and highly skilled, conformist and disobedient, craft and art.

Crafting Minoanisation

by Joanne Elizabeth Cutler

Author	: Joanne Elizabeth Cutler
Publisher	: Oxbow Books
Total Pages	: 530
Release	: 2021-10-31
Genre	: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN	: 1785709674

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The mid second millennium BC material record of the southern Aegean shows evidence of strong Cretan influence. This phenomenon has traditionally been seen in terms of ‘Minoanisation’, but the nature and degree of Cretan influence, and the process/processes by which it was spread and adopted, have been widely debated. This new study addresses the question of ‘Minoanisation’ through a study of the adoption of Cretan technologies in the wider southern Aegean: principally, weaving technology. By the early Late Bronze Age, Cretan-style discoid loom weights had appeared at a number of settlements across the southern Aegean. In most cases, this represents not only the adoption of a particular type of loom weight, but also the introduction of a new weaving technology: the use of the warp-weighted loom. The evidence for, and the implications of, the adoption of this new technology is examined. Drawing upon recent advances in textile experimental archaeology, the types of textiles that are likely to have been produced at a range of sites both on Crete itself and in the wider southern Aegean are discussed, and the likely nature and scale of textile production at the various settlements is assessed. A consideration of the evidence for the timing and extent of the adoption of Cretan weaving technology in the light of additional evidence for the adoption of other Cretan technologies is used to gain insight into the potential social and economic strategies engaged in by various groups across the southern Aegean, as well as the motivations that may have driven the adoption and adaptation of Cretan cultural traits and accompanying behaviors. By examining how technological skills and techniques are learned and considering possible mechanisms for the transmission of such technical knowledge and know-how, new perspectives can be proposed concerning the processes through which Cretan techniques were taken up and imitated abroad.

Textiles, Identity and Innovation: Design the Future

by Gianni Montagna

Author	: Gianni Montagna
Publisher	: CRC Press
Total Pages	: 454
Release	: 2018-10-03
Genre	: Technology & Engineering
ISBN	: 1351585436

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D_TEX presents itself as a starting point at a crossroads of ideas and debates around the complex universe of Textile Design in all its forms, manifestations and dimensions. The textile universe, allied to mankind since its beginnings, is increasingly far from being an area of exhausted possibilities, each moment proposing important innovations that need a presentation, discussion and maturation space that is comprehensive and above all inter- and transdisciplinary. Presently, the disciplinary areas where the textile area is present are increasing and important, such as fashion, home textiles, technical clothing and accessories, but also construction and health, among others, and can provide new possibilities and different disciplinary areas and allowing the production of new knowledge. D_TEX proposes to join the thinking of design, with technologies, tradition, techniques, and related areas, in a single space where ideas are combined with the technique and with the projectual and research capacity, thus providing for the creation of concepts, opinions, associations of ideas, links and connections that allow the conception of ideas, products and services. The interdisciplinary nature of design is a reality that fully reaches the textile material in its essence and its practical application, through the synergy and contamination by the different interventions that make up the multidisciplinary teams of research. The generic theme of D_TEX Textile Design Conference 2017, held at Lisbon School of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, Portugal on November 2-4, 2017, is Design the Future, starting from the crossroads of ideas and debates, a new starting point for the exploration of textile materials, their identities and innovations in all their dimensions.

Crafting Wearables

by Sibel Deren Guler

Author	: Sibel Deren Guler
Publisher	: Apress
Total Pages	: 229
Release	: 2016-08-13
Genre	: Computers
ISBN	: 1484218086

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Enter the exciting intersection of technology and fashion known as wearable computing. Learn about the future of electronics in clothing and textiles, and be a part of creating that future! Crafting Wearables begins with the history of the field, then covers current practices and future trends. You will gain deeper insight into the strategy behind the design of wearable devices while learning about the tools and materials needed to start your own wearables toolbox. In a time when consumer electronics are becoming smaller and seamlessly integrated into our lives, it is important to understand how technology can improve and augment your lifestyle. Wearables are in a sense the most organic and natural interface we can design, yet there is still doubt about how quickly wearable technologies will become the cultural norm. Furthermore, skills that have become less valuable over the years, such as sewing, are making a return with the wearables movement. Gives a better understanding of wearable technology and how it has evolved Teaches basic skills and techniques to familiarize you with the tools and materials Showcases breakthrough designs and discoveries that impact our everyday interactions What You'll Learn Learn the history of how technology in fashion has evolved over time Discover interesting materials and fabrics for use in wearable technology Glimpse new tools for designing wearable technology and fashion Rediscover sewing and related skills that every wearables enthusiast should learn Learn how new techniques in textile manufacturing could disrupt the fashion industry Understand and respond to the cultural and societal developments around wearables Who This Book Is For The curious designer, engineer, or creative who is looking for insight into the world of fashion technology. It is for someone who wants to start exploring wearables with basic projects and dig deeper into the methods and tools of an expert. Crafting Wearables is intended to impart comprehensive general knowledge of the state of wearables in different industries while providing a well-curated list of example projects and resources by which to begin your personal journey into e-textiles. It is a wonderful read for those who are looking to expand their understanding of fashion and technology from both a hands-on and research-based perspective.