11 research outputs found
Javanesque Effects: Appropriation of Batik and Its Transformations in Modern Textiles
American batik practice emerged in the early twentieth century based on traditional techniques from Java and those filtered through Dutch Nieuwe Kunst. The promotion of batik through the Arts and Crafts movement in North America fostered egalitarian endorsement from artisans, individual practitioners, and consumers, across geographic locales, social milieu, and skill levels. Encouraged by manuals, magazine articles, and exhibitions, enthusiasm for batik grew across the nation and in the avant-garde enclave of Greenwich Village. While practitioners were cautioned to avoid excessive veining or crackle in their works in emulation of fine tradition, commercial enterprises helped to transform the aesthetic of batik in America. Two elementsâsubtle veining (or crackle) and the clearly drawn line of hot wax flowing from the cantingâextracted from the tradition of fine Javanese batik predominated in American popular and commercial batiks.
In 1914 the John Wannamaker New York store employed Pieter Mijer to supply batik art, accessories, and yardage to its silk fabric department. Extant yardage samples consist of all-over crackle. Printed designs of fabric companies Cheney Brothers (Ye Greenwich Village Prints by Coulton Waugh in 1919) and H.R. Mallinson & Co. show prominent crackle and lines imitating the flow of wax from a canting. Yet, while American commercial batiks did not resemble traditional batik designs, motifs, colors, or processes they were perceived as batik. As new elements in the American design vocabulary, the flowing line and the crackle effect indicated batik. For example, H. R. Mallinson & Co. described their batik fabric designs as âJavanesque effects.â As long as lines resembling drawn wax or crackle were discernable, fabric designs were âlikeâ batikâ they were âJavanesque.â Crackle also provided an abstract quality linking batik to emerging modernist art styles: Crackle referenced only itself as an indication of the batik process and had no figurative or symbolic meaning. Once a subtle signature of fine batik as faint veining, the amplification of crackle into an especially prominent motif in American batik marked the transformation of batik in America from Javanese to Javanesque
Overview: Frontiers of Fashion
The fashion industry foresees changes in the future in the areas of sustainability, diversity, and technology. Professors Welters and Lillethun presented a top ten list incorporating developments that they see coming to fashion
Introduction to Focused Issue: History of Textiles and Fashion
The introduction to the focused issue draws attention to research in the history of textiles and fashion among International Textile and Apparel Association members. It is divided into three parts: the past, the present, and the future. In the first section, a review of the history of dress and textiles under the umbrella of âclothing and textilesâ is provided. In the section on the present, a snapshot is given of the current situation now that dress and textile history has been accepted by a wide range of academic disciplines. Finally, suggestions are offered to move the historic area forward in the journal and the organization
Fashion History: A Global View
In a collaborative effort, Professor Abby Lillethun from Montclair State University and Professor Linda Welters from the University of Rhode Island presented a lecture on a project that they have been working on together. Teaching in similar fields, the two historians have joined together to explore fashion history and to question why it is limited to the West beginning in the fourteenth century
Black Silk, Brown Silk: China and BeyondâTraditional Practice Meets Fashion
This one-hour discussion panel will examine bi-colored black and brown silk textiles called chiao-chou and shiang-yin-sa, (a.k.a. black gummed silk, Canton silk, cloud perfumed silk, gambiered silk, and by other names). Little known in the West, these textiles express cultural identities associated with a specific geographic locals where the required mud treatment can take place. Thus, the textiles have primarily been made in southern China in Guangdong province and in Southeast Asia in Thailand and Vietnam where Chinese immigration occurred. Since their heyday during the Qing Dynasty (1644â1911), they faded from use. The panel first contextualizes the textiles and the culture surrounding them through a brief history and explanation of the dyeing method. Even though common people used them, chiao-chou and shiang-yin-sa demanded a high market value based on the silk fibers and lengthy dye process. Beyond precious monetary value, beliefs imbue the textiles, such as their benefit to health and well-being. The fabric also represents the unified cosmos, bringing together the earth, vegetation, water, and sun in material form. Members of the panel will examine the characteristics of the textilesââsuch as chemical properties and permeability to light and airââin relation to the senses and to the beliefs inhered in the textiles in the second section. Samples include contemporary and one-hundred-year-old pieces. The reemergence of these textiles comprises the third aspect of the discussion. Here the panel will examine recent marketing invoking the cultural beliefs while simultaneously promoting the silks as ecological and sustainable. The panel will close with discussion of the use of chiao-chou and shiang-yin-sa by fashion designers such as Vivienne Tam in the United States, in the 1990s, and Bonnie Tchien Hy in Paris, currently
Fashion History : A Global View
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