Search Results

Assemblage at the Household Chest

Rebecca M. Empson

in Harnessing Fortune: Personhood, Memory and Place in Mongolia

Focusing on objects inside the household, this chapter explores how photographic montages and embroideries project different aspects of the person on to visitors to the house. These objects outwardly ... More

Focusing on objects inside the household, this chapter explores how photographic montages and embroideries project different aspects of the person on to visitors to the house. These objects outwardly display the relations of obligation available to people within the household, while provoking individual memories of absent people and places for those who live in their vicinity.Less

COSTUMES

Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon

in Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice

This chapter looks at costumes and their importance in mid-17h-century opera. Rather than reuse old stock, costumes were redesigned and remanufactured each year, especially those for the main ... More

This chapter looks at costumes and their importance in mid-17h-century opera. Rather than reuse old stock, costumes were redesigned and remanufactured each year, especially those for the main characters. The practice in Venice was for a separate artisan to take charge of costume design and manufacture. Venice was famous for the manufacturing and sale of cloth, and costumes could be made of a variety of silks and other fabrics; embellishments included embroidery and lace were added. The costumes for the minor characters and extras, however, could be rented from an agent or jobber. Some costumes for the prima donnas were especially extravagant, often costing more than many singers would earn in an entire year. On occasion these would be offered as an enticement to hire a prominent singer, who would then get to keep the dress after the opera had concluded. After the opera season, the costumes could be returned as the property of the designer/tailor, or could be distributed among the investors of the company for their own use or as capital.Less

Becoming a “Christian Woman”: Needlework and Girls' Religious Formation

Lauren F. Winner

in A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite Households of Eighteenth-Century Virginia

This chapter focuses on religious and girls' education, both charged issues in eighteenth-century Virginia. Religious education was a topic of some concern because explicit in infant baptism was the ... More

This chapter focuses on religious and girls' education, both charged issues in eighteenth-century Virginia. Religious education was a topic of some concern because explicit in infant baptism was the promise that the child would be taught about the faith into which they had been inaugurated. Mastery of this doctrine was linked to reception of communion. In interpreting Anglican girls' religious embroidery, the literary scholars Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass's reading of Renaissance needlework is helpful. The production of religious needlework in eighteenth-century Virginia was synthetically social and religious: in embroidery, ordinary household work, femininity, and Christian practice were literally intertwined. Sewing decorative needlework was one way girls learned how to be Christians; in particular, how to be Christian women in a hierarchical slave society, a society in which white girls' virtue stood for all social order, and in which elite girls both owed and were owed obedience.Less

Carolle Bénitah’s Photo-Embroidery: Remembering, Reframing, Disfiguring, and Embellishing the Past

Naïma Hachad

in Revisionary Narratives: Moroccan Women's Auto/Biographical and Testimonial Acts

In ‘L’enfance marocaine’ (2009), Carolle Bénitah scans, reframes, and embroiders over black and white family photographs from her childhood in Morocco in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 5, analyzes ... More

In ‘L’enfance marocaine’ (2009), Carolle Bénitah scans, reframes, and embroiders over black and white family photographs from her childhood in Morocco in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 5, analyzes Bénitah’s photo-embroideries, using theories on family photography and its ability to capture traumatic shifts that shape postmodern mentalities, as developed by Roland Barthes ([1980]1981), Marianne Hirsch (1997), Patricia Holland (1991), and Annette Kuhn ([1995] 2002). In tandem with these theorists, I draw on Sam Durrant’s analysis of the postcolonial narrative as a mode of mourning and an action partly meant to come to terms with traumatic historical events, and Mireille Rosello’s notion of ‘reparative mourning’ in her study of the reparative in postcolonial narratives. I read Bénitah’s images as a postmodern narrative that testifies to a fragmented subjectivity, situated at the intersection between public and private history and memory—the artist’s personal story against the backdrop of the twentieth-century history of Morocco and its Jewish community. The chapter analyzes spatial, temporal, visual, and cultural hybridity as a way of working through history while also engaging with transnational feminist strategies women use to undo gender hierarchies naturalized and perpetuated by photography and the family photograph.Less

Mending Afghanistan Stitch by Stitch: How Traditional Crafts and Social Organization Advance Afghan Women

Rachel Lehr

in Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of Contemporary Afghan Women

This chapter discusses the history of Rubia, a grassroots embroidery project whose model of sustainability was founded on competitive market awareness and economic returns. All the work produced in ... More

This chapter discusses the history of Rubia, a grassroots embroidery project whose model of sustainability was founded on competitive market awareness and economic returns. All the work produced in the Lahore slum district, Khanjurwal, was to be sold in the United States, and the proceeds returned to pay for more materials and more embroidery. Rubia's recruitment of women took advantage of the social networks, and was designed to fit into the lives of rural Afghan women without adding to their burdens. The literacy component in its original conception was intended to link education with economic opportunity. Rubia also began to incorporate very basic health practices into the embroidery program. Its commitment to reviving traditional textile techniques extends to using historical dyes. Additionally, Rubia's model is embedded in a threefold commitment: working at the grassroots level, working in the Afghan family context, and preserving cultural heritage.Less

Chapter Two Fabrics and Techniques

Bracha Yaniv

in Ceremonial Synagogue Textiles: From Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Italian Communities

This chapter examines the linen and silk fabrics used in the production of medieval ceremonial textiles, and the techniques employed to create the embroidered and woven patterns that embellished ... More

This chapter examines the linen and silk fabrics used in the production of medieval ceremonial textiles, and the techniques employed to create the embroidered and woven patterns that embellished them. The elegance of ceremonial textiles in antiquity is revealed in the use in early sources of the term shira'in na'in (fine fabrics), which connotes a concern for aesthetic values in religious observance. In all societies, embroidery — the creation of designs on a fabric using a needle and various threads — was a much simpler and more widespread technique than the weaving of designs, and was therefore less valued. From biblical times, weaving and embroidery have developed as techniques with similar objectives: first, to vary and improve the colourfulness of the object, and second, to create more sophisticated patterns. These two objectives are reflected in the materials used to make ceremonial textile objects, and they greatly influenced their design. The chapter then describes the term 'passementerie'; details the training, professional organization, and work procedures of Jews when making ceremonial objects; and looks at Jewish law and tradition in production.Less

Chapter Three The Torah Wrapper and the Torah Binder

Bracha Yaniv

in Ceremonial Synagogue Textiles: From Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Italian Communities

This chapter focuses on the Torah wrapper and the Torah binder. The wrapper, the piece of fabric rolled up with the parchment scroll, is an item used in the wrapping of the Torah scroll in Italy and ... More

This chapter focuses on the Torah wrapper and the Torah binder. The wrapper, the piece of fabric rolled up with the parchment scroll, is an item used in the wrapping of the Torah scroll in Italy and the Sephardi diaspora of exiles from Spain and Portugal. In Italy, the wrapper is known as the mapah, indicating that it evolved from the first ceremonial object connected to the Torah scroll in antiquity, inheriting its name. Meanwhile, the binder is a long, thin piece of cloth bound around the Torah scroll. In Italy and in Sephardi diaspora congregations, it is bound over the wrapper, while in other communities it is placed directly next to the parchment scroll. What makes the Italian binders unique is that they are rooted in the embroidery and lace-work traditions of the Italian Renaissance and baroque period.Less

. Noble Presents: Gender, Gift Exchange, and the Reappropriation of Luxury

Amanda E. Herbert

in Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain

This chapter examines female alliances that were built through the exchange of gifts. It considers four specific gift objects that seventeenth-and eighteenth-century women made or used and then ... More

This chapter examines female alliances that were built through the exchange of gifts. It considers four specific gift objects that seventeenth-and eighteenth-century women made or used and then recorded in their writings: a jar of marmalade, a bottle of perfume, a piece of embroidery, and a painted picture. These gift objects were intended to speak to the gendered tastes, skills, and habits cultivated by privileged women in this period and therefore to create bonds between elites. But in creating and giving these luxury objects, women stressed instead their economy and thrift. The chapter examines the reappropriation of luxury by illustrating the ways in which elite women manipulated expensive ingredients in order to use them in ways that emphasized their supposedly feminine attention to emotion, care, and household economy.Less

Taming the Steam Dragon

Vicky Albritton and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson

in Green Victorians: The Simple Life in John Ruskin's Lake District

Reverend Hardwicke Rawnsley and his wife Edith promoted the benefits of an artisan-based economy for poorer parishioners through their Keswick School of the Industrial Arts. They supported ... More

Reverend Hardwicke Rawnsley and his wife Edith promoted the benefits of an artisan-based economy for poorer parishioners through their Keswick School of the Industrial Arts. They supported handicrafts such as wood carving, spinning and weaving, embroidery, and repoussé metal work. Rawnsley thought of Nature in divine terms, often finding inspiration in the work of William Wordsworth. His annual Rush Bearing sermons aimed to inspire parishioners with a sense of their history and connection to the landscape. Rawnsley’s notion of sufficiency was often merely vicarious, as he sought to protect the poor in particular from consumer society and modern technology. Rawnsley was on the front lines fighting against the development of Thirlmere as a water supply for Manchester. But his preservationist views were modified as he confronted the factory system. In his essay, “Sunlight or Smoke?” he warily approved of technological solutions to industrial pollution as he sought to bring Ruskin’s ideas into the 20th century.Less

Home

Wendy Parkins

in Jane Morris: The Burden of History

From contemporary observations in the nineteenth century to the scholarly and biographical traditions surrounding Morris and Rossetti in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Jane Morris’s role ... More

From contemporary observations in the nineteenth century to the scholarly and biographical traditions surrounding Morris and Rossetti in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Jane Morris’s role in the home is only fleetingly glimpsed. The connotation of immobility attached to the artist’s model, not to mention the strong association between Jane Morris and the ‘lady on the sofa’ myth, has meant that her domestic labour and creative collaborations at home have too often been overlooked. This chapter considers the textual record of Jane Morris as mother, friend and craftswoman, and the importance of the home as a site of creativity, hospitality and intimacy in her life. Particular emphasis is given to her embroidery and book design and decoration. In short, this chapter develops one of the central aims of this book: namely, to recognise and reclaim the different forms of agency exercised by Jane Morris.Less

From Book Learning to Embroidery: Reorienting the Civilizing Mission (1857–1875)

in A Frenchwoman's Imperial Story: Madame Luce in Nineteenth-Century Algeria

Madame Luce's institution sat within the more general context of debates about educational policies in Algeria. This chapter highlights how gendered debates determined the withdrawal of support for ... More

Madame Luce's institution sat within the more general context of debates about educational policies in Algeria. This chapter highlights how gendered debates determined the withdrawal of support for Luce's school and erased the figure of the Muslim girl pupil from the colonial agenda. In her place emerged the embroiderer who had no pretensions to becoming French, but who nonetheless was an indigenous woman with a useful skill.Less

The Remains of the Day (1875–1915)

in A Frenchwoman's Imperial Story: Madame Luce in Nineteenth-Century Algeria

This chapter explores in more detail what has been termed “The Remains of the Day.” The inventory and will established at Madame Luce's death testify to the astute business acumen that guided her ... More

This chapter explores in more detail what has been termed “The Remains of the Day.” The inventory and will established at Madame Luce's death testify to the astute business acumen that guided her throughout much of her life. She died leaving a comfortable sum of money to the young girl whose memoirs do the most to bring her great-grandmother to life. But she also left a legacy in artisanal handicrafts that circulated widely across France, Great Britain, North America, and North Africa, thanks to universal and colonial exhibitions. Her granddaughter Henriette Benaben continued the workshop Luce established in Algiers and actively worked to assemble collections of “oriental embroideries” that now lie in the storerooms of museums in Algiers, Paris, and London. These collections constitute the most permanent and highly gendered legacy of Madame Luce's Arab–French school.Less

The Gender of Cloth: Ainu Women and Cultural Revitalization

ann-elise lewallen

in Beyond Ainu Studies: Changing Academic and Public Perspectives

This chapter narrates the “quiet revolution” that emerged in private spaces shared between elderwomen and the younger generation. Ainu women in their mid-forties to early seventies began meeting to ... More

This chapter narrates the “quiet revolution” that emerged in private spaces shared between elderwomen and the younger generation. Ainu women in their mid-forties to early seventies began meeting to exchange traditional knowledge, including techniques for gathering medicinal herbs and wild plants, techniques for weaving with natural fibers, embroidery patterns, and song and dance. Older generation women could recall these activities as survival skills, and as ritual and celebratory activities. In mountainous areas across Ainu women, this private sphere knowledge was maintained and transmitted generationally. While Ainu men were pressured to assimilate to Wajin socioeconomic standards, Ainu women were entrusted with preserving cultural practices, such as producing material cultural objects for the domestic sphere.Less

The Vestments of the Byzantine Rite Described

Warren T. Woodfin

in The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium

This chapter presents a general understanding about liturgical dresses and its evolution during the Byzantine era. The system of clerical vesture continued to be unchanged until the addition of new ... More

This chapter presents a general understanding about liturgical dresses and its evolution during the Byzantine era. The system of clerical vesture continued to be unchanged until the addition of new insignia in the late eleventh which lasted up to the fourteenth century. There was borne some sort of a vestural hierarchy to separate deacons, priests, bishops, and patriarchs in the form of ensembles of the insignia. This chapter discusses the evidence for when figural embroidery was first utilized as part of the vestments of the church.Less

Liturgical Mystagogy and the Embroidered Image

Warren T. Woodfin

in The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium

This chapter primarily examines the Byzantine tradition of mystagogy in relation to Eucharistic liturgy as part of the study of the relationship between the vestments' embroidered images and the ... More

This chapter primarily examines the Byzantine tradition of mystagogy in relation to Eucharistic liturgy as part of the study of the relationship between the vestments' embroidered images and the church iconography. The visual representation of the church decorations by itself is not enough to explain the symbolism behind the embroidery, but with the support of mystagogical interpretations of Eucharistic rites it presents a whole new level of meaning. For instance, the Great Entrance, which depicts the entry to Jerusalem, is headed by a clergyman wearing a sakkos (garment worn by bishops) designed with images that reference the said occurrence. The wearing of vestments permits the priest to actually become Christ through the liturgical re-enactments.Less

Conclusions

Warren T. Woodfin

in The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium

The embroideries of liturgical vestments have put religious principles into visual imagery resulting into a deeper understanding of the nature of the Church and the meaning of its liturgy. Such ... More

The embroideries of liturgical vestments have put religious principles into visual imagery resulting into a deeper understanding of the nature of the Church and the meaning of its liturgy. Such adding of images to clerical vestments is part of an expansive trend in the Late Byzantine Church of transforming symbolic thought into visual structure, which is a way of decoding the mysteries of the liturgy. This chapter shows that the parallels between the earthly and heavenly hierarchies have been widely represented in Byzantine art and dialogue, and that these gave their people access to heaven, if only to the extent of the Divine Liturgy. Through the clergy's embodiment of the heavenly hierarchy, their faithful followers can experience not just a similarity but the actuality of Heaven.Less

Fast Fashion: Style, Text, and Image in Late Eighteenth-Century Women’s Periodicals

Chloe Wigston Smith

in Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1690-1820s: The Long Eighteenth Century

Chloe Wigston Smith’s essay examines the innovative changes in fashion journalism in the later eighteenth century initiated by TheLady’s Magazine’s (1770–1832). Through its fold-out embroidery ... More

Chloe Wigston Smith’s essay examines the innovative changes in fashion journalism in the later eighteenth century initiated by TheLady’s Magazine’s (1770–1832). Through its fold-out embroidery patterns, fashion plates, coverage of royal birthday celebrations and early forms of fashion journalism, the Lady’s circulated knowledge about particular trends and styles, ranging from reticules and caps to colours, silhouettes, shoes. Smith contends that the Lady’s fashion coverage modelled an early form of ‘fast fashion’, in which detailed textual descriptions and fashion plates that showed full figures, and sometimes the front and back of costumes, provided minute guides to style. In a period in which most middling and elite clothes were bespoke, fashion journalism in publications including the Lady’s, the Gallery of Fashion (1794–1803) and La Belle Assemblée (1806-32), Smith concludes, placed the agency of style in the hands of readers and contributed to the democratization of style.Less

‘This terrible struggle with want of means’1: Behind the Scenes at the Cuala Press

Gifford Lewis

in The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume V: The Irish Book in English, 1891-2000

This chapter documents the early years of Cuala Press, described as ‘the most important private press in the history of printing in Ireland’. More specifically, it examines the problems and ... More

This chapter documents the early years of Cuala Press, described as ‘the most important private press in the history of printing in Ireland’. More specifically, it examines the problems and difficulties experienced by the company, especially under its director Elizabeth Yeats, sister of the poet William Butler Yeats. Cuala Press, for example, had to address the question of which manuscript hand, and typeface emulating it, was best suited to be the ‘national hand’ of Ireland. The chapter also looks at how Elizabeth increased diversification in Cuala Press’s ephemera, first by publishing a series of handwritten poems with illuminated initials. Finally, it discusses the impact of shortages and economic restrictions of World War I on Cuala Press, particularly in terms of its embroidery business.Less

Stitches, Specimens, and Pictures: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Processing of the Natural World

Janice Neri

in The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700

This chapter illustrates the professional life of Maria Sibylla Merian who grew up to be skilled in needlework and embroidery as well as artistically trained in the illustration of natural subjects, ... More

This chapter illustrates the professional life of Maria Sibylla Merian who grew up to be skilled in needlework and embroidery as well as artistically trained in the illustration of natural subjects, particularly flowers. This led to her publication of Neues Blumenbuch, a compilation of floral designs which can be used as patterns for embroidery and needlework. Merian was also involved with the study of insects wherein she created a distinct way to visually represent the life cycles of insects, which then resulted to the publication of Raupenbuch, the completion of her study on European moths and butterflies. The chapter also analyzes Merian’s visual style in her other published works such as the Blumenbuch series and Metamorphosis.Less

Dressed to Kill

Regina A. Root

in Couture and Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina

This chapter discusses how female bravery is represented by the acts of sewing and embroidery. When men go off to war, women are left at home doing the domestic chores. But during the regime of Juan ... More

This chapter discusses how female bravery is represented by the acts of sewing and embroidery. When men go off to war, women are left at home doing the domestic chores. But during the regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas, women began to take active political roles such as sewing the uniforms or flags for men, or with men planning for war. In spite of the women’s growing political participation, violence and manipulation are still visible. This chapter then traces the political gender-specific assignments within the Argentine history, presenting women with the least significance in the Argentine-Spanish society.Less