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A Batak Beaded Food Cover & a Dayak Hat

16/1/2020

 
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There's a feeling you get, when you're looking through screeds of crappy shit on auction sites instead of doing something constructive/overdue and finally, you spot something weird, alluring and inexpensive amid the garbage.  It's not triumph- it's sleazier than that, a moment of ha ha, brain, you thought I was just being a lazy twat these last three hours, foolish organ!  Something venal and self-deceiving.  How Trump's kids must feel on a really good day, I suppose.

Anyway, I had this feeling a couple of weeks back when I spotted this large and incredibly beady conical item.  I didn't know what it was, exactly, but I did know that it was one of those awesome and poorly-described things that must be mine.  Lucky we still had double figures in our account!
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A notion plucked from some dingey mental crevice whispered that I'd seen something like it before, somewhere, and a wee bit of online poking yielded a result; this is a Batak food cover.  I know even less about Batak items than I do about the slightly more common Iban/Dayak group work, so I shall defer to someone who appears less of an ignoramus for the attribution (consult the link for a very similar example and more learned explanation).  
These amazing constructions are apparently prestige items brought out during marital and funerary feasts as part of the procession and presentation of expensive dishes.  I say are, but were is probably more apposite, given the decline of indigenous practise in southern Asia these days in the face of growing religious intolerance in many formerly tribal areas.  

On one level it is intensely depressing to find these beautiful heirloom pieces and know the incredible aesthetic traditions they represent are falling into redundancy.  But what can you do?  Collect and value them, I suppose, and try to attribute them correctly.  
I have a couple of actual Dayak sun hats (see one of them below) so I knew this probably wasn't the same thing when I spotted it.  They're much more lightly constructed and explicitly hattier than the Batak cover, even to my eye.
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Dayak artisans also seemed fond of working their beads into discrete panels that could be applied to and removed from the more organic basal objects as they wore out, which, as anyone who's ever beaded anything can tell you, is both shrewd and humane.
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In contrast, the tiny strings of Batak beads are couched, directly and almost individually (take a moment to think about the labour required here) to a walnut-hued rattan or split cane woven base.  The latter is surprisingly prosaic, with all the attention directed to the stunning floral and faunal motifs relevant to the family involved.  The beads are so densely-applied that it is impossible to discern the nature of the construction unless you examine the reverse, their busy mass relieved only by narrow lines of marine shells that demarcate the feature panels.  
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The cover is rigid and heavy, as you can probably imagine, and greasily lustrous.  

Beaded work can be hard to date definitively, possessing qualities that confound the usual indicators of age.  Old beads can look surprisingly modern because their pigments don't fade and vintage work can be repurposed and applied to contemporary pieces.  Some of the tiniest and indisputably earliest trade beads used in the oldest extant Indonesian/Malay pieces have been unpicked and incorporated into much later items.  And tropical usage can be hard on the underlying organic fibres, resulting in wear and patination that can overstate an item's antiquity.  So I personally take all bead-related age statements with a truck-sized grain of salt.

Who knows how old this cover is?  It is in excellent condition with no visible losses, but that is not too surprising since they were apparently heirloom items that were probably treated and stored accordingly.
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While my main source of info didn't speculate about the age of their piece, I'd say it's contemporaneous with mine.  The beads on this one may not have the shiny uniformity of the most modern production but they're not the eye-fucking glass minuscules of the earliest period, so I'll poop out a guesstimate of mid-20th C for this cover.  The hand-spun cotton thread securing the beads and scraps of hand-loomed plainweave cloth that once lined the reverse speak of a domestic situation still producing or acquiring these non-commercial materials, but it could be twenty years in either direction.  I know I say that about virtually everything I acquire but there's bugger-all literature out there to inform a bitch, so you're stuck with my shitty opinion.  There's not much evidence of any super-modern production of these; I'm pretty sure they're something old-skool nana made for the family and I'm not sure how many nanas of that vintage are still with us.

Dealers are pricing these covers out of our modest reach so it's gratifying to hear that they still turn up, misidentified, on Ebay occasionally where they represent a lot of ethnographic and artistic bang for your buck.  I bought this one from a lady who used to live in Malaysia and consider it one of the greatest bargains I've ever stumbled across.  

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An Ice cream for your Mind: Dyeing Silk with Organic Dyesstuffs in Japan

12/8/2019

 

I make a lot of my own clothes, and as I've entered cronedom I've become much more conscious of fabric qualities over fancy construction.  Which leads one back to hand-sewing everything; the tensions generated by hand and needle yield a much better result than machine stitching natural fibre fabrics.  It's strange how the seemingly lax plain stitch holds your silk tunic and sack dresses together like no one's business, resulting in virtually zero seam pulling and holing etc.  There's also some indefinable quality in hand sewn garments; they just sit and hang better.  It's the same with natural colours over synthetic dyes.  There are quite a few shades that just die horribly when attempted with modern chemicals; apricot, red, blue-greens and purples.  Even the black that's been so treasured and ubiquitous for the last 40 or so years is really quite a horrible, revenant thing when compared to those found in vintage rugs and old school textiles.  Blacks derived from indigo are sublime in contrast.  The industrial versions may seem brighter or more stable at first, but after looking at them for more than a few moments, the eye feels tricked and assaulted.

I don't really know where I'm going with this so just watch the fucking doc.

Photos du Jour: Domestic Elevations, miscellaneous barbaric items.

13/5/2019

 
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Although I definitely appreciate asymmetry in Japanese artistic expression, I do not enjoy shit being off-centre in my daily life, so I apologise to all my strictly midpoint homies for this left-side-of-the-bed-wide-angle wonk.

A few years ago we were compelled to fell two young Himalayan Birches in a garden realignment and decided to screw them into the end of the bed.  Since then, all manner of international glamour has settled in their branches, including but not limited to:

Malband (for securing/decorating baggage and animals during migration), probably Anatolia or could be Persian/Bakhtiari, 20thC.  It's a particularly festive one with metallic thread and a billion multicoloured tassels.

Yak hair rope with white terminal details.  These are apparently made and used everywhere from the Wakhan Corridor to Mongolia and possess really peculiar physical properties, being exceedingly bristly, as well as light, strong and waterproof.  This one is from southern Tibet.

Ikat Hinggi, Sumba, circa midcentury onwards.  Sneaky dealers try to pass all of these impressive pieces off as antique, but if you've travelled through Indonesia in the last 30 years you may share my suspicion of this attribution.  To my jaded eye this piece has the slightly generic look and certain lack of conscientious detail that usually hint at modern production.  I could be wrong; the colours are definitely all combinations of red, blue and neutral, exemplifying the traditional palette.  All I know about textile production in Sumba is that it has always been regarded as highly idiosyncratic.   I'm not entirely sure they're still being executed in this particularly large format as the process is almost unimaginably skilled and laborious.
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​No matter what their age, large expanses of ikat will always trip you the fuck out and reward hours of idle contemplation.  Here's an interesting piece on it.  I can't be mad at anything that boasts both chimeras and skull racks. 
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Below right: Fuck yes I'll have that for $40: a lovely vintage Siirt battaniye, a Turkish/Kurdish iteration of that most treasured of domestic ephemera, the angora blanket.  Local goats are shorn of the silky fibres that are hand-woven into simple kilim-style cotton-warp plainweaves and then given a thorough brushing to yield this pelt-like pile.  They are light, dirt-resistant and warm without inducing the sweaty thermal panics that characterise my relationship with duck down.  

Just as an aside to that particularly baffling cohort of anti-wool (wool?  You're angry about wool?) agitators out there; shearing a caprine is not inherently distressing, cruel or painful and I'm not sure exactly where people have been getting that fucked up idea.  Wild sheep and goats lose their wool/hair via seasonal moults, like cats, but most domestic breeds absolutely require manual wool removal if they are not to end up lodged somewhere like a wad of felt.  I've shorn and crutched sheep myself, both with hand shears and a comb, so I'm not just talking out of my arse.  There's really no way you can shear a sheep without its cooperation.  They quickly learn the process and relax into the positions as you make your long blows down their flanks etc.  It's no more traumatic than getting a buzzcut when you'd rather be having lunch.  Watch this to see what I mean. 

If you have animal husbandry concerns (and all of us should), I urge you to get off your arse, visit a farm, see what goes on for yourself and make decisions from there.  PETA's campaigns have done more harm to public perception of animal welfare reform than anything else I can think of.
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Top left: I'm not 100% sure where this length of tent/yurt band came from but because of the width and very atavistic motifs I'm guessing Central Asia, probably Uzbek or Kirgiz.  Turkish dealers always cut these for some fucking reason, which really pisses me off as it takes ages to sew them back together.  
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^ Doga, Duacik, Tawiz or Moska, an embroidered amulet from northern Afghanistan/Uzbekistan, possibly Chodor Turkmen people.  This one has pages of the Qu'ran or a similar text (I haven't been tempted to look) sewn into it but others contain salt and other auspicious substances to repel evil influences.  A nice man gave it to me for washing his Kente cloths.  Thanks Philip!
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Dog, circa last year.  The most expensive fibres in this array by a factor of 10, and connoisseur of Siirt angora.
(Disclaimer: apart from said dog which was an essential purchase, all of these items are vintage/second hand and nothing cost more than $100; most were less than $50, so we're not exactly flexing lol.)

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A Vintage Banjara dress panel with mirrors & embroidery

16/5/2017

 
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This is a bizarre piece from our personal collection and one that has had us scratching our damn heads for quite a while now.  

​Although obviously constructed from quite oldish panels salvaged from a single dress, it has been deliberately and laboriously sewn into a shape that can only be described as baffling and utterly inutile... unless, to paraphrase Lovecraft, the intended wearer possessed brachiation and proportions quite unlike the normal run of earthly creatures.    
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The reverse is reinforced with pieces of hand-spun cotton plain weave (except for a single piece of lively kantha quilting) which presumably represent the original garment lining since the mirrors are sewn in through this layer.  The glass segments are not of the murky early type (which you can see in the Banjara gala pieces here) so I'm lazily calling this a mid-century item.
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While I would have loved to see the sadly deceased dress from which this item was constructed, there is something perversely satisfying about an object in your collection that resists your understanding.
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It will sit over the back of a chair with the plain weave, mirrorless portions acting like 'shoulders', so my best guess is probably: mirror cover?  

​Or maybe some Banjara ladies just had effed-out dresses+homely chair issues too.
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The heavy textures created by the puckered mirror stitching and its associated embroidery are taken to the next level by the addition of tiny pompoms on stalks and what appear to be lead-alloy or tin beads and plaques, the latter embossed with minute detail.
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And it is ironic that illiterate, often marginalised women leading lives severely circumscribed by culture and religion have produced some of the most universally appreciated works of material expression.  There is hardly a society in existence that has not valued personal adornment as a pillar of its collective representation; these textiles articulate the fundamentals of human existence- our immersion in natural chaos and our desire for order and distinction.  That they are so often relegated in favour of 'higher' art speaks unflattering volumes about the perceptions and motivations of conventional curatorial practise. 
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Monday slash Tuesday slash fuck yeah DIY hallway do-up photoessay

8/11/2016

 
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So we broke out the drill and hammer and took down all the unsightly ad hoc shelving made from leftover decking and old chipboard (mmm chipboard) etc. and filled the holey walls.  

Although this is a very modest 1860's weatherboard cottage of around 90m2, its creators decided to devote around a third of that precious acreage to a bizarrely capacious central hallway, presumably to convince the casual caller that ten toothless rickety brats and four dogs were not being made to share the same bathwater out back while the other five were being trafficked dockside in exchange for molasses or moustache wax or some shit like that. The hall is bloatedly oversized and completely fucking useless, which can only mean one thing: it was born to be a gallery. That coupled with our love of collecting shit we have nowhere to actually put just felt like destiny.

​A gallery it would be!
We haven't (only) been sitting around with our thumbs up our arses over the last week or so. 

I woke up the other day, stumbled into that darkest portion of the hallway that had been partitioned off with shitty curtaining and transfigur'd over the years into a sort of ghetto walk-in wardrobe and decided enough was eeeenough.  No more trying to find really important shit in the dark with the aid of a half-dead craft lamp because there was no actual lighting.  No to stubbing my toe on the edge of the homeless old sewing machine.  No to shoving things into the fucking black corner of eternity behind the racks of clothes and knowing they would be lost in space and time.  No to fending off clinically obese and half-sentient industrial dust bunnies that seemed increasingly cognisant of having outgrown the vacuum cleaner lumen.  

No to fucking all of it.
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Like all sensitive students of urban architecture and Brad Pitt, we wanted our new formal entrance gallery to respond to our environment.  This particular environment leaks like a senior sister wife when the central gutter fills with hail, so it was important that everything cool went on one side so we can get buckets under the splits in the ceiling panels whenever that drip drip drip dripdripdripdrip sploosh wakes us up at 3.45am  😐  ​
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It's true that high-end glamour comes at a price.  Just ask the Duchess of Cambridge.  

​I sent R down to the service station with the $20 we had left til payday and a very strict brief.  But I needn't have worried; the entire project came in under budget thanks to the magic of pooling all the various dregs of claggy black acrylic hanging round the house, using that old half-tin of outdoor white on the ceiling (Solarguard's superior water-resistance hurrah) and by just not doing anything at all to the shitty timber floor.  
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Not bothering to do anything to things has a lot to be said for it.  Have you ever given a single flying furry fuck about the floor at someone else's house?  Neither have we, so we chucked some rugs down and called it a day.  

​There are a couple of 'good' pieces here, but most of the items in this tableau were obtained for very little money from auctions etc. and many have no particular cachet beyond our personal enjoyment of their rustic or exuberant exoticism- just in case this comes across as our being materialistic wankers.  

Now OG Rangda can repel all the inauspicious spirits and the Iban baby carrier and Kohistani head dress have a place of their very own instead of squatting unsatisfactorily in the lounge.  We love to sit in the adjoining bedroom and peep in on that which we have wrought when the evening sun glows through the fanlight.  One day soon we will actually have time for that, perhaps when the decadal spring clean we're halfway through is finally finished.  Normal blogal transmission will resume next week.

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Sad Kente: experimental hand-washing of a vintage silk textile.

10/8/2016

 
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Philip at The Old Trout Boutique had a textile calamity a while back; to cut a long story short, two of his lovely vintage kente cloths ended up in an attic in plastic bags getting mouldy and buggered. Sadness! 
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​I'd never actually handled a kente before and was both impressed by their beauty and appalled by their fate, so I offered to have a go at washing them in the hope that we could salvage some sections.  < Here they are on the ivy wall catching some UV to kill those shitty mould spores.

Wet-washing vintage textiles is always contentious.  Most authorities advise against it because amateur munters have ruined a good chunk of the historical record with their ham-fisted laundering fails.  Under normal circumstances I would never wash pieces like this and I do not advocate it unless you either really know what you're doing or the item is definitely not historically or academically important.  Establish that before you wash something, not afterwards.
In this case, both kentes were stinky landfill anyway so we literally had nothing to lose and I thought we might as well squeeze some learnings out of this misfortune.  

​Older kentes are generally medium-weight silk with some cotton. In my experience, ethnographic textiles from the 20thC often feature both stable and unstable dyes, and so it was with this piece.
It's best to just assume you'll be dealing with leaky dyes when you're washing an older textile.
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Though the structure was generally still robust, this blue kente was grimy and tired, with mould, a few rotted holes and some of the strip-woven sections were coming apart.

I ran a third of a bath of cold water, shook up some conventional glycerine hand soap in a jar of hot water and added it along with a litre or so of plain white vinegar to the bath.  (Mould stink is one of the most stubborn smells to try and exorcise but vinegar tends to abolish all manner of aromatic funkiness.  It also tends to prevent fugitive dyes from 'fixing' in the lighter sections of the weave during the wash.)  

​With the water lukewarm (not hot- don't be tempted) I submersed the fabric and subjected it to a bit of gentle manual agitation to ensure even exposure to the water and to coax some of that dirt free.  No scrubbing, just swishing around. 
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Never, ever actively scrub an older textile, no matter how much you'd like to.  A stain is always better than a bald patch or a hole.  Below: the loose dye and general dirt that came free.
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After ten minutes of this very respectful treatment I drained the bath, lay the kente as flat as possible in the empty tub and used the shower head to hose it off immediately (always cold water), paying attention to both sides of the cloth.  

Be really careful with wet textiles; they're in a weakened state and all that extra weight makes them particularly easy to rip.  Try to find someone to help you handle and support the larger pieces.
You want to flush the soap and keep that rogue dye headed for the drain. If you have a nice smooth concrete driveway with a slope, take it out there, lie it flat and hit it with the garden hose (not too hard). Blast all that loose dye and dirt away before it can be reabsorbed by the wet fibres. Try to refrain from concentrating too hard on any one area or you could end up with patchy colour.
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When the rinse water was looking cleaner, I let the fabric drain briefly in the bath.  There is still a slight danger of dye bleed so keep an eye on it and don't be tempted to squeeze or bunch the fabric.  

Ideally, silk should be laid out flat somewhere shady to dry because wet suspension can stretch the fibres and cause permanent deformation.  But it's the middle of winter and and I don't have clean dry grass or a concrete pad handy, so this guy goes on the washing line.  Never peg silk or vintage cloth and if your dyes remain stubbornly unstable, try to ensure the doubled-over areas don't come into contact with each other while still wet.  Laid flat and straight on an old towel or sheet is best if you can possibly manage it.  I should have laid a towel over this wire line but I didn't think of it.
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Don't panic if your wet fabric looks substantially different from its original state.  They usually dry lighter.  Expect a small degree of lustre loss in shiny virgin silks- that's just how the biscuit breaks down.

Observations: A moderate amount of blue dye exited stage left in the rinse, but the blue sections were only very slightly (maybe 5%) lighter overall and there was little to no staining in the lighter colours- even the yellow resisted.
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So from a purely chromatic point of view, the result was perfectly acceptable.  Much of the speckly mould staining departed and what remained was substantially diminished, along with that surface dirt dinginess.  Not a hint of nasty mould stink remained, even to my very particular nose.  Silk is always texturally affected by washing no matter what you do, but in this case the change to its handle was limited to a maybe 5-10% loss of that absolute virgin pliability via a slight contraction of the weave, which did not amount to noticeable shrinkage.  I forgot to take pics before I gave the kente back but any differences were too subtle for the camera to convey anyway.  There is no hint of vinegar scent after a few hours in fresh air, if you were worried about that.  I haven't washed the yellow kente yet and I will update this item when I do.

Verdict?  Both thumbs up to this treatment in the case of (non-significant) textiles that are otherwise too stinky or too dirty to tolerate.  I was surprised at the decent colour retention and pretty sure I could have gone a wee bit harder with the soap concentration without detriment to the fabric.  Your results may vary depending on your dyes and construction, but if your item is otherwise destined for the discard pile, you might as well roll the dice and give this process a try.  Substantial portions of these kentes can now be salvaged for further use, and that is gratifying.

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liked this series on Naga elders by Trupal Pandya

22/4/2016

 
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The Last Living Headhunters
As collectors of other peoples' nice gear, we're always grateful to anyone who documents material cultures in situ.  These days it's often for the last time before they are subsumed.  We think Trupal did a nice job with these images.
​See more of them here.

A Vintage Suzani Lakai or Kungrat Horse Cover, Uzbekistan or Northern Afghanistan.

3/2/2016

0 Comments

 
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When it comes to the occult art of textile attribution, I'm just going to come right out and admit my conclusions are based almost entirely on very remote supposition and dodgy logic.  If I've said that before, it bears repeating in case it sounds like I know what I'm talking about.  My only claim to distinction in the field is an eye for a half-decent thing, generally speaking, and a fairly retentive/associative brain.
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I still think it's worth sharing my amateur attribution process even if it is largely bollocks and that's what I'm doing here.  We picked up this lovely suzani on the weekend which was fucking irresponsible of us because we are broke, but if we allowed impecuniousness to restrict our acquisitions we'd be living under a grain sack in an alley somewhere. Get off our dicks, man.
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What's not to like isn't something you can say too often about the general run of suzanis.  They are an acquired taste- often loud, chaotic, lopsided, alien, violent... in fact, everything that might challenge the comfy urbanised eye, so it's rare to find a piece from this tradition that doesn't assault or appal you in some way.  We like visual assaults and our house is full of them; this blanket is a nice reprieve.  I think this is of Lakai or Kungirat origin, from a comparison with other pieces, but like most of what you're about to read that's not set in stone.
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The late 
20th century signalled the end of many of the transhumant lifestyles and value systems that conceived these striking embroideries which had anyway been degraded by commercial imperatives.

Suzanis were once dowery and prestige items, painstakingly assembled from handspun, organically-dyed fibres- silk, cotton and wool- by and for family members and bearing culturally relevant symbolism.  The endless steppes and monochromatic winters of Central Asia must have rendered these repositories of colour and comfort an incredible contrastive richesse.
Sadly, it was this dynamism that caught collectors' eyes and tipped Uzbek, Kirghiz and Tadjik women off to the fact that there was a greater market for their domestic work which was historically only to be sold off in a pinch.  Cue an avalanche of industrial dyes, synthetic materials, half-arsed drawing and sloppy execution; a quick flick through Etsy will familiarise you with the nasty tail end of suzani production.

I'm not an age-snob, though, and don't accept the generally-held view that older equals better, more valuable and more artistically worthy.  There's plenty of shitty tat floating around with little but age and patrician provenance to recommend it.  Agnostic curiosity fuels my interest in the history of the modest objects we collect.
Horse blankets are used to trick out one's pony wherever their tremendous value as companions is recognised.  This one is 150cm wide at the flared end xs 125cm long, with an unusual leaf-green cotton ground and lavish chain stitch in flossy handpsun silk.
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Green is the colour of paradise (pardaes/ferdaws) in Islamic tradition, gardens were viewed as aspirational luxuries by nomadic peoples and both notions are expressed in this design, which pleases me greatly.

Most of the dyes appear to be organically-derived and I say that for two reasons.  They exhibit the wandering variation called a
brash, from the Persian 'mottled', and that's the first thing out the window when commercial dyes are in play.  Also, these shades are relatively easily achieved by tweaking a handful of humble dyestuffs.  They aren't the insane clown posse colours- the Cadbury purple, sizzling lipstick red and Travolta black- that are the usual aim of synthetics.  The orange is perhaps suspect, but it's not as hot and solid in life as it appears in some of these pics.  Would a Central Asian lady really have reached for the Dylon to achieve a perversely naturalistic palette?  It's a bit counterintuitive.  

​The embroidery is suffocatingly dense rather than loosely indifferent, nor are there the usual expanses of expedient plain stitch seen on commercially-intended pieces.  If these are natural dyes, then this all-over chain stitch suggests an earlier date along with the absence of any machine sewing and artificial materials (as far as I can tell)
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The fact that it's a horse cover in parochial taste also bolsters the idea that it was not made explicitly for sale and could therefore be older.
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The floral backing prints are Chinese circa 1960, retain a bit of horse-grease and have been patched, which points to sustained use; these are replaced as they wear out on favoured older items, but these ones may be perfectly original and contemporaneous with this piece.  The green base is in good nick with one or two usage whoopsies.  It doesn't have that battered, threadbare look of truly antique cotton, nor does it possess the tight, polished regularity of modern production, so... first half of the 20th C?
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The designs are first sketched out on the base cloth, traditionally by a knowledgeable senior woman in consultation with the prospective embroider/s and according to the intended purpose.  You can see the underdrawing in the images directly above and left.  It looks like ink applied with a brush rather than marker pen, so I'm going to assume that weighs in favour of age.

Let's consider iconography.  Academics are still losing buttplugs and choking each other out over the origins of the paisley or 
boteh motif so I'll leave that one alone. 
Except to say that common sense and lex parsimoniae scream obviously vegetal.  Sorry- couldn't help it.
That central mutant double-tailed boteh supposedly incorporates aspects of the scorpion and ram's horns (protection from misfortune and strength, respectively); the triangles are abstract talismanic elements.  I think we all understand the flowers.

​These paisley + millefleurs compositions always remind me of Mughal designs.  Those northern Indian aesthetes shared a love of embroidery with the suzani tribals and their refined idiom was butched up on the steppes, the local ancient totemic symbols settling into these formal, symmetrical arrangements.
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More or less symmetrical, because you can rely on a suzani to bring the random and confound Western expectations of tidy resolution.  See the first image and note the single blue boteh in the border, then the little blue motif to the right in the above pic.  Guaranteed 100% effective against evil eye.

This particular composition implies the artist knew how to pimp a horse in accordance with the expectations of an extant tradition, and understood the talismanic significance of these devices rather than just throwing them around in a decorative manner.  This piece looks coherent, and therefore older.  Most modern suzanis are essentially joyous visual gobbledegook- pastiches full of obvious appropriation.
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On the other hand, the spacing of these elements is slightly funky and inelegant, which can imply modernity.  Unhelpfully, wild drawing is also a feature of some very old work and some groups are renowned for their punk stylings, especially- you guessed it- the Lakai and Kungirat.  Doh.  Both groups are noted horse fanatics; the double-boteh symbol is generally attributed to the Lakai but those guys really love red and it's weird to find something of theirs without it.
The internet hasn't coughed up any similar examples, so I'm going to take a punt and say Kungirat, circa 1930.
​Is that crazy?  You tell me.  EDIT after reading this piece I am inclined to this this is a daur blanket for embellishing the Kungrat bride's ride to her husband's family.  Cool.
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liked this incredible antique suzani

30/11/2015

 
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Uzbekistan, circa 1830.
​Recently passed in at auction after the bidding didn't break the lower est. of 50 000 euros.
Will fifty thousand of you bitches please buy my book STAT so I can fulfil my fucking destiny?
​Have a heart.

Our Textiles, Pt 3: Tok wi- a Batik Altar Cloth from Northern Java, circa 1920

12/8/2015

 
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Though I've always loved batik we possess very few examples and I was pleased to buy this tok wi or Taoist altar cloth locally for an extremely modest sum.
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Tok wi like this one were made in Java for the Peranakan or Baba-Nyonya ethnic group, who largely reside in Malaysia and Singapore.  They are descended from Han Chinese settlers (mostly male) and the brides they contracted both from around Malaysia and the Indonesian archipelago (the latter historically purchased as slaves with the connivance of the British colonial authority.)  

Perhaps more commonly known as the Straits Chinese to those outside the region, the Peranakan form a distinct creole culture famed for their cuisine, mercantile prosperity and the corresponding richness of their aesthetic, an intriguing blend of Chinese and local Straits techniques and imagery.  The image to the left depicts the wedding of a Peranakan couple from Penang. (Wiki)  

This tok wi is an example of one culture interpreted through the creative lens of another. 
Peranakan Malays maintained the Taoist beliefs of their Han ancestors amid the Islam and Animist traditions practised by the surrounding peoples.  Tok wi were used to decorate altar tables during important occasions.  This one features a recognisably Chinese cast of auspicious characters; the lotus, the pearl-chasing dragon, the eight anthropomorphic Immortals and a pair of romping Qilin and Fenghuang birds.  Together they represent longevity, good fortune and familial harmony.
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These stalwarts of the Chinese pantheon have been interpreted by textile artists on the northern coast of Java, working in this traditionally Indonesian medium to produce these cloths for their wealthy neighbours. 
The drawing exhibits the joyous irregularity that is such a definitive characteristic of coastal Javan batik, entirely distinct from the batik kraton produced for local nobility with its often static, abstract formality.  

You could argue that this composition is a bit crowded and slightly chaotic in contrast to some other, exceedingly elegant examples in limited palettes. 

Personally I find a lot of formal Chinese arrangements boring and prefer the challenges to symmetry and the projection of numinous energy in this lively piece.
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I love the fierce acclaim expressed by the flanking qilin, the googly dragon and unapologetic palette, obviously derived from traditional Chinese famille rose (or vert) ceramics, with its brilliant interplay of rouge, fuchsia and jade. 
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It's difficult to pin an exact date on this piece.  These colours could be either natural or synthetic.  I'll take a stab and place it in the second quarter of the 20th C just from the look and feel of  the cotton, which is fine, dry and slightly irregular, possessing that flattened, tell-tale weariness of something with a good half century of use under its belt.  That being said, traditional practises survived up til the present day in Indonesia, so all chronological attribution is just inexpert conjecture on my part and might turn out to be complete bollocks.
Batik is a wax-resist technique, the fundamentals of which are covered by a fairly decent Wiki page.  Areas of cloth are alternately protected from and exposed to dyes in sequence with the careful application of hot wax from a canting vessel.  The wax inevitably cracks during the dying process, allowing spidery seams of colour to stain the underlying fabric (below right), producing the veining that is a signature of the technique.  Some designs allow block-stamping but this tok wi looks like freehand or batik tulis to me.
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Some collectors balk at any wear or signs of use on prospective acquisitions but I like to see stuff like the votive wine(?)stain visible in the lower right hand quadrant.  Tok wi are ritual objects and shit happens at weddings and funerals.

As a general snuffler and appreciator of things unusual, I find this cloth particularly beguiling on a number of different levels.  It reminds me of our family trips to Peranakan strongholds (Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Penang, Phuket, Indonesia) as a kid and the distinctive otherness of their cultural expression.  The icecream-coloured townhouses crammed against each other in the older neighbourhoods.  Eating pork buns (char siu bao) from a tin cart whilst visiting my Indian-Malay aunt's house in the middle of KL, a resolutely Muslim city.  

> Holding this tok wi up to the window infuses our slanting winter sunlight with the pressing golden qualities of  a south-east Asian afternoon.  Few objects speak to me as plainly of their origins.
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< You can see the strictly nominal difference between the 'right' side of the cloth in the upper half of this folded example and the reverse, another diagnostic element of true batik.  
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liked this NYT review of 'The Sultans of Deccan India' show @ the Met.

11/5/2015

 
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There's a really beautiful slideshow of featured images.  See it Here.


Our Textiles, Part 2: Some vintage embroidered Afghani dress pieces

29/4/2015

 
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A year or so ago I was lucky enough to score a large cache of old Indian and southeast Asian textiles on a local auction site, and for very little money (because we po).  As I began to ease the individual pieces out of their plastic shrouds it became apparent that we had done quite well.  Enjoying them in the privacy of our own home feels rather selfish and we'd like to share these delightful works of art with a wider audience. 

We began this series with a post on a couple of Banjara gala and encourage you to read that first for an overview of this sort of thing. 

Domestic textiles, especially tribal work, have long been seen as the poorer cousin twice-removed of the princely silks and ikat favoured by prominent collectors and institutions, but with the latter examples being priced so far out of many enthusiasts' reach in recent years, perhaps these 'homelier' items are starting to get the attention they deserve.  There's nothing basic about this gorgeous gem-like Baluch breast panel.  The casual trade often just calls these pieces 'tribal Afghan' or 'Kuchi' but I'm going to stick my neck out with the specific attribution because of the characteristic nature of the motifs.

These are sections from voluminous robe-like dresses simply constructed from plain fabric- homespun or trade cloth- then embellished by the female relatives of the recipient.  I don't know if these older panels were saved for use in newer garments and assume they're being salvaged mainly for sale these days, but exemplary tribal textiles and dowery work were historically treasured and recycled, for instance into appliqué covers and festive hangings.

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The panel, centring on a petite neckline finished with the brilliant little tassel featured above, is, I think, plain or satin-stitched with knobbly silk floss over a backcloth of slightly faded apricot-pink handwoven cotton.  Some of the silk colours seem organically-derived, particularly the blue, but purples are often suspicious and this one looks like a commercial dye.  The saturated colours and dense geometry of this composition remind me of enamelled tiles or cloisonné

The Baluch or Baloch (Balochi: بلوچ - the term has a dozen different spellings in English) people are/were a nomadic minority famous for their low black tents and lately occupy an area stretching across Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan partially determined by the pressures of conflict.  Baluch women are noted for their extravagant dress and a domestic rug production long favoured by the cannier end of the market.  Their aesthetic tradition seems pulled between two opposing poles; the sombre palette and hypnotic, conservative repetition of older work contrasting violently with an almost chaotic modern idiom reflecting the upheavals of their bellicose environment.

This blouse piece is all archaic motif rather than the wonky representationalism of Baluch war rugs.  
The field is dominated by hooked designs that are variously interpreted as stars, spiders, scorpions, flowers or ram horns etc etc; as with all tribal iconography, some derivations are obvious and others are deeply obscured in the earliest cycles of shamanistic ritual practice and not even the peoples who utilise them are sure of the distinction.  It is sufficient to say they are intended as protective amulets and their efficacy is derived from the very ancient principle of confusing the scrutiny of malevolent forces with visual sophistry.  Note the imperfect symmetry in the outer guards; these seemingly purposeful misalignments are also found in rugs.  You can see a detail of the reverse below.
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I guesstimate this piece was made in the first half, maybe even the first quarter of the 20th C.  

In contrast is this suspiciously tourist-friendly niqaab type-construction below (I have neither the patience nor inclination to unravel the intricacies of veiling terminology), recently acquired from a bazar in northern Afghanistan that began life as a circa 1980's dress front.  Although I don't know which group produced this work, the material differences are obvious and the sizzling modern palette certainly underlines the gulf between contemporary and traditional dyestuffs.  Personally, I enjoy both the mellowed harmony of the older piece and the eye-humping garishness of this later example.
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Treasures from the Otago Museum: Maori textiles & Moa egg

25/4/2015

 
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BELOW RIGHT  A piupiu or flax (harakeke- Phormium species) skirt.  The plant is well known overseas as an ornamental; we grow a number of cultivars on our own property, but the main type used for weaving is the Swamp Flax (P tenax) - the leaves are longer and the fibres stronger. You'll find contemporary flax weavers across the ethnic spectrum, making everything from traditional garments to handbags to paper, and I wish the usefulness of this material was more widely known outside New Zealand.
It was really difficult to shoot in the frankly stygian conditions of the Tangata Whenua (indigenous) gallery, and if you're hell bent on taking pics in a dark institution, we advise three things: a piece of dark fabric you can whip out to abolish the reflections that will otherwise ruin your best shots, an early start to avoid the inevitable crowds, and a tri or monopod, so that you can avoid douchebag flashmonkey syndrome.

That being said, we generally enjoy low lux settings and were pleased with this lovely, almost lunar image of the intact Moa egg (left).  It is an intensely beautiful and strangely satisfying object and it's nice to know that an enormous bird once thought the same way. Below: An Upland Moa.
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NZ Flax species are members of the agave family, which is widely exploited by a number of disparate indigenous cultures.  BELOW Unknown wahine (Maori woman) wearing a traditional cloak made from pounded flax fibre (wiki).
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Piupiu strands are cut lengthwise down the flax leaf and then relieved of their tough waxy coating at intervals so that the exposed fibres will take dye, resulting in the bands of contrasting colour and texture you see here. A resist-dyeing process, I suppose.  The mellow golden hue is the natural colour of dried harakeke.
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BELOW a Kete, or 'kit' bag as they are popularly known, again made from flax fibre.  Although there are quite a few fine old examples floating around, I believe that the best are distinguished not by age, but by their technical and artistic merit and many awesome ketes are being made today.  I alternate between contemporary handbags and kete.  You'll get around three years out of a well-constructed one before the corners start to fray and then you can either retire it to a wall somewhere or onto the fire or compost heap :)  A dignified end.  I've posted this piece before in an earlier photoessay from this gallery but you'll just have to deal.
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ABOVE An example of taaniko (fine weave) at the edge of a harakeke cloak.  I am unsure as to the nature of the dyes involved but presume they are a mix of natural and synthetic.

RIGHT Kahu kurī - dogskin cloak.  The Kuri was a Polynesian canine brought to NZ by maori from distant islands and became extinct around the end of the 19th C. Their skin was cut into strips and assembled into these chiefly garments, the possession and bestowal of which conferred tremendous mana or prestige.  Despite the number of kuri who must have died in the commission of this item and my own deeply pro-dog conditioning, I find these robes oddly unprovocative.  Perhaps for the same reason that I can't muster hate for vintage fur. 
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Intention and context must be respected if we are to survive as a matrix of mature cultures and not just lurch from one pissy Twittermob/fundamentalist-da-fay to the next, because that shit ends in loss and tears.  

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A Kungrad / Kungirat Tent or Yurt Band

24/11/2014

 
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From what I can discern, the Kungrad (or Kungirat or Kohngirad, which are the most widely recognised English renderings of the name) are a somewhat amorphous nomadic/formerly nomadic group, strung out between the Khazaks and Mongols and sometimes identifying with these and other neighbouring tribes.  

According to Wikipedia, "variations on the name include Onggirat, Ongirat, Qongrat, Kungrad, Qunghrãt, Wangjila (王紀剌), Yongjilie (雍吉烈), and Guangjila (廣吉剌) in Chinese sources and Ongrat or Kungrat in Turkish."  You can decide which one you prefer.   Today they live in Kazakhstan, Turkestan, Mongolia, China and Afghanistan and are generally identified as a Kazakh sub-tribe.
There was something extra about Kungirat ladies historically; Ghengis Khan's mother, great grandmother and principle wife, the empress Börte Üjin, were all of this tribe, as were many of the other wives and consorts that married into China's medieval dynasties.  >  This is Empress Radnashiri (d. 1322) a consort of the Yuan Dynasty in China.  She knew her way around statement bling.  

The textile you see here is a tent or yurt (or ger or jirga) band, which is a length of flat kilim wool woven on a narrow mobile loom.  Some are strictly functional- more or less plain, used to secure the felt or goat hair walls that line traditional tents and pressed into service when it's time to move, strapping loads onto animals and vehicles.  Others, like those below, are decorative and lavishly adorned with a variety of techniques including felting, appliqué, embroidery, brocade and pile panels, forming part of the ancient suite of formal heraldry common to every self-respecting Central Asian householder up to present times.
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The colour red is perhaps the most fundamental and recognisable element of these nomads' aesthetic practice.  Its ancient biological associations with blood and familial continuity meld with those of martial prowess and general good fortune, not to mention plain old visibility amid those often-monotonous landscapes.  Back when wandering a wee bit too far in the wrong direction could get you an arrow in the throat, it was better to be able to recognise your neighbours from a distance rather than on close inspection.
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Here's the band we acquired recently.  We've loved tent bands and animal trappings for a long time, probably because they are the sort of honest, homely, noncommercial items that bear the most forthright imagery- symbols and compositions that you only really see on the oldest rugs and bag faces secluded in museums and snooty private collections.  They speak to my deeply buried itchy feet, of loading everything onto something hairy and protesting and setting off somewhere else when it gets too hot or cold.

Unsurprisingly, the stuff woven expressly for sale is often generic and crowd-pleasing (witness the mind-numbing stream of gul rugs churned out by Turkmen weavers for the Russian market even before 1900) but I think it's safe to say the woman behind this band wasn't too worried about what a rug dealer might think of it.
Price-wise, tent bands really run the gamut from fifty bucks to several thousand dollars for the oldest and rarest, even when fragmented; they're one of the few areas in which the novice can still score a stone-cold bargain as far as graphic/authentic bang for the buck is concerned.  We picked up these two lengths of the same 9m band (they're often cut for sale which is immensely annoying) for well under a hundy locally.  There are lots of bog-standard Uzbek and Turkish straps kicking around but Kungirat stuff is a bit rarer so we think we did well.  Perhaps they're not as commercial due to the madly extravagant, almost Dr Seuss-y nature of their motifs.  Here in NZ such puzzling items tend to be onsold by returning tourists who, having been pressured into buying them as souvenirs whilst on trips through Turkey, rarely have any clue what they are.  The touristy bits of Turkey seem to be a clearing house for random weavings sourced from all over the Middle East and Central Asia; most of it is dross but there's the odd whacky gem amongst all the rug-picker rejects.
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The rough plainweave base of madder-dyed wool is embroidered suzani-style with satin and chain stitch and jööjhed further with long-stemmed tassels. 
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BELOW  The swastika-type symbol is incredibly ancient- paleolithic, in fact.  The word itself is Sanskrit (svastika), denoting anything auspicious or likely to engender good fortune.  This one is a little bit confused but I love that sort of thing.
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I'd say this band is a fairly old thing since it's seen a lot of use and everything is hand spun, including the repairs and embellishments; let's call it first half of the 20th C.  The battered condition is pretty typical from what I've seen.  There are some pristine examples to be found, having been made and then put away as the family's circumstances changed; many nomad groups were forcibly settled under Collectivisation.   
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Let's have a look at the motifs.  LEFT  Front, with the reverse directly below.  Everyone has different ideas about the origins of these symbols but I don't think we'll ever really know for sure so you might as well decide for yourself.  Some of these ones are intact while others have been rubbed almost bare.  You can see a later repair in the mauve-grey element above.

<  Tree of Life?  Or something totemic with abstract eagle-foot embellishment?  

The white looks like cotton, but on closer inspection it turns out to be really fine silky mohair-like wool, at least to my eye.  Everything else is the kind of hard, glossy, kempy wool that you find on rustic items, exhibiting the typically knobbly and uneven diameter of handspun thread.
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The ram horn references are pretty explicit in some of these symbols; it's a popular theme and can be found in virtually every Central Asian item we've collected.
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ABOVE AND LEFT  Tassel details.  Each one is wrapped in a bewildering array of colours which I imagine uses up any short ends left over after large projects are completed.

BELOW  Kazakhs and velvet go together like tomato and sauce, so it's no surprise to find a scrap used to reinforce a bit of edge wear.
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BELOW  Right side up.  Good as new  :)
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The dyes are a rowdy mix of organic and industrial, with the former predominating, despite what I assumed at first glance.  The red of the satin stitch blocks looks crazier here than in life so it could actually be natural, but some of the replacement orange looks hot-n-dodgy and there's the inevitable whacky greens and used-to-be-blue-now-shitty-grey failures here and there.  BELOW LEFT  The end (literally).
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Our Textiles: Two vintage Indian Banjara Gala embroideries with shisha and cowries.

2/9/2014

 
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Disclaimer- I have a pretty superficial knowledge of Indian textiles and this series won't be any scholarly dissertation.  But we do collect an eclectic range of Islamic and Asian material and have a very broad sort of meta-familiarity on our side, so hopefully our observations will be of some use.  We both love this field and it has never been easier for the dufus or layperson to appreciate and acquire items from its immense artistic legacy.   

The Banjara (or Lambadi/Lamani) people are a formerly nomadic tribe, largely (sometimes nominally) Hindu, distributed across India and are one of the putative ancestors of the Roma populations scattered throughout Europe.  They've suffered their share of the socioeconomic disadvantages incurred by virtually all traditionally mobile groups compelled by policy and circumstance to take up subsistence agriculture, but seem to have retained a distinct identity.   

It's safe to say they enjoy ornamentation.  To my dilettante eye, their aesthetic has a lot in common with that of other designated 'tinker/gypsy' (I find these terms borderline derogatory but they have wide historical currency) and dissenter groups across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and into Central Asia such as the Kutchi, Kalashi and Baluch.  It rejoices in the vivid hues and massed amulet devices of fortune and protection and declarations of portable wealth.  

Settlement seems to instigate a pattern of divestment familiar to any collector of ethnographic textiles.  The stuff that Nana wore loses its relevance as the cultural context is lost; these pieces are sold to traders who then move them on to tourists and western collectors.  While this may seem a melancholy reality, in practise it has resulted in the preservation of a lot of wonderful material.  I bought a collection of really nice vintage textiles from a lady who'd spent time in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, getting to know the locals and being gifted old family items as tokens of appreciation for the work she was doing.  These two pieces are the first from that group that I've posted so far.

GALA WITH CHAIN-STITCH, LEAD BEADS AND COWRIES, KARANTAKA, EARLY 20TH C
A gala is a rectangle of embroidered cloth, usually homespun cotton in older pieces like this one, worn a little like a hood to protect the nape of a woman's neck while she's carrying pots on her head.  It is secured via the tassels at the top.  Cowrie shells are ancient symbols of the Feminine and divine protection and are used pretty lavishly in Subcontinental textiles.  They also have a more practical attribute in that they weight the piece so that it sits well in situ.  This one measures 35 x 27cm, excluding fringing.
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It retains most of its original ragged tassels (see details below) and even the soft lead beads that decorate them.  From the tufts of white thread in the central band I guess it might have lost a line of cowries there.

The chain stitching is incredibly dense, covering every nanometre of the underlying structure, every cotton thread spun and loomed by hand before being worked to this glorious extent.  A cursory investigation of the interweb leads me to believe this piece is from Karnataka (formerly Mysore), as the style and technique is characteristic of that region.  I'll stick my neck out and say it's from the first third of the 20Cth.  There's not an artificial thread on it, the colours are vegetable-derived and have that almost indefinable patina of both wear and age.  

Dating handspun cotton can be difficult since these materials and techniques were used until very recently throughout Asia; you can encounter pieces separated by a century that are hard for the beginner to differentiate.   But once you've handled a decent number of pieces even the novice can start to get a feel for relative vintages.
In some traditions these older gamuts gave way to brighter 'chemical' dyes as far back as Victorian times, basically as soon as they were synthesised and distributed by western manufacturers.  You'll see these azo and aniline colours, often solid greens, blue-purples and freaky reds, creeping in amongst the softer shades in rugs, clothing, scarves, tent and animal ornamentation from around 1870 onwards.  Other groups held tight to organic dyestuffs until the last few decades and even today some of these mind-bogglingly old techniques are being revived, often through womens' craft collectives.  Below right- rear detail.
We don't view the use of synthetic dyes as an aesthetic catastrophe, but we're a minority among collectors who have historically been obsessed with excluding anything containing them from personal or scholarly appreciation.  Rug snobs are the worst, but hey- we're happy to pick up the awesome pieces they've discounted because of a single colour. 
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In both of these pieces the cotton thread and backing cloth is visibly hand-spun and hand-loomed, full of natural irregularities and possessing a soft, rubbed, weary sort of dryness, factors that reliably denote age in the absence of provenance.  More recent cotton is smoother, waxier in its finish, has a tighter handle and tends to be synthetically coloured (though this is not always so.)  Modern embroideries tend also to be 'neater', more determinedly symmetrical and less idiosyncratic in their design.  The stitching itself is almost always larger, coarser and more cursory looking, particularly in items produced specifically for sale rather than personal or dowery use, though elements of the design might still be perfectly ancient.  The 'arrow' or directional bands to each side of the above piece are a motif used by tribes all the way from Tangiers to the Tonkin Gulf for thousands of years, and are still employed today.
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Organic dyes do tend to fade softly and evenly, (although there are a surprising number of corrosive exceptions that will actually destroy the underlying fibres) and inorganic colours are sometimes jarring and less 'harmonious' to the extrinsic eye, but harmony isn't everything, and these considerations were not uppermost in the minds of the various creators.  As an artist, I find this distinction spurious.  Not to mention sexist, conservative, arbitrary and gobsmackingly arrogant.  The same people who'd praise Picasso or Basquiat for using chrome yellow think they know better than the Banjara lady who likes neon pink.  (Rant over.)
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GALA WITH APPLIQUÉ, SHISHA MIRRORS & COWRIES, MADHYA PRADESH, EARLY 20TH C
This gala is quite possibly older still than the one above.  It's a rather tired old soldier with a few glass losses and no tassels left to speak of, but its enduring beauty and purpose as a protective item could not be more emphatically expressed.

It's from a Banjara family in Madhya Pradesh.  It features various raised embroidery, appliqué and shisha work, the pieces of handblown glass couched around with sturdy chain stitch.  (You can see the reverse directly below)  The dusty saffron palette just breathes age, its colours both rich and subdued in contrast to the remains of the replacement stitching in whacky green that once held the ties in place.  

The shisha glass panels are thick with bubbly irregularities and burnished with a petrol-blue lustre, in contrast to the foil-backed silver mirrors used in contemporary work.  They are murky, jewelled phylactery, staring down misfortune and jealousy.   Below- rear details.
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In the detail below you can make out a number of the techniques employed in this piece.  Visible also in the vacant glass apertures is the old plain-weave cloth that forms the basis of this textile, with the exposed stretches only slightly faded in comparison, a factor which also argues for organic-based dyes and an early date in this instance.

I really enjoy the spiky bands of appliqué and lively floating thread on this gala.  Despite the stiff visual competition that crowds our bedroom, it commands a very special kind of attention, lurking on the black wall like Argos of the hundred eyes and never, ever blinking.
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I'll be continuing this series so if textiles are your thing, keep checking back.

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Photoessay: Tribal Papua New Guinea & the Mt Hagen singsing, circa 1968.  Part 2

14/7/2014

 
As I've already mentioned, my father James (Jim) travelled from Australia to Papua New Guinea circa 1968 to work as a mechanic in that protectorate and trundle around with his failing, dust and fungus-ridden Soviet camera (he was an economical guy, lol), recording whatever took his fancy.  Most of these images are of dubious technical quality for the simple reason that the shutter curtain in his crappy camera was falling to pieces; the originals are truly horrible to behold and I take my hat off to the Lovely R and his patient, respectful remediation.  As I know little about the groups involved, I'll confine my remarks to personal observation.  
You can find the first instalment of this series Here.
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ABOVE & BELOW  Confluence: observers, participants and regulators captured in the same frame.  Even though we've pored over all these images for some time now, it's difficult to judge the precise level of tension that surely must have been a feature of these occasions, so confrontational on every level from physical display to subconscious perception.  I suppose there are as many reactions to these scenes as there are individuals to enact and spectate them, but having once resided in a tribal area myself, I can tell you there would have been an edge to all this bonhomie.
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ABOVE  Some sort of Native Police parade dress slash band situation, complete with spats, sashes and pith helmets.  Ah, colonialism.  It's a bitch but you can't fault the wardrobe.  As a colonial myself I've always been struck by the arrant otherness of British sartorial tradition.  There are few sights on earth more surreal and perplexing than a hundred bubblegum-pink/shiny brown men sweating buckets in full military kit on a 38ºC pre-monsoon afternoon.

The spears and totemic devices visible in the background belong to one of the groups in full tribal regalia massed behind them in what must have been a stunning juxtaposition. 

LEFT & BELOW  Speaking of juxtapositions...
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LEFT  My personal favourite of all Dad's images.  Asaro mudmen in the ghostly regalia that assisted their escape from certain death when one of their warring parties was routed and forced to hide in a river.  After dusk, the party emerged covered in silt and so terrified their enemies that they were able to effect an escape...

This popular story seems to be complete bullshit, if the more mundane account I dug up in Scholarspace is anything to go by.  

In reality, the original mud-daubing is apparently related to pre-colonial girituwai disguise practice, adopted by individual Asaro men intending to conduct raids against neighbouring tribes; it behoved them to do it ninja-styles in order to avoid identification and reprisal. 

 In 1957, an elaborate massed version (as per this picture) was displayed at the inaugural Eastern Highlands Agricultural Show for the first time as an apparently ad hoc expression of Asaro tribal identity and cultural practice.  

You learn something new every day.
I love this image; the random guy at bottom left gets me every time, and knowing my dad, he probably waved him into the frame right in the middle of the Asaro routine.  Mad skills.  They don't teach that at art school.

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Photo du jour: Balinese Leyak Mask

10/6/2014

 
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You might not be able to make it out, but this is a fantastic mid-century Balinese mask we picked up from another collector a little while back.  We think it might be one of the leyak spirits that form Rangda's entourage, or even Mata Gede, an associated monkey (?) spirit.  It's difficult to find reliable accounts of the Balinese pantheon since many sources seem to contradict one another, but we are so in love with this piece; it is everything the later, more commercial masks are not- inhabited, expressive, idiosyncratic.

Like so many of these older masks one of teeth had been broken, so I modelled a new one out of polymer clay and attached it carefully.  I'm not really happy with the result (it was a wee bit hasty) so I might re-do it some time soon and blog the process for anyone else out there wondering how to restore these incredible masks in an inexpensive and reversible manner.  I'll post more pics of this mask some time soon, along with details from the Afghan and Indian textiles I picked up recently.  I know I said I would ages ago, but *jumps up and runs out of the room* 

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Photos du Jour- elements from the collection of Indian/Afghani textiles that arrived today omg.

24/2/2014

 

I had to wait the whole weekend (!) to receive this parcel of 20th C tribal and old-skool textiles from a lady who had lived in northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, picking up pretties as she went.

At least 20 pieces.  And yes, I am losing my shit right now, wandering back and forth through a wilderness of handwoven goodness whilst saliva runs from both corners of my mouth and my head is bursting with colours and stitches and sparkles and sequins and couching and...  If I thought they could stand the rough treatment, I would roll around on them like the Southpark dad over that bed full of groupies.

Here is a small preview- I will blog the lot in the fullness of time as there are some glorious things and I don't believe this domestic stuff gets the respect it deserves.  Some things are really quite old in themselves as well as representing some very archaic forms and ideas.  I hope you enjoy them.
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Treasures from the Tangata Whenua Gallery, Otago Museum.  Part 1

30/10/2013

 
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Te Paranihi, a wakataua or war canoe, circa 1840.
Tangata Whenua (People of the land) is the widely accepted Maori term used to describe 'indigenous' New Zealanders of Polynesian descent.  Many New Zealanders of European descent find the distinction confrontational and even antagonistic to their own love of/belonging to this idiosyncratic little archipeligo, which is an unhappy state of affairs for all involved.  As my own understanding of history and the human diaspora has developed, I've come to personally regard locale-specific 'indigenousness' as an artifact of insufficient chronological perspective.  I mean, where does anyone draw the biological or cultural line?  But other peeps are free to feel as indigenous or exotic as they please as far as I'm concerned; I just can't get bent out of shape by any current official designation.

My appreciation of Maori cultural expression was far more adversely affected by the patriarchal posturing adopted by many of its most vocal contemporary exponents.  This macho, martial emphasis was embraced by a prurient media willing to trade genuine inquiry and dialogue for the mileage accrued in the course of stoking disharmony.
The truth, as they say, is out there.  It's no easy thing to drag your asphyxiating culture out from under the three-tonne toad that is colonization.  Some of my own ancestors ended up on the other side of the world trying to escape its clutches, stripped of their language and customary connection to their own forsaken island.  While, in my opinion, the concept of tapu is still employed to underscore masculine primacy within Maoritanga, that may concede something to feminist scrutiny in the fullness of time.  Looking over the objects in this gallery goes some way to restoring noa, the feminine principle, to its rightful status.  (A word on pronunciation- I apologize for the omission of macrons; they're often not supported and end up corrupting the text.)
Right: Ranginui and Papatuanuku, the primordial human couple in conjugal embrace.  Poutokomanawa support pole from a Taupo house.

The story of Rangi (sky) and Papa (earth) is as universal and probably as old as conscious human perception, transcending every petty differential to speak to everyone who has ever loved and held another.  In their tender and mutual necessity and in the depths of their immortal allegory we are confronted with everything we ignore in the crush of daily life.

That the equity of their union should be so anciently regarded as ideal is bitterly ironic in light of our everyday violence toward each other.

How infinitely preferable is this loving depiction to the torture porn of the christian crucifix or the seething hypocrisy of islamic proscription?  Yes, I'm dissing monotheism.  Consider the alternatives.
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Left: Openwork frieze from the prow of the Te Paranihi waka, a canoe originally for Paturomu, a chief based at Koroniti.  Portions of this craft were taken from an earlier Ngati Toa wakataua called Waikahu.  

This is a panel from the stern.
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Above:  Lintel panel, Bay of Islands.  Many such pieces show women giving birth, symbolizing spiritual and existential passage.  One of the many feminine articles representing noa, the sacred female principle.
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Canoe figurehead from Long Beach, Otago.
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Kete or basket, woven of NZ flax or harakeke. 20thC, Hawkes Bay region.
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Maripi Tuatini. Mako shark tooth knife. Such elaborate implements were employed in the cutting and consuming human flesh, a highly tapu procedure. Its openwork detailing appears damaged. Unlocalized.
Please respect the Otago Museum's copyright of these images.  Do not reproduce without permission.

*   More Photoessays Here   *


Treasures from the Pacific Peoples gallery, Otago Museum, vol 4.

25/8/2013

 
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Above: an Adaro sea deity from the Solomon Islands.

The freedom and breadth of perception that allowed the unknown artist to represent an oceanic spirit in the manner depicted above is pretty breathtaking, really.

The union of the entire fish with the anthropomorphic body, complete with strange, swirling tail and piscine mascots is a perplexing and poetic amalgam.  Strange that the northern peoples of my own ancestry did not seem to have constructed or worshiped such intimate embodiments, despite being almost as dependent on the sea as the islanders of the Pacific.

Did christianity abolish such archetypes?  Why have I never seen anything like this from them, even on cave walls?  Maybe I just need to look a bit closer.

The solar motifs on the Austral Island house post to the left are far more familiar and indeed, almost universal.

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These are pendents from the Sepik River region in Papua New Guinea.  The one on the left is worn over the heart to protect it from arrows.  That on the right is held in the mouth during battle.  I cannot imagine my own reaction to someone rushing toward me with this figure gripped in their teeth whilst intent on my death.

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Detail from a ceremonial scoop carved from hardwood, Austral Islands.

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A necklace of human teeth and fibre, Kiribati.

Hanging from a wall at the rear of the exhibit, this was nonetheless the kind of object that necessitates contemplation, much of it spent sweeping my tongue over my own dentition and wondering how many people it required.  I feel a strange dearth of offence or even empathy; it is a naked thing, oddly mute and aesthetically neutral though there is a distant beauty in its polished ivory and softly lustrous dentine.  In imagining it around my own neck,  I can almost hear the quiet, clattering little patter and click of the teeth as they shift with my movements.  Some of them seem old and worn, others relatively untried.
The incisor to the bottom right was turning bad when it was removed.  Was it sacred or profane?  Respectful of the dead or contemptuous of their existence?

I prefer to contemplate such items in ignorance of their specific context.

*   More Here   *


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