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.

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.
​
​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. 

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.

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.  

^ 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!

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.)

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.

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.

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 abrash, 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).  ​

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.  

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.

BELOW  Right side up.  Good as new  :)

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).

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.

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.

GALA WITH APPLIQUÉ, SHISHA MIRRORS & COWRIES, MADHYA PRADESH, EARLY 20TH C

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.

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.

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.

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* 

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.

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.)

Please respect the Otago Museum's copyright of these images.  Do not reproduce without permission.

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.

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.

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

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.