Category: Textiles

A Vintage Banjara dress panel with mirrors & embroidery

16/5/2017

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

10/8/2016

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

3/2/2016

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

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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Photo du Jour: Retro Bird Fabric

29/10/2015

Ye olde graphic design is moving me at the moment, so I thought I'd share a detail from a vintage dress length that somehow turned up on the doorstep almost like it'd been bought online.

Some people might think $10 is 9.99 dollars too much for parrots that look like they were chundered by a jaguar channelling a shaman rolling on something out of a dirty bucket,
but yeah I'm wearing it.

What?

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Vintage Fabric Prints: Paisley & Mid-Century from the Blackthorn collection

27/8/2015

As a child of the Seventies I used to sit staring at the violent blue paisley and peacocks papering the walls of my great-grandmother's new summerhill stone flat and let my eyes go out of focus until the feeling of tilted dissociation became too intense for my small brain. The sight of my dad, a deep russet ginger, in his goldenrod-yellow terry towelling top with laced-up neck is another enduring aesthetic memory of the period. If you were there too, you know how deeply that shit soaked into our DNA.

I've tried to prod and coax and nag the reason why these perfectly normal, conservative people suddenly decided to dress both themselves and their houses like opiated nightmares but no one really seems to know. Rejection of postwar austerity yeah yeah blah blah; all that academic rationale gets us no closer to the empirical truth.

Whatever it was, it began my lifelong love affair with lurid organic design.

My wardrobe is made up of black and the vintage print and ethnic items I find on local auction sites and in thrift shops etc. I either make or customise a lot of my own garments due to the expense, embarrassing homogeneity and arse-chapping crappiness of most contemporary fashion. And the fact of my somewhat heroic personal dimensions, which are pretty much dude with bewbs.

New Zealand was, until very recently, a great place to pick up vintage gear. That's changing with local designers and students getting into repurposing and modding, though, and I now count myself lucky if I can snatch up something decent in the $50 to $100 bracket, which is almost out of my price range. A couple of two-three years ago I paid under $20 for almost everything you see here.

^ This guy is possibly still my favourite. Like most of these lengths, it's made it into a sleeveless dress that suffers regular remodelling.

According to the selvage it's a Viyella (wool + cotton) milled in Japan which means it is beautifully soft, both warm and cool, astoundingly hardwearing and looks as good as the day it was cut from the bolt. Japanese midcentury production of everything from fabrics to guitars is famously high-quality so don't hesitate to pay a bit extra.

> Rayon sounds super-synthetic but it's actually organically-derived from wood pulp and feels like fine, limp and slightly grainy silk, making it a fucking godsend on a sweaty day. This lightweight merlot, candy pink and Fanta-orange piece is now a dress that works with every single lipstick I've ever owned.

Prove me wrong.

> This piece horrified me when I pulled it out of the postbag (the vendor used some Phosho magic in her listing, the shifty bitch) but it has grown on me like... Satanic sputum, or possibly some sort of intergalactic fruiting body. There's a lot of wool in it which makes for a cosy winter experience.

< Out of all the prints in my current rotation, this classic Indo-Persian paisley gets the most public love from weirdly effusive strangers. I paid about $12 for two metres, cobbled it into a knee-length number and rock it with my bluebird earrings.

It's a cotton/synthetic mix, has a weird linear twill texture, was possibly intended for curtains but is just as happy draping arsecheeks. Such is life.

< Quite a little saga behind this lapis, turquoise and camel Viyella, a jewelly cousin to the first example. I was outbid for four meters on a local auction site and nursed that grudge like something lurking in a well until lo and beholding the very same piece for sale a year later at a third of the original price. On it like a fly on poopies! Tremendous gloating exultation!

Until I got round to making it up. Close, nongloating inspection revealed that it was lightly but liberally stained throughout by what looks like sewing machine oil. I console myself with the notion that someone else took the wallet punch. Fellow black clothing aficionados will know the principle darkness conquers (almost) all. Well, so does explosión de colorido because I'll be fucked by shiny violet leprechauns if I can see that nameless splatter from a polite distance.

¡Problema resuelto!

^ My finest recent acquisition and a Modernist/Scandi floral triumph. I probably should have ironed it but you know... domesticity: who has the time for that shit?

Awesome scale and colour attracted me to this piece. The dyes are vibrant and well-registered and the largest white daisy is about ten cm across! Scored about... is it thirteen metres of this rather pristine midweight cotton and will sell some, so if you're in the market for up to ten metres of gorgeous, spacious retro floral abstract, hit me up via Contact. I'm happy to cut it to smaller lengths and will post overseas (at cost).

I feel we should throw this stuff up online as a resource and a bit of insurance against such batshit design heritage being lost to landfills and natural attrition. Feel free to use the pics in your projects if you'll be kind enough to include a link back to this site. I've got a bunch of other prints all squished up in my stash and I'll get round to posting those as a second instalment in this series in the fullness of time.

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

12/8/2015

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

29/4/2015

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 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.

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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Our Textiles: Two vintage Indian Banjara Gala embroideries with shisha and cowries.

2/9/2014

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

I'll be continuing this series so if textiles are your thing, keep checking back.

* More of the strange & the beauteous from our personal collection * Photoessays here *

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A Vintage Banjara dress panel with mirrors & embroidery

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Our Textiles: Two vintage Indian Banjara Gala embroideries with shisha and cowries.

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