More textile arts

The other exhibit we went to see at the Textile Museum was called People Place and Thing, it consisted of three mini-exhibits. I am not sure why they called it that, but the names of the mini-exhibits made a little more sense.

The first one is called Skin and Bone. The artist, David Halper, has applied some very interesting embroidery to various furs and skins.

The most striking is a large embroidery of a woman on the flank of a full-sized horse. The horse looks real, but it is a model of a horse covered in cowskin, complete with fur.


Then there is a series of embroideries of shadow creatures on animal hides. For example a shadow eagle with the two hands held up to create the shadow. The embroidery is accurate enough to be able to follow it to create your own shadow eagle.


A little bizarre was the set of faces embroidered onto the cross-sections of deer lying on the floor. Each "deer" was a full-sized model of the front half of a deer. Something just a little macabre about that display.


But the embroidery was amazing, the level of detail and shading in the portraits very impressive.


The second mini-exhibit was Faces and Mazes. Here, the artist Lia Cook has executed woven hangings that look like photographs in the level of detail. She used computer software to translate pictures into weaving instructions. The close-up detail of how it was done has a maze-like quality to it, and one hanging actually looks like a maze. Then it looks like a close-up of the weave structure, but when you look at it closely, it is essentially patches of black and white woven in very fine detail. Her work is fascinating, you can get lost in it. Most of the faces were doll faces, but some were actual baby faces.


The third exhibit was called Stumble, it consisted of outsized male heads and figures put together with bits of fabric sewn together and then inflated to form three dimensional figures. The technique was interesting; apparently the artist (Stephen Schofield) wets down the fabric with sugar water and then inflates it, the sugar in the water stiffens the fabric as the water evaporates so that the figure holds its three dimensional shape. To take it down, it is sprayed with ordinary water which washes out the sugar and deflates the figure. The figures are remarkably well done, you can see the musculature reproduced in the fabric.


Of the three exhibits, the last one interested me the least, but only because I have a personal interest in embroidery and weaving; I might be more interested in Stumble if I was a quilter.

The last special exhibit we saw was of Orenburg Shawls. Orenburg is a Russian town, they knit shawls there out of local wool. The shawls are uncommonly light and warm, they are knitted up in lacy patterns. When you see how fine the lace is, you wonder how such a shawl could keep you warm. The description of the display noted that when Russia became Communist, the production of the shawls was collectivized, but after the Communist era ended it went back to being a cottage industry as it was before 1917. Women are so resilient, they just keep on keeping on!

Fashionably wrapped

On Friday several of us from the weaving class went to the Textile Museum to see a couple of exhibits: People Place and Thing and the Kashmiri Shawls.


People Place and Thing was interesting, but the Kashmiri Shawls were enthralling.

In the Kashmir valley of northwest India they used to weave amazing shawls made from the hair of Himalayan goats, called pashmina, or cashmere. They were light, colourful and very finely woven. In the early 19th century they became very popular in Europe, ladies would pay a hundred guineas for a handwoven Kashmiri shawl.


A Kashmiri shawl could have 250 warp threads to the inch, and could be five feet or more in width. Some shawls were so wide that they had to be woven in pieces and handsewn together. The stitches joining the woven pieces into a single shawl were so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye!

The shawls quickly became very fashionable, and agents would travel to Kashmir to direct the weaving of designs currently favoured by European fashions. Kashmiri weavers were initially resentful of this intrusion into their design process, but I guess the money talked and they began to weave to the dictates of European fashion.


As the shawls became ever more fashionable and in demand, there was strong pressure to learn to weave such shawls in Europe, to reduce the cost. The draw loom was invented, which allowed warp threads to be manipulated individually for the intricate shawl designs that were so popular. It took two people to operate a draw loom, one to weave and another to manipulate the draw strings and hooks to lift and lower the infinite combinations of warp threads for the intricate designs. The jacquard mechanism was added to the draw loom, this eliminated the need for "draw boys". Punch cards were made to specify the warp manipulation for each design, the cards were then fed into the jacquard mechanism which translated the holes in the cards into instructions to automatically raise or lower specific warp threads.

Very quickly the jacquard loom allowed far more intricate designs to be woven and the price of shawls dropped dramatically. By the late 19th century a shawl was selling for as little as 26 shillings. Europeans used sheep's wool (the weft) and silk (the warp), since pashmina was not strong enough for machine weaving. This made a heavier shawl, but apparently this was a small price to pay for the ability to weave the more intricate designs.


Original Kashmiri handwoven shawls remained expensive, and their designs were not as rich and complex as the newer jacquard loom weaves. By 1870 the Kashmiri weavers were pretty much put out of business. Unfortunately, there was an economic recession and famine at the same time, and in Hindu society weavers occupied a very low status. Very few of them earned enough to support a family at the best of times, and as a result of the collapse of demand for the shawls and the accompanying famine, many weavers died of starvation. Those that survived abandoned their looms to seek out other employment. Within a generation the skills of handweaving these beautiful shawls were lost forever.


European women wore their shawls as full-sized capes that draped attractively over the full hoop skirts also popular at the time.


The popular paisley design is named for the Scottish town of Paisley which is supposed to be the origin of this pattern, but it probably evolved from the traditional "Tree of Life" Kashmiri design. The Tree of Life was the palm, it was usually represented in a teardrop shape.


This is an unusual asymmetric shawl design. The idea for it was that a lady could fold it in such a way that only one quarter would show, and each quarter being different it would seem as if she had four different shawls depending on which quarter she displayed.

The four of us from the weaving class were completely in awe of these wonderful shawls. We are all amateur weavers, we know just enough to know how much we don't know. To see the work of master weavers like this was an amazing experience.

War prayer rug

Yesterday I bought a war rug.


In my weaving class, one of the women is a volunteer at the Textile Museum of Canada. She told me that their director, Max Allen, was selling off a bunch of Afghan war rugs that he had collected in a special sale to benefit the museum. You had to buy a membership in the museum and then could pay $50 for your choice of small rugs available, about 80 of them. You could also bid on one or more of the larger rugs that would be on display.

The sale was yesterday. I went downtown to the sale location to arrive right at opening time, but there were already fifty people ahead of me, and Max had decided that each person could buy up to two rugs apiece. I guess he was worried not enough people would come to buy the rugs.

Of course, they sold out within ten minutes of opening the doors. When I got in, there were three rugs left, and two of them appeared to be claimed by a young couple standing by them. I picked up the third rug.

I've kind of been thinking about getting a membership in the Textile Museum, so this was an incentive to do it. And looking up my rug on warrug.com, I figure it is probably worth around $200. Some of the larger rugs that were snapped up in the first few seconds of the sale were in the thousand dollar range.

As you can see from the picture, this is not the most beautiful rug, filled as it is with images of war (mostly vehicles, some rugs are more blatant with images of weapons). It is small, about 2.5 x 1.5 ft. This would be a prayer rug. Can you imagine praying on a rug like this? What would you be praying for? Or about?

I wrote last year about the war rug exhibit at the Textile Museum, and there is a lot of information at warrug.com about this subject. There are also videos of Max Allen speaking on the subject (a short video here, and a longer one here). He was at the sale, wandering around explaining the details of the rugs, about how they were made, how you could tell where they came from, what the imagery signified, that sort of thing.

I think the beauty of this rug for me is in its construction and its backstory. I do not know the details of the weaver's life and circumstance but I do know some generalities. She is most likely a woman. She incorporates images from her life, and with Afghanistan being a battlefield for more than thirty years now, war defines her life. In all likelihood she lives or has lived in a refugee camp. She may have learned her craft there, she most certainly was influenced by the refugee camps.

Before the war, Afghan women rarely left their home towns, and this was reflected in the design of their rugs, you could tell where a rug came from by the details of its design and imagery. No more, for weavers forced into refugee camps learned the styles of weavers all over their country, they melded their imagery and techniques. Today it is very difficult to tell where an Afghan rug was made, there is very little specific imagery based on locale.

They say you should write about what you know, weavers weave what they know.

Textile Museum, part II: War Rugs of Afghanistan

The plaque on the wall at the start of this exhibit says it all.

There have never been rugs like this before.

This exhibit at the Canadian Textile Museum was amazing, shocking, beautiful, haunting.








A traditional Persian or Afghan rug is based on the concept of a walled garden, beautiful flowers, birds and trees represented in the centre or main body of the rug, and a protective wall or border surrounding it all.

Look closely and you will see in this rug that weapons and military vehicles have replaced the flowers, trees and animals. Click the image to see a more detailed view of it.







All of these carpets were filled with images of war, either blatantly or subtly.







Four million Afghans have fled to refugee camps, one of the largest refugee populations ever. People who had lived their entire lives in small villages, never travelling very far, now trekked across their country to find safe haven, passing through cities for the first time ever. They have ended in massive refugee camps, people from all parts of this country jumbled together. Once you could tell where a rug came from by its unique design and patterns, now the rug weavers from all over share images and weaving heritages in the camps, it is impossible to tell anymore where a rug comes from, or whether its content is a comment for or against war.

A kalashnikov is an Aghan man's most prized possession.

















A very sad rug, a lady lute player surrounded by tanks and grenades.

















Afghans have been exposed to the world, whether by foreign soldiers, news broadcasts on TV, or their own relatives fled to other countries and sending postcards home. Several of the displayed rugs showed foreign cities: Melbourne, Paris, London, New York. Each one incorporating weapons and machinery of war (a carpet depicting London showed the sky filled with bombers).

This rug shows the Twin Towers of New York City.





Afghans struggle to understand what is going on in their country through the stories and symbols of mythology. This rug depicts the story of Rustam and the dragon, how Rustam's trusty horse Rakhsh saved his master and aided in the destruction of the dragon.











This rug is a symbolic representation of the battle between good and evil, being fought in the land of Afghanistan.








The military insignia worn as patches by foreign soldiers are a rich source of images and symbols for Afghan weavers.





This rug bears a terrible message. In the centre you see a butterfly. At the bottom you see the butterfly landmine (small pink shape). This was widely used by Soviet soldiers, and Afghan children would pick them up because they looked like interesting toys, with devastating results.

Afghanistan is still heavily mined, most of the Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan action were killed by landmines. Some of the rugs depict Afghans with missing limbs, due to landmines.

The Ottawa Convention (Mine Ban Treaty) was signed by 122 nations in 1997, banning the use of anti-personnel landmines. Princess Diana worked hard for this treaty, and her death spurred many recalcitrant nations to ratify it. However, thirty nations have yet to sign, including Russia, India, China and the United States. Although this treaty was historical in gaining widespread ratification of a weapons ban, it is still almost useless because those four great nations refuse to sign.

The exhibit included a slide show of photos gleaned from various websites depicting the war in Afghanistan. A few minutes of watching the endless loop of grim photos conveyed what a little of what it was like to live there.

The photos in the slide show are mostly taken by foreign soldiers and show what they see there every day. There were a very few photos of battlefields, but most of the photos were of everyday life. It painted a pretty grim picture. Thirty years of war! Many people there have never known another way of life!

This exhibit of exquisite workmanship and artistry is indeed an eye-opener!

A visit to the Textile Museum, the Cutting Edge

On Tuesday I went to the Canadian Textile Museum. I am still feeling sick, but this is the last day of the Afghan Rug Exhibit so I needed to get to the museum whether I felt like it or not. I took a lot of photos so I am dividing them into two posts, one on the Afghan rugs and one on everything else. This is the "everything else" post.

The first exhibit at the museum is called The Cutting Edge, it is about the construction of clothing. It was interesting, but not an area that I am especially interested in so I don't have much to say about it. Except this.

When I visited the ROM a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the ROM had acquired a large collection of imperial Chinese robes around the turn of the century. Apparently most of them are now in the Textile Museum.

These two robes are interesting because one is "real" and one is "fake". Can you tell which is which?

They both actually date from roughly the same time period, but one is a true imperial robe that would have been worn by a member of the Chinese Emperor's family, the other is most likely a theatrical fake, worn in a theatrical drama to represent someone of imperial status.

The gaudy gold and blue robe is the "fake". The telltale is the helter skelter positioning of the embroidered dragons.

On a "real" imperial robe, the dragons are positioned in proper symbolic poses: bottom left facing right, bottom right facing left and upper centre facing forward. There are other differences as well, but those are the most obvious. The point being that an imperial robe means something, there is nothing on it that doesn't signify the royalty of the wearer. Mixing up the symbolic components immediately testifies the garment's inauthenticity.

Embroidery for such robes was often done on separate pieces of fabric and then cut out to apply to the garment.

Moving on, there was a tiny collection of quilts. Unfortunately the lighting in the Museum is a bit poor for photos, you either get blurry pics without flash, or too-bright pics with. And since I really don't know a lot about quilts, I can't comment too much on them either.

So here is one quilt and a close-up of some of the detail of it.