Back in March, the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Centre hosted an online conference about Jewish Craftspeople in the Middle Ages - and I only learned about it while it was already running, and then had a little timezone conversion issue, so I ended up not catching most of what I would have liked to see (for instance the paper including silk dyers on the second day).

To my great delight, though, that can be remedied. The conference papers were recorded, and they are now online on the Centre's Youtube channel for everyone to see. There's three videos, one for each of the days of the conference.

Enjoy!

There's a webinar on tonight about Murex Purple dye in the Bronze Age Aegean, by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. The webinar is via Zoom, it's free to attend (you just need to register), and it starts at 6:00 pm German time.

Read more about the webinar, and register here.

In other news: I'm busy as a bee on amphetamines here, and the weather is finally stable enough for me to fire my spindle whorls! Unfortunately, there's already a few dead ones. The salamanders must have been hungry...

More about the firing, and pictures, are to come. Tomorrow, probably.

The Early Textiles Study Group has opened their Call for Papers for the next conference, which is planned for Manchester on September 9-11. In case in-person is not possible, it will be held virtually.

The title is ‘Legacy: textile studies, the past informing the present’. The ETSG is thus looking for papers that explore any aspect of the legacies of the study of early textiles. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Pioneers in the study and reconstruction of early textiles,
• Collections, their histories and their futures,
• Fresh insights gained by applying new methodologies to old collections and archives.

The CfP is open until June 1st.



Definitely virtually, and taking place this Saturday, is the next EXARC textile chat. As usual, you can find it on their Discord server, and it will start at 15:00 CET. This month, the topic is embroidery.

If you're interested in medieval gold threads, there's a zoom talk at/from Yale University on Friday, April 2:

Department of the History of Art, Yale University, Medieval-Renaissance Forum: Gold on the Move. The Mongol Impact on 13th and 14th century Asian and Mediterranean Textiles.

It's at 12:00 pm Yale time, and if I did my time conversion correctly, that corresponds to 18:00 h German time. Which is a very reasonable time to listen to a talk!

These are crazy times. Crazy, with a capital C, or maybe with all capital letters. But anyway, even though it's all crazy, and even though we don't know how things will develop from now onwards (at least not in the medium run, it's pretty clear what will happen here in Germany in the next two or three weeks), a bit of optimism might be what we all need.

So. I'm very, very excited to announce that we will try to have a European Textile Forum this year! If all goes well enough, we will meet in Tilff-Méry, Belgium, from August 9 to August 15.

Our focus topic this year will be "Sticks and Stones May Make a Loom", and we will explore weaving techniques and possibilities on "primitive" looms during the Forum week.



If you're a weaver, or a researcher, and that sounds interesting for you, you can find out more about it on textileforum.org, where there's the Call for Papers and the registration form online now.

It's a little short notice, but better late than never: There will be a conference online about prehistoric textiles next week, on February 24 and 25. There will be talks in German and English; topics range from textile imprints on pots to the fabrication of early textiles from bast and other materials - you can see the whole programme here, and register in the same place in case you want to attend the conference.

It sounds really interesting even though it's way out of my usual time zone!

 

Somehow, today feels like Friday! Which has absolutely nothing to do with the proper content of this blog post... which is:

Around the World in 80 Experiments!

EXARC is hosting the Experimental Archaeology Conference with this title, starting March 29 and ending April 1 (no April fool joke).



Also no joke: It's open access, and completely free. You can find out more about the conference programme here, and register for it here.