There's this conference, started years ago by two textile archaeologists who felt it was a lonely occupation. It's taking place every three years, and it has grown a lot over time. Once upon a time, after it started, it was a smallish, private-ish conference where you needed to know someone to get in, and give a paper too. By now, it has become much more open (starting with the one in Copenhagen 2008, the first one that I attended), and you can just register and participate... provided you can stand the idea of having a large bunch of textile archaeologists talking textile, textile, textile, for several days in a row.

I'm talking about NESAT, of course. The wait is over, and after spending the weekend frantically getting everything that needed to be done before end of next week wrapped up, I am now on my way to Hallstatt. Where I will meet lots of lovely colleagues again, and finally get to see the glorious salt mines of Hallstatt. Where I will probably stay up way too late and chat way too much and have loads and loads of fun. Where I will have absolutely no time, and no inclination, to write a blog post for you (sorry, but that's the plain truth).

So I'm taking a blog break until June 2 (I'll be taking a few days off after the conference). Have a good time until then!

The time has come - the Call for Papers and the registration form for our next Textile Forum are online. As usual, you can find them at www.textileforum.org.

This year, our conference will take place from 3-9 November, and our focus topic is "Plant Fibres: Materials, Techniques, Problems". We've touched on plant fibres now and then in the previous Forums, but there's usually much more been said and done on wool and silk, so we would like to have this as the focus topic for a change.

Just like we did last year, we're planning to make it a combination of papers and practical sessions, and we're looking forward to the suggestions and proposals coming in.

If you're interested in the Forum, or know someone who might be interested, please pass on the Call for Papers - we're happy to see it spread out!

The conference for Dyes in History and Archaeology will be taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, on October 30 and 31 2014. It's number 33 in the series, and the call for papers is currently open. Abstracts have to be submitted by May 30. There's a website, but it's not including the current CfP. If you are interested, send me an email or leave your email address in the comments, and I can forward you the contact data and template.

And a second CfP that reached me with the request to spread widely, so I will just paste it here:



Call for Papers, Annals of Leisure Research, Special Issue: THE DRESS ISSUE

Guest Editor:Prof Alison L Goodrum, Department of Apparel, Manchester Metropolitan University, England

According to Entwistle (2000: 6) “all people dress the body in some way, be it through clothing, tattooing, cosmetics or other forms of body painting. To put it another way, no culture leaves the body unadorned but adds to, embellishes, enhances or decorates the body”.  In this scholarly definition, even Nudists and Naturists, although eschewing material items of clothing, are dressed, be this in the form of, say, a splash of perfume, a slick of moisturiser, a necklace or a goatee beard.  This Special Issue takes this expansive definition of dress and explores its application to, and significance within, Leisure Studies.

The links between dress and leisure are multiple, longstanding, and range across time and space.  In the 1920s, for example, French couturière, Coco Chanel, gave utilitarian jersey fabric a high fashion ‘spin’, endorsing its easy-to-wear qualities as a motif for modern living.  And, today, stretchiness and comfort remain as important material properties in both active- and leisurewear.  While certain leisure pursuits call for ‘dressing down’ and the wearing of decidedly non-specialist dress, other leisure activities demand modes of dress that are strictly policed and/or technically sophisticated.  On a cultural note, sports-based communities such as ‘Bikers’, ‘Skaters’ and ‘Surfies’ identify themselves tribally through esoteric sartorial markers (favouring a particular brand of clothing, for example).

The current resurgence of handcrafting, knitting and home dressmaking as a cross-generational, fashionable, and often gender-distinctive, pastime, presents yet a further link between leisure and dress: one that relates to making-as-hobby.  The vernacular in dress is pertinent, too, to sporting spectatorship. For example, fans may use make-shift props, face-paints and fancy dress costuming to display support for individual players or teams. More generally, sports fans comprise an eager and profitable cohort of consumers keen to purchase goods relating to their interests such as replica kits and commemorative garments and merchandise.

Shopping for fashionable dress and accessories is itself, for some, an all-consuming pastime or passion.  The practice of shopping has altered radically over the past decade with internet and TV shopping offering alternative routes to market and, with them, shifts in the consumer experience.  Other alternative sites and spaces for the consumption of dress include the car boot sale, thrift store, flea market and swap shop. These informal, often festive or festival-like spaces, move the consumption of dress from formalised retail industry into the realm of entertainment.

The Special Issue seeks, then, to capture, and to map, the diversity and dynamism of the many links between dress and leisure. The discipline of Leisure Studies has engaged with these links but has tended to do so in a haphazard way, touching on dress as an adjunct to, or spin-off from, larger projects. The proposed Issue will marshal together original research papers on dress and leisure, an underexplored, and perhaps under-considered, area in Leisure Studies. The outcome will be a publication that repositions dress as a central, and significant, subject in, and for, leisure, whilst simultaneously promoting leisure as a rich topic, too, for scholars from such disciplines as fashion theory and dress history.  We welcome paper submissions that address any of the following (and related) topics on dress and aspects of leisure (as well as relevant others):

·         Style tribes and leisure/sporting subcultures and fandom
·         Performance-, active-wear and technical design in/for leisure and sport
·         Histories of leisure and dress
·         Spaces and sites of/for leisure and the performance of dress
·         Buying, shopping and consumption of dress as leisure, pleasure and/or anxiety
·         Leisure, sport and the dressed and/or undressed body
·         Collecting dress, shoes, accessories and bodily adornment/s
·         Craft, making and the (domestic) production of dress as a leisure pursuit
·         Leisure, dress and non-conformity/subversion

Important Dates for Authors:

Submission of Abstracts: Please send proposed paper title and an abstract of no more than 250 words to the guest editor, Alison Goodrum (Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein.) no later than 21^st July 2014. We will advise the outcome no later than 4^th August 2014.

Submission of Full Paper: 2^nd March 2015 (further details to be advised upon confirmation of abstract acceptance).
Publication: First issue of 2016 (approximately January)

Ages ago (or at least what feels like ages), I posted about there being an exhibition about fabulous replicated textiles being shown in Dresden: Parade Textiles for August the Strong.

Special exhibitions somewhere off across the country are a tricky beast, if you ask me. You have to find out about them, and then you have to find a time and a way to get there. And until you've done that and been there, unless you happen across somebody else who already has and whom you can ask, you will not know whether it's worth the effort or not.

I've both traveled to a special exhibition to be totally exhilarated and in love with the thing, coming out of the door after hours and hours of monument-al pleasure, and traveled to a special exhibition that I would have regretted the time and effort put in had it been in the neighbouring town with 15 mins travel time, let alone three hours in the car. Single trip three hours, of course.

I also learned, over the years, that a Spec Ex will not necessarily be large - they can, in fact, be tiny. Which may be a good thing, or a bad one, or neutral, depending on a multitude of things.

Long story short - the most patient of all husbands joined me in travelling to Dresden over the weekend, to see the special exhibition, while the best of all neighbours kindly took care of the cat. (She has lots of personnel, you see.) We had opted for the train, since it's about the same time to spend in car or train, and with the costs our car is running, train was actually cheaper (plus gives you more reading, sleeping, and knitting time.) The special exhibition is one of the very small ones, which I had sort of half-expected, but the textiles shown are really, really beautiful. I would have liked some more in-depth info about the manufacture of the replicas, including more video of how they were made, and some inkling about the costs involved in having them replicated, but that was sadly lacking. The texts accompanying the textiles, both the old and the new ones, were also too technical to let non-textile geeks understand what was meant; an explanation of how velvet is woven, for example, would surely have heightened the appreciation of many of the visitors. I'd also have appreciated some close-up photographs together with the textiles shown, so that you could see the bindings a bit easier. The textiles are not all fully replicated yet, and we were dubious about the colours used in one of the hangings, but I found all the others truly spectacular; lots of gold and silk and a nice deep dark blue and nice shades of red.

After the room with the textiles, we went to look at some of the other exhibits. The museum is quite, quite large (even if you don't book the Historical Green Vault with your ticket), and it's chock-full of those baroque splendour thingies where small items are embellished with even smaller designs, and lots of bling added around it, and precious materials are turned into breathtaking things. Sunglasses, at some places, would be a good idea to dampen down some of the splendour.

And after our museum tour, we did what all good archaeologists do - we visited the museum (book) shop, which was a mixture of a museum shop with the necessary souvenirs, trinkets and postcards; a bookshop; and what Germans call "Modernes Antiquariat" where you can buy older books that have gone out of print for a reduced price.

Now, your typical archaeologist has a thing for buying books (ask our friends who helped us move!) and I am no exception. Especially exhibition catalogues - experience says that if you don't buy them when you can, you may not get the chance again. So we went home with... some more books.

In case you are interested in seeing the exhibition about the splendid textiles, it will still run until February 24. It's a small room with about one dozen pieces, part of those originals and part reconstructions, and being a textile geek will help you appreciate what is meant by "velvet, cut" and "or frisé". If you are a textile geek, though, you might really love it.

Do you know that feeling that the plan of the year slowly emerges out of fog and nothingness? January and February are the two months when plans are made and dates are fixed, and the calendar becomes spattered and sprinkled with colourful spots all over. It's an exciting time every time it comes around!

And for 2014, there are a few things fixed that I am really looking forward to already.

As usual, I will be in Freienfels with my market stall. Freienfels this year is April 30 to May 4, and the market is open for all visitors during the weekend.

Next on my calendar is the International Museum Day on May 18, which I will spend at the Stadtmuseum Bietigheim-Bissingen, demonstrating spinning technique both with distaff and spindle and with the Great Wheel.

Right after that comes the NESAT in Hallstatt, a conference I've been looking forward to for, as usual, the last three years.

Next up is a semi-private medieval event in Herzberg, running from June 27 to July 6. The event after that is the exact opposite to private, however: Together with Margit Ströbele from Alte Künste, I will be running a dealer's table at LonCon3! I will also give a paper about textile techniques on the academic programme there. If you are at LonCon, make sure to drop by!

If you want to learn a textile technique or need assistance in tailoring a garment, I have course dates planned for September 6-7 and October 25-26. As usual, details and booking info can be found on my shop page.

And the last date already fixed and agreed upon for 2014 at the moment is our next Textile Forum, which will take place 3-9 November, again in Mayen (we love it there). If you want to keep informed about the Textile Forum, you can subscribe to our newsletter on the Forum homepage.

And if you want to keep informed about my upcoming events and dates, you can always check the list of them on my homepage.

As you can see, the year promises to be full of interesting events already, and I am looking forward to maybe meeting a few more of you this year.

It's time for a little textile conference stuff - exciting things are coming up!


First of all, NESAT. The next one is taking place in Hallstatt, and the preliminary programme is online. Also, the proceedings from last NESAT are now out and available from Verlag Marie Leidorf.As usual, you should also be able to get them via your book dealer of choice.

The CTR Copenhagen also has a few conference announcements on their website, including a conference about traditional textile crafts early in 2014.

If you have been in thorough contact with textile crafts, especially tablet weaving, chances are high that you have read at least one book by Peter Collingwood. Sadly, he died a few years ago (here's an obituary). The Early Textiles Study Group, where he was a member until his death, now has a CfP out for a conference about Crafting Textiles from the Bronze Age to AD 1600: A tribute to Peter Collingwood. The conference will take place in London 10 to 11 October 2014, the CfP is open until January 31, 2014. Here is the conference website, in case you would like to be part of this.

Today it's time for me to rejoice - my article about the Spinning Experiment (yes, that one back from 2009) has been published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. Here's the link.

It's not open access, since that requires the author (yes, the author) to pay a stupid amount of money which I can't afford (and even if I did, I would not since I am a strong believer in the Rule, or Yog's Law). I'd much prefer if it were free, or open access, or offered at an affordable price - but as things are, I am very happy to have the article out there, and published in a journal where it will be seen (and hopefully read) by a lot of people.

(If you would like to read the article, you may have access to it from a library computer if the library subscribes to the journal.)