Snooping around on the message boards of livinghistory.co.uk, I found info about a conference on European Painted Cloths C14th-C21st (London, 15-16 Jun 2012).


The deadlines for the call for papers are already gone by, but the conference itself might be of interest. At the very least, it's a topic not encountered so very often, and I'm happy to see it gets looked at a bit more!

European Painted Cloths C14th-C21st
Pageantry, Ceremony, Theatre and the Domestic Interior

This two day conference will explore the use of painted cloths in religious ceremony, pageantry, domestic interiors and scenic art. It will focus on their change of context and significance from the
fourteenth to the twenty-first century exploring their different function, materials, and method of creation.

The potential for large sizes, portability, and versatility for religious objects including banners, hangings, altarpieces, and palls was the impetus for the emergence of fabrics as a painting support in Western art in the Middle Ages. The demand for elaborate altarpieces, church furnishings, and liturgical objects increased in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries due to changes to liturgical practice and an upsurge of religious fervour. The functionality of the works explains the survival of relatively few examples. Were paintings on fabric envisaged as ephemeral objects? There is evidence to the contrary. One of the most common forms of interior decoration for centuries, painted cloths have received less attention from art historians and historians than they deserve in part due to their poor survival. Often regarded as cheap substitutes for those who could not afford tapestries, their function has been oversimplified and their importance in  providing imagery as well as literary subjects has been underrated.

Scenic backcloths were once commissioned for court functions, part of an elaborate display of royal power and magnificence, such as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The same methods and materials continued to be used for theatrical cloths. The nineteenth and twentieth century saw a
resurgence in interest in the art form, as established artists, among them Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Picasso and later Piper, Hockney and Caulfield, took up commissions for the theatre and ballet.

The conference, to be held at The Courtauld Institute of Art, will be run in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum. Presentations by four keynote speakers will reflect the aim of the conference to bring together and foster interdisciplinary research between art and interiors historians, paintings and textile conservators.
Organised by Christina Young (The Courtauld Institute of Art) and
Nicola Costaras (Victoria & Albert Museum)

If you are looking to meet me for a chat (or because you are desperate to buy me a coffee), I can be found at the following places in the near future:

Tannenberg, the traditional end-of-season market, September 30 to October 3. I will be having a stall there and sell my usual stock of goods - plus if you would like to try prepping wool for historical spinning yourself, I will offer you the opportunity to "rent-a-wool-tool" at my stall.

Family day at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, September 25 - I will be demonstrating wool processing and spinning with distaff and hand-spindle. If you dare, you can try spinning yourself as well!

The Embroidery Workshop - I will be teaching medieval embroidery in Erlangen on the 29th of October (counted work) and the 30th of October (split stitch and diverse laid-and-couched techniques). Booking can be done via the webshop (look under "Kurse").

Medieval Dress and Textiles Society Autumn meeting, October 22, in London - I will be speaking in the afternoon there.

If you are in the area, why not drop by?

I'm getting into the mood for the embroidery course in October.

If by "getting into the mood" you understand "starting some insanely large project because I'm so much looking forward to the course because I'm sure it will be an insane amount of fun and I can't wait for it so I'm starting this now", that is. And yes, there will be pictures as soon as I deem a bit of it picture-worthy.

And I am having fun with it. I have decided on a stitch to use that I totally love, it's wonderful material, it's relatively fast to work. And it means I get to practise my mean material-calculation skillzz again.

And yes, calculating how much material you will need will definitely be part of the workshop. Also, for those who are interested in it, how much time you will probably need.

The Costume Society of America is holding their Western Region 2012 Symposium “Interpreting History through Costume”on March 17-18, 2012 at The William S. Hart Ranch & Museum in Santa Clarita, CA.

Their call for papers is still open until October 15. Here's the short of it:

The Western Region Symposium offers an opportunity for established Members and potential New Members to present Oral Research Papers or Research-in Progress, reports on unpublished research, new creations and/or practical experience.
Possible Topics Include: Designing costume for period theatrical or dance performances, films or television shows; Comparisons between recreated garments, or garments designed for performance, with actual historic garments; The importance of costume in the understanding of social, political & world history; How costumed docents enhance the understanding of museum collections & the visitor experience; Use of costume in non-costume exhibitions: an opportunity to provide context; Pursuit of the past: the impulse to collect historic dress; Using dress to create an historic character or personage for reenactment.

They welcome about everybody - so if that sounds interesting to you, check out the full call for papers on this website.

First of all, thanks to everybody who commented with links or hints to medieval headwear on yesterday's post. I will go hunt all those things down and have a good look at them. And if anybody thinks of any more, please comment to yesterday's bleg - it really is helping me!

And today's post... is going to be something similar-but-different. I am preparing a workshop on historical wool preparation and historical spinning, and I'm very, very much looking forward to it. However, I have been mucking around with this and that and fibres and spindles for a good long while now, and my spinning skill was never acquired in the traditional teacher-to-student manner. Thus, I have learned many things differently. And I do not have good insights into what makes a switch to historical spinning difficult for somebody who has learned hand-spindle spinning the modern way. (If you need to brush up on the difference, the two most important bits in my opinion are that historical spinning uses a distaff for holding the fibres, and there's no slinging the thread around under the whorl before fixing it at the top. There's more, but those are two very common differences.)

Hence, I will make you an offer. Are you spinning with a hand-spindle? Have you tried spinning historically? Whether you are spinning historical or modern, I would like to hear about what problems or questions you have. Is there something you just can't get to work? Or something you wanted to try but cannot figure out?

I will try to answer your questions here in the blog - and use the material for my teaching. This way, everybody wins: I get to know common problems, and you will get an answer. And I will try my best to make it a helpful one!

Here's the promised textile centred backlog. I'll start you off with a conference date again:

The conference "Dyes in History and Archaeology DHA30", a joint meeting with the Royal Society of Chemistry Historical Group, will take place 12-15 October 2011 in the University of Derby Enterprise Centre, Derby (UK). For more information, please visit the conference's website. While this is one of the many conferences I will not be able to attend, a poster about the Hallstatt project that I took part in will be shown there.

Since it came up again on MEDTC, for those of you lusting after a view of the textiles in the V&A in London: They will be available for study again probably in summer 2013, since the collection is moving to a new location. It's not a progress report, but at least some info: Clothworker's centre.

And now the juiciest bit for today. Beatrix Nutz who researches the textiles from Schloß Lengberg (medieval bras, anyone?) has been busy again, and her article about the very early needle lace from the finds is online. You can find the article here; it includes pics, schematic drawings of lace structures, and you can all understand it - just scroll down for the English text. Enjoy!

I really should not go check work emails before writing the blog, or it leads to severe late-blogging.

While I was away, a ton of mails (a small ton, anyways) came over the MEDTC-list. For example, this link that leads to a list of dissertations since 1994, with quite a few textile-related titles among it. I'm not going to re-post all the interesting bits from the list - if you did not join it in 2009 when I first wrote about it, or when you found out about it, you can join now by going to this old post, reading up on it and doing what you need to do.

There's the (annual) international conference „Experimental Archaeology in Europe 2011“ that will take place from 13.-16.10.2011 in Schleswig/Germany. It is organised by EXAR and the Archaeological Service and Museum of Schleswig-Holstein in castle Gottorf near Schleswig. Though termed "international", the conference is almost purely in German language. If you do not mind that, though, there will be a presentation about the Hallstatt textile reproduction that I was also involved in, and two other textile-focused papers. Unfortunately, I will miss the conference due to a date clash. If you think about going, you can find more info on the website www.exar.org.


And on the other side of Earth (more or less), there's a roundtable discussion about experimental archaeology:


Teaching Experimental Archaeology in an Academic Setting: A Roundtable Discussion

Increasingly, many archaeologists acknowledge the value of experimental archaeology and incorporate an experimental component into their research designs.   Simultaneously, numerous anthropology departments throughout the world are expose their students to the field by adding experimental archaeology courses to their departmental offerings or at least by including experimental components to more traditional archaeology classes.  The professors offering these courses come from various backgrounds and approach the material in very different ways.  Accordingly, we all have a great deal to offer one another.

In an effort to encourage dialogue between the instructors of these courses, a roundtable discussion focused on teaching experimental archaeology in an academic setting has been organized and is planned to take place during this year's Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology Conference (REARC).  This conference will take place between October 14 and 16 at the Schiele Museum located in Gastonia, North Carolina (see: www.rearc.us).  If you: 1) currently teach or are planning on teaching an experimental archaeology course, 2) currently teach or are planning on teaching a course that includes an experimental archaeology component, or 3) are interested in how experimental archaeology is taught in an academic setting, please consider participating in this roundtable.  In addition to a lively discussion, I would like to also assemble a packet of hard copy and digital materials such as syllabi, reading lists, class activities, etc. that can be shared amongst the participants and interested conference attendees.  Please consider sharing these materials whether or not you plan on attending the conference.  If you are planning on participating in any capacity please respond to Bill Schindler (Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein.) by September 15, 2011.


More of the backlog, but with a more textile nature, tomorrow.