Announcing the Founding Presidents Award Nominees

TSA is proud to announce the five presentations at the 2024 Symposium that have been nominated for the Founding Presidents Award. Congratulations to presenters Jennifer Byram and Eveline Steele, Dr. Manpreet Chahal, Kristal Hale and Sandra Sardjono, Elena Kanagy-Loux, and Jennifer Green!
 
The Founding Presidents Award was inaugurated in 2008 to recognize excellence in the field of textile studies and to ensure that the finest new work is represented at the organization’s biennial symposium. The awards are named in honor of the five founding presidents – Peggy Gilfoy, Milton Sonday, Lotus Stack, Mattiebelle Gittinger and Louise W. Mackie. 
 
Candidates are nominated by the committee, based on a preliminary review of their abstracts, and asked to submit their papers in advance of the symposium for final review. The nominees receive complimentary conference registration and the winning paper receives an additional monetary award. This award is by nomination only. Read more about the award.

About the Nominated Presentations

Kristal Hale and Sandra Sardjono, “Conservation and Repatriation of Textiles” 
Session 12C, Friday, Nov 15 1:00-2:30pm EST
Textile represents one of the most important cultural heritages in Indonesia and is an integral part of social and religious lives of traditional communities. Due to colonial impact, shifts in indigenous belief systems and values, modernization, and tourism, many textiles have left their original environments. Many gained new contexts as museum objects housed in regional museums or private collections in Indonesia and abroad.  In Indonesian museums, these objects are cared for by museum staff with various backgrounds and levels of expertise, who are shifted to new positions every two – three years by the Indonesian Ministry. This methodology is intended as a response to colonization with the goal of imparting intra-museum knowledge throughout the archipelago. Consequently, individuals may serve as curator and/or conservator of ceramics at one institution and textiles at another. This solution to a colonial problem creates challenges of its own; individuals must adapt with creativity and resilience as they care for textiles in humid, equatorial environments.  The desire to support Indonesian museums inspired Tracing Patterns Foundation to create the Museums of the 21st Century program. In its first program in 2022, TPF collaborated with other US and Indonesian organizations to create workshops focusing on conservation, curation, and education. This effort works in tandem with the repatriation Textiles Forward Program, which aims to repatriate significant textile objects to educational institutions such as museums and universities. This presentation will discuss the learning process involved in these two programs, their impact on local institutions, and their ongoing effects.
 

Jennifer Byram and Eveline Steele, Plying Together Knowledges: Revitalization of Indigenous Textile Knowledge through Language
Session 7B, Thursday, Nov 14 9:30-11:00am EST
When studying textiles for which few records exist, where does one turn? For archaeologists studying textiles in non-ideal preservation contexts, the approach often turns to indirect sources of evidence. This paper presents a research project conducted between a textile artist and archaeologist, Jennifer Byram and a basket weaver and Choctaw first-speaker, Eveline Steele, from the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. They approached research into Southeastern United States Indigenous textiles by drawing on Choctaw language documents from the 19th century to elucidate past textile knowledge. In doing so, the project has brought forth knowledge about weaving processes and material preparation that is invaluable to ongoing revitalization of Southeastern Indigenous textiles as well as supporting the preservation of Choctaw basketry traditions. This project produced a Choctaw vocabulary list of textile-related terminology that is important for Choctaw textile artists who integrate the vocabulary and textile practice into their own language learning journey and outreach in the Choctaw community.


Dr. Manpreet Chahal, An Attempt Towards Skilling Persons With Visual Impairment In Macrame Technique Using Post-Consumer Textile Waste
Session 17A, Sunday, Nov 17 1:00-2:30pm EST
Persons with visual impairment possess highly developed sense of hearing and touch, positive attitude, and willingness to learn despite their limitations. Training in a rich stimulating environment can help them to perform with good efficiency. To explore new possibilities for skilling persons with visual impairment, macrame technique was selected and fine strips of discarded jersey knit T-shirts (post-consumer textile waste) were used as an alternative option for raw material instead of cords or strings.  Each macrame technique was broken into smaller tasks for identifying the skill set required. Training module was developed which included the learning outcomes, materials required, complete step-by-step procedure and time duration required for training. Instructions were modified for ease in transaction using auditory and tactile senses.  Purposive sampling technique was used for selecting three trainees for the study from a NGO situated in New Delhi, India. Training strategies specific to persons with visual impairment were adopted while training. The pace of learning and performance efficiency of the trainees was recorded. Problems faced during the training programme were identified and alternative solutions were suggested.  Trainees were trained in three basic knotting techniques i.e., lark’s head knot, square knot and clove hitch knot used in the art of macrame. After adequate training, trainees were able to work on creation of products like keychain, plant holder, leaf wall hanging and coaster. Training of persons with visual impairment in upcycled macrame products was an attempt towards social and environmental sustainability.

Elena Kanagy-Loux, “Muy Curiosa y Muy Diestra”: Bobbin Lace Making in Eighteenth-Century Mexico 
Session 14C, Saturday, Nov 16 2:45-4:15pm EST
How can the analysis of 18th-century Mexican lace expand traditional narratives of the agency of makers under colonial rule? What glimpses can these textiles offer into the lives of the women and girls who made them? Although bobbin lace was introduced in Mexico through colonization, its local styling—both through making and end use—was not a simple facsimile of its Spanish origins. The appreciation for this “curious and skilled” trimming drew upon a long tradition of highly-valued textile production in the Americas, and lace was quickly interpreted in new ways. This paper will focus on the technical analysis of the lace structures of several extant metallic bobbin lace fragments and colchas (or coverlets) with polychrome wool bobbin lace edgings from the 18th century. Additionally, archival documents, ceramics, lace pattern books, and casta paintings will provide a broader context for the establishment of bobbin lace production in Mexico.   Scholarship on the development of colonial textile industries in New Spain is extensive, although primarily focused on guild-centric and male-dominated industries such as weaving. This project builds upon a growing body of research into this period by historians such as James Middleton, who analyzes fashion through portraiture, Alejandra Mayela Flores Enriquez, who focuses on girls’ needlework education, and fashion historian Laura Beltrán-Rubio, whose work explores the intersections of Indigenous American and Spanish dress. Seen through a revitalized gaze, the adoption and adaptation of lace in Mexico can be understood not only as an imposition of the Spanish, but as an innovation of local artisans.

Jennifer Green, From Soil and Place: the Flaxmobile Project and the cultivation of a local textile ecology
Session 10B, Thursday, November 14, 4:30-6:00pm EST
The increasing individualization of craft, perpetuated through professionalisation, commercialisation, and the dematerialisation of craft communities are departures from craft’s historical functions as necessity, chore, and collective support. The slow emergence of textiles, from materials with known sources, on land that is stewarded with community, is an increasingly distant reality. In response to this, the Flaxmobile project began in 2022 as a mobile facility for educational immersion in flax fibre processing and sustainable textiles. It aims to reconnect craftspeople with their materials, through re-establishing knowledge of fibre flax growing, establishing networks of connection between textile producers and makers, and providing craftspeople with access to local linen fibre toward the development of new materials and products.  This paper investigates the ways in which textiles are created through a complex and dynamic arrangement of people, processes, and the environment. We consider how to shift from individualism to an understanding of textile practice as an interconnected ecology. To this end, we explore the central characteristics of ecologies and apply them to textile production, using Transition Design as a methodology to understand how we might disrupt our reliance on materials made overseas. Ecologies are living systems, strengthened by plurality and diversity, based on mutual relationships, and dependent upon balance between humans and the planet; this project aims to help craftspeople re-situate themselves within their local textile ecosystem. Viewing textiles in this way provides craftspeople with valuable skills and knowledge for their collective survival and sustainable future.