Stitching modernity: the textile work of Fortunato Depero

Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) was a Futurist artist who worked in a variety of artistic mediums, from painting and graphic design to furniture and textiles. His work in textiles, created and produced in close collaboration with his wife, Rosetta Amadori, can be considered the most important development in his artistic career, as it comprised a large portion of his creative production. Yet this work has been largely overlooked. Many reasons explain this oversight, including categorizing inconsistencies – for example, his textiles have been described as embroidery, needlework, tapestry, patchwork, and cloth mosaic – and the persistent relegation of textiles to the realm of crafts and domestic arts rather than art, which has meant that his work in textiles has not been a priority for scholars and conservators of Futurism. This paper places Depero's textiles within the context of early-twentieth-century modernist artistic activities, and demonstrates the centrality of his textile work to his artistic oeuvre.     

Towards the identification of dyestuffs in Early Iron Age Scandinavian peat bog textiles

A large systematic dye investigation of prehistoric Danish and Norwegian bog textiles was carried out using high performance liquid chromatography with photo diode array detection. After the selection of the most suitable protocol for dye extraction and HPLC analysis for this specific group of archaeological samples, the second part included the characterisation of the dyes detected in the whole series of the Early Iron Age textiles and the interpretation of the dyeing technology. Natural organic dyes were found from the three main categories of natural dyes, hence throwing new light on the use of biological dye sources in Early Iron Age Scandinavia. The results clearly indicate that most Scandinavian peat bog textiles originally were dyed and that already during the 1st millennium BC, the populations in Scandinavia were familiar with the dyeing technology.     

Towards an early warning system for oxidative degradation of protein fibres in historical tapestries by means of calibrated amino acid analysis

Flemish 15–17th century tapestries are among the most precious testimonies of European cultural heritage. Even in their deteriorated condition, they are still highly valued and exhibited in many museums all over the world. The present state of degradation evidenced by visual assessment in conservation practice, and confirmed with macro-scaled tensile strength tests, reveals the vulnerability of the wool and silk fibres to light exposure.     

丝绸纺织品传统染色工艺的色度学研究

本研究在对传统染色方法染色丝绸色度测定的基础上,尝试对其色度参数所隐含的规律进行解释和说明,以达到对传统染色方法有更好的理解和应用。为此使用传统染色方法对丝织品染色,应用无损色度学分析技术,测量染色后的丝绸纺织品的色度参数。利用RGB、XYZ、Lab和LCh色度参数,分析了传统染色工艺的色度参数的分布范围和分布规律以及染色工艺对色度参数的影响。特别观察到了R-G、X-Y参数都存在线性相关的关系,C-L数值存在近似线性关系;植物染料对丝绸染色的a-b参数存在一个大致的范围;多次染色使RGB参数下降,L值下降;套染效果基本符合颜色加法;媒染剂的光谱图主要受染料影响,丝绸材质对染色结果几乎没有影响。建立了简单染色模型,利用"亮度显色因子"和"彩度显色因子"的概念,解释了C-L参数的近似线性相关关系,以及L参数随染色次数增加而递增和递减的现象。本研究的成果对于未来进一步深入研究与丝绸纺织品的文物保护和修复相关的色彩还原、配色等问题奠定了实验基础。     

Material Choices for Fibre in the Neolithic: An Approach through the Measurement of Mechanical Properties

Studies of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Europe have focused on plants and animals exploited for food. However, the exploitation of plants for fibres underwent a significant change with the addition of domestic flax as a fibre crop. While the technology of flax fibre processing is increasingly understood by archaeologists, its material value as a fibre crop in comparison to indigenous fibre is less well explored. We examine the mechanical properties of flax and two indigenous fibres (lime bast, willow bast), by testing fibre strips for tensile properties and discuss the results in the light of material choices in these periods.     

Removal of natural organic dyes from wool–implications for ancient textile provenance studies

Ancient wool textiles recovered from archaeological sites are in many cases originally dyed with natural organic dyestuffs from vegetable sources. These include among others woad (Isatis tinctoria L.), weld (Reseda luteola L.), and madder (Rubia tinctorum L.). These dyestuffs could be a threat to the use of the strontium isotopic system as a tracer for provenance studies of ancient wool, because they could potentially contaminate the signature of the textile's raw material. We present a novel method which allows for efficient removal of organic dyestuffs in wool prior to strontium isotopic analysis. Our method is based on an oxidative release of the dyestuff constituents by ammonium peroxodisulfate [(NH₄)₂S₂O₈] solution, combined with hydrofluoric acid (HF) that has shown to effectively remove/dissolve adhering dust micro-particles. Our multi-analytical results show that such a pretreatment is capable of removing >98% of the originally present organic dyestuffs without significantly destroying the wool structure. The strontium isotopic ratios of the residual wool fraction after the application of the pretreatment are sensitive to the origin and, therefore, can be used as tracers for the provenance of the raw material. We propose to apply this method to ancient wool textiles in which positive identification of organic dyestuff constituents by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) was made.     

环十二烷在彩绘织物湿洗中的临时性封护工艺研究

彩绘颜料与织物通过粘合剂相结合的方式决定了彩绘部分的不稳定性,大多彩绘织物都因此经不起湿洗.为此,本实验对环十二烷在彩绘织物湿洗中对彩绘部分的临时性封护加固处理的可行性、效果和安全性进行了研究.通过正交实验法,筛选出了环十二烷的最佳施加工艺条件:双面、刷涂、一遍、环十二烷加热至62℃,并对与环十二烷升华速率相关的环境条件进行了对比研究.实验证明,环十二烷对织物强度以及纤维的微观分子结构等方面没有明显影响,环十二烷在彩绘织物上的应用是安全的.实验启示,本实验的研究思路不仅适用于彩绘织物,对其它类型纺织品文物甚至其它文物如纸张、字画、壁画等的保护修复也有借鉴意义.     

Recent analyses of the excavated textile find from Grave 35 HTR73, Kerameikos cemetery,Athens, Greece

The following study presents the results of instrumental analyses performed on the excavated textile find HTR73 from the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens. In Greece, preservation of excavated textiles is rare, mainly due to the unfavourable environmental conditions prevailing. The Kerameikos textile find is from the 5th century BC, and has been preserved in association with copper, which is the most common type of preservation in Greece. Past analyses had indicated the presence of silk fibres, of the Bombyx mori silkworm, the use of which was not common in Classical Greece. In the present study, non-destructive instrumental analytical techniques were applied, namely ESEM and FTIR microspectroscopy, for the purpose of material identification. None of the techniques applied confirmed the presence of silk. However, cellulosic bast and possibly cotton fibres were identified. The presence of cotton is an equally rare phenomenon for the Classical period in Greece.     

Having her hand in it? Elite women as ‘makers’ of textile art in the Middle Ages

ABSTRACT

In the Middle Ages, elite women acted as creators, donors and recipients of textile art. This article analyses a small but representative group of seventh- to thirteenth-century embroideries in order to examine the motivation for their creation and to investigate the ways in which women could mark their own presence through textile art. It discusses written sources alongside the material evidence; these sources include documentary, hagiographical and literary texts, which provide information about cultural norms and the expectations of society. Set within the context of these sources, the evidence suggests that society both channelled women's creativity into textile art and idealised it. At the same time, as artists and patrons of ornamented textiles, noblewomen had creative control over the medium; embroidery became a field in which their works were noted and celebrated.     

In Cloth We Trust

In this essay, I contextualize recent studies of cloth and culture in Africa, South America, and Oceania within changing anthropological concerns. Examining cloth as an important aspect of art, technology, and economy, I question how specific properties of objects are connected with cultural and social significance. Over the last two decades in particular, cloth—whether woven or nonwoven—has often been construed as an especially potent polyvalent symbol. Examining how scholars have explored this potential, I address the conceptual relocation of cloth in different, often contradictory regimes of value that join discrete physical locations, from isolated community to cosmopolitan museum.