This issue is the start of the fiftieth volume of Textile History, continuing our celebration of the golden anniversary of the journal. (To assuage any curiosity about our prolonged anniversary, the first volume of Textile History was presented to the research community across 1968 and 1969, giving us a wonderful excuse to extend our scholarly festivities.) The anniversary conference hosted by the Pasold Research Fund in November 2018 in London brought together both established and emerging scholars to reflect upon the themes and subfields that constitute the field of textile history, and consider the new directions in which scholars of textile history are forging interdisciplinary pathways. We are continuing those discussions across Volume 50, in which, in addition to our usual array of articles, book reviews and exhibition reviews by scholars across the field, we are publishing a series of ‘think pieces’ on particular aspects of textile history, charting how these themes and subfields have been represented in the fifty years of Textile History, and what needs and opportunities for further research topics and approaches might be addressed in the coming decades. We are also highlighting this landmark volume by launching a new cover design, which offers us a more flexible canvas to emphasise the range of material and visual evidence available to textile historians. We thank all our authors, peer reviewers and readers for joining in these celebrations.
Last year, we noted that Textile History was founded with a desire to promote conversations between historians of textile industries — the business, economics, trade and technologies of textile production and distribution — and historians of textile art and design — the aesthetics, cultural and political meanings and consumption of textiles. The articles in this issue demonstrate the fruition of these exchanges, focusing in different ways on the symbiotic relationships between trade, technology and economics on the one hand and design and consumption on the other. Jutta Wimmler, in ‘From Senegal to Augsburg: Gum Arabic and the Central European Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century’, examines the trade in gum arabic, derived from the sap of trees native to West Africa, as a crucial component in the proliferation of printed cottons and linens in eighteenth-century European textile industries. Textile manufacturers used gums to control the placement and spread of mordants that allowed for vibrant colours to be printed in precise patterns. Wimmler argues that ‘the large-scale production and dissemination of printed cotton and linen textiles from the late seventeenth century onwards would not have been possible without gum arabic from Senegal’. She seeks both to recover the importance of this African raw material and locate the context for its use in Central European textile manufacturing, in both ways extending our knowledge of the global trades that underpinned textile production and allowed for the visual effects associated with eighteenth-century printed textiles.
In ‘Textiles and the Face of Modernity: Artistry and Industry in Mid-Century America’, Virginia Gardner Troy explores the design process that affected both the production and use of new textiles in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. Key players in textile design required interdisciplinary knowledge in order to harness new manufacturing processes to create textiles that represented the best in modern — and often handcrafted — design. Textile designers also played an important role in the dissemination of American textiles, as symbols of both artistry and industry, into modern interior design of both domestic and corporate settings, as well as other innovative uses, such as automobile interiors. These ‘Super Designers’ or ‘Techno-Craftsmen’, as they were variously called, were equally at home in the factory, the department store and the museum, creating a nexus for the promotion of modern American textiles.
We also include a Research Note by Rudy Jos Beerens, who participated in the Textile History Fiftieth Anniversary Conference as one of the emerging scholars forging new directions in the field, and whose research we are delighted to publish. In ‘The Amsterdam Tapestry Producer Alexander Baert (1660–1719) and his Workshop: New Findings’, Beerens mines archival sources in new ways, to show the overlapping networks of kinship, community and business, as key factors in the movement of Flemish tapestry production across the borders of the Dutch Republic, and indeed by extension across northern Europe. Using the case study of Alexander Baert, Beerens is able to not only trace the motivations for migration but also explore the extent to which these networks persisted and continued to support the entrepreneurial endeavour of tapestry production and distribution, and the impact that these networks had on the design of the tapestries produced.
These articles are followed by a set of short essays on key themes and sub-disciplines in textile history, commissioned for this fiftieth volume of the journal. We asked authors to consider the place of their particular theme within the broader field, surveying how their themes have been represented within the journal, not only to celebrate the five decades of scholarship published by Textile History, but also to identify new avenues for further research. Particular threads run through several of the essays, for example, the longstanding emphasis on interdisciplinarity, not only within the academy but beyond it to incorporate the ground-breaking scholarship occurring in museums and other public institutions. Many authors also note the influence both of and on the journal in the dialogues surrounding the ‘material turn’ in the humanities. In this issue we publish essays by Mary Brooks on Conservation, Beverly Lemire on Material Culture, Shinobu Majima on Business History, Charlotte Niklas on Dress, Miki Sugiura on Value and Philip Sykas on Design. All of these authors will no doubt provoke new scholarly directions, while also serving as excellent historiographic guides. We will continue these thematic essays in the second issue of this volume.
The issue ends as customary with reviews of the latest scholarship in textile history, as presented in both exhibitions and publications. We want to take this opportunity to again thank Alexis Romano and Chris Boydell, the previous editors of Exhibition and Book Reviews, respectively, for graciously orienting our new review editors and helping make such a seamless transition. We also welcome our new editors as they make their initial contributions. Serena Dyer, the Exhibition Review Editor, writes:
From the fur and feathers of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s ‘Fashioned from Nature’, to the glitz and fabric innovation of the Fashion and Textiles Museum’s ‘Night and Day’, the exhibition reviews in this issue highlight the diversity of materials and modes of materiality that currently preoccupy curatorial approaches to textiles and dress. At the same time, we are reminded in ‘Anni Albers’ of the importance of weaving, and the core crafts at the heart of textile history.
Suggestions for new exhibitions to review may be sent to Serena at [email protected]. We would also like to expand our reviews to include other visual means of conveying research in textile history, such as film or television documentary, and would welcome suggestions to Serena along these lines as well.
Rachel Silberstein, the Book Review Editor, writes:
In this issue’s book reviews, two new publications — May Morris: Arts & Crafts Designer and May Morris: Art and Life, New Perspectives — explore the significance of the textile designer and embroiderer, May Morris, to the fortunes of Morris & Co. and the Arts and Crafts movement. The Clothing of the Common Sort 1570–1700, a study of probate accounts dating from 1570 to 1700, offers a wealth of insights into common people’s clothing consumption. Walter Morrell’s ‘Manufacture for the New Draperie’ (1616) includes a full transcript and study of this important text. Fashion Curating: Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond explores the current state of fashion curation; Colors in Fashion considers the importance to colour to fashion; and European Fashion: The Creation of a Global Industry challenges established narratives of fashion creation as the centralised product of a small group of Parisian designers. Finally, Salish Blankets: Robes of Protection and Transformation, Symbols of Wealth examines the history and cultural significance of Salish weaving.
Please contact Rachel on [email protected] to suggest possible books for review and send books to her at The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, 400 Thomson Hall, Seattle WA 98195, USA.
Textile History is the journal of the Pasold Research Fund, which supports innovative research in textile and dress history. The Fund offers a variety of research grants, including to support object-based research in museums and other heritage institutions, as well as grants for publications and postgraduate study. The Fund also awards an annual prize for the best article published in the journal, as judged by the Fund’s Governors and members of the Editorial Board. We are delighted to announce that the winning article for Volume 49 (2018) is Elizabeth Spencer, ‘“None but Abigails appeared in white aprons”: The Apron as an Elite Garment in Eighteenth-Century England’. For further information about the work of the Fund, see: www.pasold.co.uk.