@yrpastlife - Tumblr Blog

“Feline heads“ Peru, Mochica culture 1st to 8th centuries AD

"The relationship of textiles to writing is especially significant, not only for the cuneiform-like qualities of many patterns (preserved in a Hungarian term irásos, meaning 'written'), but also for the parallels between ink on papyrus and pigment on bark cloth. There is, in fact, little difference between the two. Such connections are implied in many textile terms. For example, the Indian full-colour painted and printed 'kalamkari' are so named from the Persian for pen, kalam; the wax for Indonesian batiks is delivered by a copper-bowled tulis, also meaning pen. The European term for hand-colouring of details on cloth is 'pencilling'. The Islamic term tiraz, originally denoting embroideries, came to encompass all textiles within this culture that carried inscriptions. And the patterns woven into the silks of Madagascar are acknowledged as a language: the Malagasy vocabulary for writing and preparing the loom are synonymous, while the finest stripes are zanatsoratra, literally children of the writing, or vowels. The study of textiles is, in fact, a branch of palaeography, in which deciphering and dating reveals the stories encapsulated in cloth 'handwriting'.

With or without inscriptions, textiles convey all kinds of 'texts': allegiances are expressed, promises are made (as in today's bank notes, whose value is purely conceptual), memories are preserved, new ideas are proposed. Records were kept in quipu (khipu) a method of knotting string used by the Incas and other ancient Andean cultures to keep accounts and communicate information, the oldest of which is some 4,600 years old. Many anthropological and ethnographical studies of textiles aim at teaching us how to read these cloth languages anew. The 'plot' is provided by the socially meaningful elements; the 'syntax' is the construction, often only revealed by the application of archaeological and conservation analyses. Equally, the most creative textiles of today exploit a vocabulary of fibres, dyes and techniques. Textiles can be prose or poetry, instructive or the most demanding of texts. The ways in which they are used - and reused - add more layers of meaning, all significant indicators of sensitivities that can be traced back to the Stone Age."

— Mary Schoeser, World Textiles

cutecipher

there's art inside me trying to get out

kosmogrl

learning not to return to places where I miss the past but see no future

user7038634357

mawmenny

7pleiades7

The Garden of Adonis - Amoretta and Time, (Detail), (1887) by John Dickson Batten (English, 1860 – 1932), oil on canvas, approximately 104 x 127 cm (40.9 x 50 in), Private Collection

#the garden of adonis - amoretta and time #inspo

fashionlandscapeblog

Yakov Khomich

From the series "Girl in the blue dress", 2024

Oil on canvas.

nemfrog

Red star petunias. Sakata's flower seed color plates. 1956.

Internet Archive

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homoidiotic

Michael Hernandez for “Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue” by Leslie Feinberg. Photographed by Catherine Opie (1992/1994) second picture with partner Sky Renfro