Category: Textiles
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Kiribati armour
The Republic of Kiribati is not on many travel itineraries but it has a fascinating culture, including the wearing of intricate and somewhat alarming armour! The body armour of Kiribati (pronounced “Kiribas”) is held in museum collections around the world. The outfits consist of a full-body suit of woven coconut fibre accompanied by a neck…
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Operation Wrapped in Remembrance
This year there are a number of significant wartime anniversaries. It is 80 years since the end of World War Two, 75 years since the start of the Korean War, 65 years since the end of the Malayan Emergency and 50 years since the Vietnam War ended. A New Zealand project has been created to…
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Reader submissions
Shikoku Fukumoto is a Japanese artist who explores shibori and indigo dyeing in her ethereal, sometimes eerie, and beautiful textile installations. She studied art at Kyoto City University of Arts before turning to fabric and colour and her work has been seen in Japan, the USA, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, and is in…
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Egypt and the Singer Sewing machine
The Singer company specialised in making stylish sewing machines that graced the home. Originally called I. M. Singer & Co., the Singer Company produced the first practical sewing machine for domestic use. The company started in 1851 and quickly grew until it was the largest producer in the world of these machines. Old Singer sewing…
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Campbell Island’s Shetlanders
In the early 20th Century an attempt was made to farm sheep on Campbell Island (Moto Ihupuku) in Aotearoa New Zealand. Campbell Island lies in the subantarctic, 400 or so miles south of Te Waipounamu/ the South Island. It is windswept, and mountainous, and is almost bisected by a long fiord called Perseverance Harbour that…
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Reader submissions
The first indigenous woman to ever study at Oxford University will receive a posthumous degree. Mākereti Papakura, a pioneering Māori scholar, matrucalted in 1927 to read Anthropology at the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Society of Home Students. She explored the customs of her iwi (tribal group) from Te Arawa as seen from a female…
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Sealskins and the General Grant
On May 14th, 1866 and American ship, the “General Grant” sank near the Auckland Islands, and an extraordinary tale of survival followed. There were 83 people on board the ship, along with gold, wool, skins and other valuables from New Zealand and Australia, and the vessel headed out from Melbourne on the London route. Ten days…
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The Enigma and Dress of an Afro-Brazilian Gentlewoman
Clothing and adornments can tell us lots about the past but sometimes mystery remains. The Brazilian state of Bahia has a strong link to Africa through its history. Enslaved people from the continent where brought over to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade, and many “Baiana”, women who trace their roots back to Africa,…
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Conversation and Cloth
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A scrap of carpet
I sold my house, Ferncliff, in Shetland a couple of years ago. Ferncliff sits on the hill above the ferry terminal on the island of Yell that offers transport to Unst and Fetlar, the most remote of the North Isles. The house was built in 1824 and many of the original elements are still in…