Tag: travel

  • Vadim Mikhailov

    A recent news article in the New York Times drew attention to Vadim Mikhailov, a protest artist who works with textiles. Repurposing cloth, carpets, costume and the like has long been the stock-in-trade of those who protest against what they perceive as injustice: Brazilian-Swiss artist, Eva de Souza, for example, or Korean-born Aram Han Sifuentes…

  • The Whitby Coast Bonnets

    Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, the famous English photographer, captured images of women wearing bonnets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thanks to these photographs we are able to see the patterns of the cloth, the evolution of the bonnets and the very practical reasons why they became everyday wear for women working on the…

  • Easter and the bonnet

    In your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it,You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade. In 1917 Irving Berlin wrote “Smile and Show Your Dimple”, a melody that would, 16 years later, become “Easter Parade”, with those opening lines. In 1948 Judy Garland and Fred Astaire were the stars of a film…

  • CTANZ symposium 2026

    The Costume and Textiles Aotearoa New Zealand’s symposium is open for registrations. Each year this event draws lovers of textiles and costumes together to share a weekend of exploration and enthusiasms. This year the symposium is in New Zealand’s only City of Design, a UNESCO designation: Whanganui. Registration for symposium is now open. Join us…

  • Threads of Heritage

    A new short film from Zimbabwe brings together fashion, storytelling, and an iconic printed fabric. Pfeka is a clothing brand from Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The brand came up with the Masvingo print, a cloth that was inspired by Great Zimbabwe‘s massive stone ruins with its chevron and herringbone patterns. Now the print has,…

  • It’s barkcloth…

    Barkcloth is probably familiar to most readers of the blog but maybe not these textiles. Barkcloth is made by pounding inner tree bark over a hard surface until the fibres mesh together. Across the globe barkcloth is produced in this way and the studio collection has examples from Africa and the Pacific. This map shows…

  • Fire-fighting in Japan

    During the Edo Period (1600s to the mid-19th Century) Japan enjoyed peace and prosperity. This was reflected in fire-fighters’ protective clothing. Utilitarian clothes that protected the wearer while they were putting out the fires that could easily spread across the tightly-packed wooden buildings of towns and cities were an important part of a fire fighter’s…

  • Jean-Claude Bissery

    A new window display for autumn features a printed hanging by the French artist, Jean-Claude Bissery. Known for his use of vibrant colour and design, the piece hanging in the studio is entitled “Boucheron”, which translates as “woodcutter”. In the image a man strides through a forest filled with autumnal leaves, carrying a cut tree…

  • Fighting gender imbalance… with knitting?

    In Denmark knitting is making a political statement. Huzzah!

  • Philippine woven textiles

    This week a Canadian visitor to the studio mentioned the intriguing banana fibre textiles from the Philippine Islands. The oldest known of these pieces in the world dates back to the 13th or 14th Century. It is an ikat cloth (as you can see on this link) and was found on Banton Island in 1936.…