Eight years ago, I was interviewed for the magazine BaliSavvy, “the official American Express® guide to the island”. I found a copy of that 2010 interview recently in an archive of the adversities I have endured since March 2010. I decided to post it here, in several installments, as … Continue reading
A dazzling textiles show opened last week at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, titled “Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade 1500 – 1800“. It’s a topic that touches on interesting aspects of Indonesian history and material culture. Unusual textiles from faraway places were hot commodities in Indonesia’s ports and … Continue reading
The Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) just acquired the greatest single collection of Indian trade textiles in the world: The Roger Hollander Collection. The museum has 70 important pieces from the collection on show now until 3 June, in a blockbuster exhibition entitled “Patterns of Trade: Indian Textiles for Export 1400 … Continue reading
San Francisco must be the most enthusiastic city in the world when it comes to antique textiles, rugs and tribal arts. This week sees the soukification of the retro Motel Capri by the Antique Rug & Textile Art Association. While we are primarily lovers of flat textiles, and it’s a … Continue reading
San Francisco’s De Young Museum has just opened a splendid little exhibition of selections from their tremendous collection of world textiles, entitled To Dye For: A World Saturated in Color. It focuses on various techniques used around the world to imbue plain thread with pure colour, including tie-dye, ikat, and … Continue reading
The Ashmolean’s Jousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art has a splendid online database of textiles. One of the collection’s superstars is this radiant sun, blazing at the centre of a 19th century Rajput royal flag. The colour is so full of muscle, it knocks you off your chair, … Continue reading
Among the 149 lots offered at Christie’s South Kensington’s upcoming auction of Indian and Islamic textiles is this striking Egyptian appliqué wall hanging from the 1920s (detail above). The sale includes only two Indonesian textiles, a pair of “lawon” headcloths from Palembang, with the low estimate at a mere ₤1,000 … Continue reading
Last June I heard Bill Gates bought Irma Lake Ranch in Wyoming, the property of a dear friend of mine, Roger W. Hollander. I was happy to receive the news. I loved this place passionately, and will never forget the times that I spent there. Knowing the ranch remains in private hands is somehow heartening. … Continue reading
Contemporary textile arts don’t get any better than this. Check out Weavers Studio in Kolkata for kantha cloth, felt, applique, embroidery, hand prints, kalamkari, zardozi, chikanwork, pintucks, pleats, shibori, and more. This is much more than a production house, it’s a textile study and development centre, devoted to fine handwork and learning … Continue reading
Textilians take note. There’s a spiffy article on the Laharia Turbans of Rajasthan in the catalog for the Arts of Pacific Asia Show (part of Asia Week New York 2010).
Joe Loux, one of the few tribal art and textile dealers whose tastes coincide almost unerringly with my own, is showing this dazzling patola in the annual exhibition of the San Francisco Tribal group at the Presidio. The exhibition opens with a benefit bash on 10 October, with proceeds going … Continue reading