[From Hali, Winter 2009. Photo by Don Tuttle.]
Ever since Katie Loux's
piece about Bolivian textiles and the old weavings of the
Aymara was published in
Hali, I've been hoping to spot more examples of similar woven stripes in some current interiors.
[Mid-18th-century Ahauyo, Camelid wool yarns, Aymara Culture, Southern Altiplano, Bolivia. William Siegal Gallery.]
[All interiors photography by Lisa Romerein posted here with permission from the designer.]
Then today, when I asked L.A. decorator
Schuyler Samperton about one of her residential projects, she mentioned using striped rugs from Austin, Texas to upholster a pair of chairs. With the artistic connections between the Southwestern United States and neighboring regions to the south, my mind took a few big leaps further down to South America and back again to
Hali's cover story.
Schuyler used another woven rug from Austin as a throw, mixed together in the same room with pillows made from suzani fragments and Indonesian fabrics (sourced at
Maison 819). The curtain and chair fabrics are from
Raoul Textiles.
Coincidentally, Indonesian and Peruvian textiles are among the cross-cultural offerings currently on view in
To Dye For: A World Saturated in Color at the
de Young Museum through January 9, 2011. And the
de Young was the recipient of the Jeffrey Appleby Collection of Andean textiles (in the 1990s Thames & Hudson published
a related book in association with the Museum.)
I also noticed
Five Centuries of Indonesian Textiles at the de Young gift shop
online.
Of course the
V & A is a never ending source brimming with beautiful volumes.
I'm still a big fan of the budget-friendly
pattern series with the accompanying (free!) CD-Rom, so I was thrilled to see
Chinese Textiles in the soon-to-hit-stores fall line up.
Apart from their aesthetic beauty, textiles are such valuable tools for historians. (Not sure if it has been done already, but shouldn't there be an alternative, visually dynamic world map with countries distinguished by indigenous patterned fabrics, rather than the usual pastels? Might improve my sense of geography.) I can't help being fascinated by the ways in which curators use old textiles to play detective, and also to bring various eras to life for museum visitors.
No big surprise then that I was smiling when
Enfilade, a newsletter for historians of 18th-century art and architecture, recently invited me to contribute
a little something on the subject. If you are not a big textile person, no doubt you skipped this post entirely, but if you stayed to the end and your passion happens to be centuries-old houses or other decorative arts, I highly recommend
Enfilade. It's a wonderful window on the world's art and antiques scene.
Update 9:49 p.m.
So it seems the
de Young is the fifth most popular museum in the U.S.! I didn't realize that until coming across
this SF Gate article.
Update 9.27.2010
Many thanks to
Janet Blyberg for sharing
this vintage Bolivian blanket source,
Spartan, via
Lena Corwin.
And my own afterthought:
Peruvian pillow cover from
The Textile Museum gift shop. Found a shot of Newman and Redford sporting what appears to be Bolivian apparel
here.