|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Tai Textiles: Threads of Meaning
| Article
# : |
11417 |
|
|
Section : |
THE ARTS
|
| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1994 |
1,573 Words |
| Author
: |
Patricia Malarcher
Patricia Malarcher writes on the arts from Englewood, New
Jersey. |
Until recently, textiles created by the Tai-speaking people of Southeast Asia were hardly known beyond their own areas. Seminal research begun in 1985 by Mattiebelle Gittinger, research assistant at the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., and H. Leedom Lefferts, Jr., professor of anthropology at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, has now brought these fabrics to public attention. Like traditional textiles from around the world, those produced by the Tai are a seamless mesh of function, symbol, and design. They are distinctive in reflecting aesthetic preferences based not only on deeply rooted conventions but also on the influence of cultures with which they came in contact as they moved south from China.
Textiles and the Tai Experience in Southeast Asia, the exhibition that culminated Gittingers and Lefferts pioneering studies, has completed its tour of selected sites in North America after opening in July 1992 at the Thai Cultural Center in Bangkok. The comprehensive catalog published by the 'Textile Museum remains as a reference.
As the authors explain, the term Tai does not refer to citizens of Thailand, who are known as "Thai" but rather to a family of languages spoken by the majority of people in Thailand and Laos and that also exists in Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia, India, and China. Queen Sirikit of Thailand, who has encouraged both the preservation of historic textiles and the revival of weaving, was a major patron of the show, which consisted of about 120 nineteenth-and twentieth-century pieces drawn from public and private collections, primarily in Thailand and the United States.
Although their geometric patterns sometimes resemble the checkerboard and diamond motifs produced in other cultures, Tai textiles have their own peculiar nuances. The visual effects of some result from textile technology rarely found beyond Southeast Asia. At times, they seem expressive of a regional sensibility; for example, a woven motif might quietly echo the structure of a tiered royal headdress or the crownlike spires on temples in Thailand. They also reveal local customs. In some places, for instance, tradition calls for a young woman to make herself a reversible coat of black fabric, with one side embroidered and the other side plain. Throughout her life she would wear the coat with the plain side out; when she died it would be reversed and draped across her coffin with the decorated side up. Tai fabrics also evidence particular manifestations of Theravada Buddhist beliefs. For example, mat-size fabrics with heavily brocaded surfaces, often in patterns of concentric diamonds, were bowed over by practitioners as
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
