Full Description
Winner of the R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Award sponsored by the Textile Society of America
Asia is renowned for the production of fine handwoven cottons and luxurious silks -- important items of trade for centuries. In addition to these celebrated fabrics, however, weavers throughout the region produced cloth from ramie, hemp, pina, and banana fibers (including Philippine abaca and Okinawan ito basho), as well as a number of lesser-known plant fibers. Over the course of the twentieth century, many of these Asian plant fiber weaving traditions became marginalized or hovered on the brink of extinction, given the advent of synthetic fabrics, growing industrialization, and increased international textile trade. As the essays in this book testify, however, they have not vanished altogether. Rather, in recent times weavers have purposefully chosen to pursue various efforts directed at their preservation, revival, or reinvention. In many cases, the production of bast and leaf fiber textiles is now thriving in newly globalized situations.
This volume presents eight essays documenting the current state of bast and leaf fiber weaving traditions in Vietnam, Borneo, Korea, Burma, Okinawa, the Philippines, Japan, and Micronesia. The processes that have nurtured or buffeted attempts to preserve or revive the production of these textiles are examined and abundantly illustrated with color photographs.
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction: Considering Bast and Leaf Fiber Textiles in a Globalized Context / B. Lynne Milgram and Roy W. Hamilton
1) Bast and Leaf Fibers in the Asia-Pacific Region: An Overview / Roy W. Hamilton
2) Hemp Textiles of the Hmong in Vietnam / Tran Thi Thu Thuy
3) Ulap Doyo: Woven Fibers of East Kalimantan / Elizabeth Oley
4) Sambe: Korean Hemp Fabrics / Bu-ja Koh
5) Stemming from the Lotus: Sacred Robes for Buddhist Monks / Sylvia Fraser-Lu and Ma Thanegi
6) Bashofu, The Mingei Movement and the Creation of a New Okinawa / Amanda Meyer Stinchecum
7) Recrafting Tradition and Livelihood: Women and Bast Fiber Textiles in the Upland Philippines / B Lynne Milgram
8) Preserving Echigo Jofu and Nara Sarashi: Issues in Contemporary Bast Fiber Textile Production / Melissa M. Rinne
9) Reviving the Sacred Machi: A Chiefly Weaving from Fais Island, Micronesia / Donald H. Rubenstein and Sophiano Limol
Notes to the Text
Reverences Cited
Contributors
Index
