In the past decade there has been a steadily growing amount of scholarship into the study of textiles that circulated through and around the sphere of the Mediterranean Sea, along with trade routes to India and the Far East during the period of 300–1600 CE. As noted by the organizers of this panel, the study of these fabrics and the embodied experience of their users have been stuck within disconnected silos without a unifying theory or methodology to assist in crafting a more complex picture of the pre-/early modern human experience. This paper proposes a new art historical methodology—“textility”—to more comprehensively situate the study of textiles within the embodied experiences of the medieval built environment and material culture.
A term already in use in the field of design studies, the roots of the term “textility” can be traced to the Latin root texere (“to weave”) and the Greek techne (“to make”). Design studies scholars Victoria Mitchell and Elaine Igoe, and anthropologist Tim Ingold use the word as a means for understanding and creating methods that can be used within the growing field of design studies for dissecting the role of the maker, whether that be an artist, architect, potter, writer, or weaver. Considering these definitions of textility, I propose a different employment of the term “textility” as an art historical methodology, where textility functions to “make” an art object (painting, fresco, work of architecture, etc.) “woven” or textilic (textile-like) through its materials, reproduction of a textile aesthetic, and/or metaphorical description. Further, this art historical interpretation of textility draws on the work of phenomenology and sensiotics to construct the embodied experience of wearing textiles by taking into consideration the texture, weight, materiality, smell, and sound of the textiles themselves in relation to the body that they clothe. This will explore the way that textiles relate to the body of the art object instead of an approach that focuses on iconography and style. By doing so, textiles can be incorporated or re-incorporated into understanding art and architecture as a lens or veil through which to create a more complex and dynamic narrative of historical periods, cultures, and their objects.
The first part of this paper will outline the theoretical frameworks and practical steps through which each object or group of objects can be examined, such as: body, origin, material/materiality, real/implied use, and touch/sensation/sensorium. The second half of this paper will focus on two case studies of how to apply this methodology to a textile object, a thirteenth opus anglicanum cope fragment held within Lyon’s Musee des tissus, and to a painted representation with the fourteenth-century Last Judgement fresco within the Pisan Camposanto.
Keywords: Textility; art history; material culture; medieval textiles; theory
Barthes, Roland. The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.
Drewal, Henry John. “Sensiotics, or the Study of the Senses in Material Culture and History in Africa and Beyond.” In The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, ed. Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Anne Carter, 275–94. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Igoe, Elaine. Textile Design Theory in the Making. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021.
Ingold, Tim. “The textility of making.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34 (2010):91–102.
Mitchell, Victoria. “Textiles, Text and Techne.” In Obscure Objects of Desires: Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century, ed. Tanya Harrod, 324–39. London: Crafts Council, 1997.
Tania Kolarik (she/her/hers)
2017–present: Ph.D. Candidate, Art History, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Dissertation: “Clothing the Commune: The Culture of Textiles in the Long Fourteenth Century”
2015: M.A. University of North Texas–Art History; Minor: Roman History
2013: B.S. Texas A&M University–Biomedical Science; Minor: Art and Architectural History
https://arthistory.wisc.edu/staff/tania-kolarik/
A term already in use in the field of design studies, “textility” is used as a means for understanding and creating methods that can be used within the growing field of design studies for dissecting the role of the maker, whether that be an artist, architect, potter, writer, or weaver. Considering these definitions of textility, I propose a different employment of the term “textility” as an art historical methodology, where textility functions to “make” an art object (painting, fresco, work of architecture, etc.) “woven” or textilic (textile-like) through its materials, reproduction of a textile aesthetic, and/or metaphorical description.