The Textile Museum Journal Symposium21.11.2025 {en}
Please join the convenors for The Textile Museum Journal Symposium, a special program celebrating the centennial year of The Textile Museum on December 6, 2025. This free virtual program features interviews conducted with four authors who contributed to this year’s The Textile Museum Journal, which focused on new research illuminating aspects of The Textile Museum Collection.
For description of the program and to register, please visit: https://museum.gwu.edu/textile-museum-journal-symposium
PROGRAM
The Pegasus Cloth: Unveiling a Masterpiece from the Abbasid Caliphate
Juan de Lara and Ana Cabrera Lafuente
Dr. Juan de Lara is an art historian and archaeologist specializing in the Islamic world and is currently a Teaching Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Khalili Research Centre. Dr. Ana Cabrera Lafuente is a museum curator at the Spanish Institute of Tourism (TURESPAÑA). They will discuss the Pegasus Cloth in The Textile Museum Collection, which is a fragment from a large textile, woven in a combination of cotton and silk (mulham), decorated with embroidery of mythological winged horses and trees of life in gold-silver alloy threads and silks, and dated to the late ninth or tenth century and possesses a captivating history, including a detective-worthy provenance, academic misattributions, a moment in the spotlight as the centerpiece of an international exhibition, a disappearance, and a subsequent rediscovery.
Velvets and Towels: Piled Fabrics from the Ottoman Empire to Manchester to New Jersey
Amanda Phillips
Dr. Amanda Phillips teaches Islamic Art and Material Culture at the University of Virginia, where she is also director of graduate studies in Art & Architectural History. She will discuss the technical and historical relationship between piled fabrics in the Eastern Mediterranean, the United Kingdom, and the United States, focusing on the roles of material and technology.
This program will take place on Zoom. To participate, please register online, and we will email you a link and instructions for joining. Simply follow that link at the time the program starts (10 a.m. EST / 7 a.m. PST). When you register, you can also request to receive a reminder email one day before the program with the link included.
Highlights from the Korean Textile Collection at The Textile Museum
Yoo Jin Choi
Yoo Jin Choi is a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Delaware, researching the transcultural exchange between East Asia and the “West.” She has held curatorial and education positions in Korean and American museums. She will examine the Korean textiles in The Textile Museum Collection from various angles and contextualize them within the multi-faceted history of Korean and Asian textiles.
Andean Traditions in the Making of Discontinuous Warp (and Weft) Textiles
Elena Phipps
Dr. Elena Phipps has taught textile history, techniques, and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles since 2011. In her presentation, she will explore all the nuances of the discontinuous warp and weft variations developed in the Andes—from its use in geometric and curvilinear design construction to its structural formation in expanding the rectangular shape to a trapezoidal one, as well as its manipulation of the weaving format to enable its deconstruction and reconstruction into different formats, and finally as the expression of pure color in the symbolic formation of designs.
We very much hope that you will join us and also enjoy reading our current centennial year volume.
With best wishes,
The Textile Museum Journal Editorial Team
The Textile Museum Journal Author Interviews from the previous five years are also available at the museum’s Vimeo site for viewing. Please feel free to share the links with your friends, colleagues, or anyone whom you think will be interested in learning about the subjects.
NEW APPROACHES TO THINKING WITH CARPETS
2025
Reading Networks of Coloniality and Capitalism Through “Oriental” Carpets with Dorothy Armstrong
Link: https://vimeo.com/1047596291
„Designing Without Design” in Sirwa Weaving Communities of Southern Morocco withMyriem Naji
Link: https://vimeo.com/1050763022
Between Ornament and Structure: Carpets in Modern Art and Architecture withFarniyaz Zaker
Link: https://vimeo.com/1052046221
TEXTILES ACROSS TIME
2024
A 14th-Century Asian Silk in a Monastic Manuscript with Dr. Nikolaos Vryzidis
Link: https://vimeo.com/903797919
Two Velvet Letter Pouches and Their Role in Safavid Diplomacy with Dr. Anna Jolly and Dr. Corinne Mühlemann
Link: https://vimeo.com/906100824
Reading Mosurin Wool Textiles in Imperial Japan with Yu-Ning Chen
Link: https://vimeo.com/908387173
TEXTILES AND MATHEMATICS
2023
Keeping Nasca Time: The Brooklyn Museum Textile as a 365-Day Calendar with Dr. Lois Martin
Link: https://vimeo.com/790174356
Indigenous Knotted-Cord Records in Costa Rica with Dr. Scott Palumbo and Dr. Keilyn Rodríguez Sánchez
Link: https://vimeo.com/790913337
Crafting Novel Knotted Textiles with Mathematics with Dr. Nithikul Nimkulrat
Link: https://vimeo.com/793090266
Weaving a No-Waste Garment on the Loom: Understanding Gaussian Curvature with Dr. Eva Knoll, Département de mathématiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal
Link: https://vimeo.com/795343342
GLOBAL AFRICA
2022
The Quilts of Bisa Butler with Dr. Nancy Demerdash
Link: https://vimeo.com/673313352
Reconstructing the Historical „Akhnif“ of Southern Morocco with Dr. Myriem Naji
Link: https://vimeo.com/675956827
Getting to Know Early Modern Kongo Textiles with Dr. Cécile Fromont
Link: https://vimeo.com/680523397
Royal Garments of the Emir of Kano with Dr. Elisha P. Renne
Link: https://vimeo.com/681476100
Indigo Reimagined with Peju Layiwola with Dr. Jean Borgatti and Dr. Peju Layiwola
Link: https://vimeo.com/687199309
Zohra Opoku’s Poetic Image Making with Dr. Silvia Forni
Link: https://vimeo.com/687508079
COLOR
2021
Brilliance, Color, and the Manipulation of Light in Andean Textile Traditions with Dr. Elena Phipps
https://vimeo.com/521518483
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Asian Textiles in Portuguese Collections with Dr. Jessica Hallett, Dr. Raquel Santos, Dr. Blythe McCarthy, Dr. Ana Claro, Dr. Maria João Ferreira, Curator
https://vimeo.com/529375455
Color, Expectations, and Authenticity in Oriental Carpets with Prof. Dr. Walter Denny
https://vimeo.com/519722805
Dyers’ Notebooks in Eighteenth-Century England and France with Dr. Anita Quye
https://vimeo.com/522876661?h=3291189d3e
Further information: https://museum.gwu.edu/textile-museum-journal-symposium.
Source: THE TEXTILE MUSEUM JOURNAL SYMPOSIUM, H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US.
