I have spent a lot of time trying to better understand textiles, their formal vocabulary, their manual production processes and their cultural and sociological backgrounds.
It all started in 2015 with an invitation to Felicity Brown to talk about her work in my studio in Frankfurt. I met her in Dubai and dreamed of working with her one day. The fact that this dream has come true fills me with great gratitude.
Ever since I saw Felicity working on the dressmaker's dummy in Tashkeel and picked up the needle again thanks to her, I can't stop researching textiles and trying out her processes myself. My library grew steadily, as did my collection of tools: weaving frames, hand spindles, needles, fibres, yarns, fabrics - and the number of workshops I took part in.
Looking back, I wonder why I ever lost sight of textiles as an artistic material. They were the ones that sparked my original interest. Today I realise that I never really said goodbye to them - they were just waiting to come back into my life.
After school, I wanted to become a fashion designer, but it was important to me to learn the craft first. During my men's tailoring apprenticeship at the excellent Schmidt bespoke tailors in Sauerland, however, I changed my mind: I decided to become a costume designer for theatre and opera. My path first led me to Dortmund, where I worked as a men's tailor and later as a costume and stage design assistant. Later, at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, which has its own stage design class, I lost touch with textiles as an artistic material. Nobody sewed, wove or used textiles for creative processes - and they gradually fell into oblivion for me too.
Today, the time I invested in my research seems completely justified - especially after reading the fantastic book Worn by Sofie Thanhauser (2022). In it, she tells the story of clothing in a way that made me realise why we know so little about its economic and cultural-historical significance, even though we live in clothes. She vividly shows why we have left the production of these essential goods to industry - and the enormous consequences this has for us as humans and for nature. But not only that. It also tells the story of the devaluation of this labour and its products long before machines were invented. The guilds, the East Indian Company and the colonisation of the so-called New World play an important role.
I am extremely happy to have found this book! The facts now fit into a larger context. Whereas a year ago I thought I couldn't afford to spend my precious time on anything less important or interesting, I now realise that I couldn't have invested my time better.
I find the greatest source for my research into traditional crafts in indigenous peoples, who have never abandoned these often ritualistic and meaningful methods of making clothing and jewellery, and in haute couture.
Imagine using a backstrap loom: a simple device consisting of wooden sticks and a belt around your hips. The chain is attached to a tree and the other end is tied around your hips. Your body determines the tension of the warp threads, which, the more evenly they are held, creates a uniformly woven piece of fabric. Good body awareness is essential here. Even the smallest change in your posture or concentration is recorded in the fabric.
Imagine your grandmother showing you, when you are eight years old, how to turn your dreams into patterns that will later become the designs for the molas - a reverse appliqué technique native to Panama. And then you dress yourself in your own dreams!
Imagine wearing a scarf with long fringes and thinking nothing of it. Women have been wearing fringes since the invention of thread. The first surviving item of clothing is a fringed skirt. Fringed skirts were worn by women for about 20,000 years. It was a garment that neither warmed nor covered the vulva. Archaeologists assume that the fringes symbolise fertility and stand for hair and pubic hair.
If textiles had been as well preserved as stone or bronze, and if women's work had not already been devalued at the time of the first archaeological discoveries, we would probably be talking about the ‘string time’ today. It was centuries before weaving was invented! However, this does not mean that the women who invented most textile processes were not intelligent. Rather, it points to the complexity of the concept of warp and weft.
The history of textile inventions has slowly disappeared from our historical consciousness since the Age of Reason. Today, many parents can no longer sew on buttons, and the subject of textiles or needlework has been abolished in German public schools - although it would have been worth preserving this discipline. Can we really afford not to pass on this culturally and historically valuable knowledge to future generations?
If you would like to know more about this, I recommend the book by Elisabeth Wayland Barber:
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years : Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, and of course WORN by Sofie Thanhauser!
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