I'm back home after NESAT and then a nice, full extra day to let the conference sort of end slowly instead of rushing home from the middle of things. It was exhilarating, with all the familiar faces to see again, and we enjoyed wonderful, mindboggling and really awesome papers. There was delicious conference food, enough coffee, a really tempting book table (some of the books magically found their way into my bag), there were even non-alcoholic cocktails and layer cakes! And a delightfully large amount of free time in the evenings to mingle and hang out together.

And like any good and proper conference, it was really exhausting. One week of speaking at least one foreign language a lot for most of us, in-depth discussions, science lingo and textile lingo and chemical formulas and isotope numbers, plus too little sleep - that's enough to wear a person out. So... more on NESAT during the next few days!

One in every three years is a special year - because one in every three years it's NESAT year. NESAT, for those of you who don't breakfast textile conference proceedings, is short for North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles (though it is not only northern Europe nowadays), and it's THE conference for textile archaeologists.

And I'm really happy, because today, NESAT starts - and I'm there. Not presenting, just meeting up with friends and colleagues and having a really good time with the lots of awesome papers and topics.

Though I'm away, blogging will continue - I've been busy pre-blogging, and if everything goes as it should, you will have a daily post as usual.

The moment has come - textile folks rejoice! Cathy stumbled across a new downloadable .pdf-publication on the Archaeology of York webpage, and this time, it's Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate by Penelope Walton Rogers. That book has been out of print for a good while, and I dimly remember checking its price once, years back, and deciding it was way too pricey for my student's budget.

Now it's available for free download! You will find the download page behind this link. Enjoy!

And now I'm returning you to your regularly scheduled reminder post...
It's May already, and the deadline for the Textile Forum is drawing closer.

So please do not forget to register if you would like to attend this year's European Textile Forum in Asparn an der Zaya, Austria. We are going to focus on linen and other vegetable fibres, and it does promise to be very, very interesting!

This came to me via the MEDTC-Discuss list, and I'm passing it on as per the request in the mail:

Call for paper: Annual Meeting of Renaissance Society of America, 22-24 March 2012 , Washington DC, USA.

Panel: Veil and Veiling in Europe, 1450-1650: Revisiting

From St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and Tertullian’s ‘On the Veiling Virgins’ to the decrees of the Council of Trent, the veil, and the custom of veiling women’s hair, has historically been the premise of discourse regarding gender and religious identity in early and medieval Christian societies. However, the significance and function of the veil became far more complicated in early modern Europe than in previous centuries as early modern European society experienced a crisis of order. Both religious and civic leaders reinforced the need for women to cover their heads and emphasized the veil, including its fabric, style, and colour, as an indicator of women’s different social statuses and, most importantly, their personal and familial honour or shame. Because social norms necessitated that every woman own some form of headcovering, the act of veiling, the refusal to don a veil, or even the way that a woman chose to wear the veil could reveal her regional or ethnic identity, political affiliation, or religious confession.

By using multiple disciplines and sources, it is possible for scholars to put forth a variety of questions about early modern veiling practices, including:
1) How did early modern Europeans define, or redefine, the veil?
2) How has the tradition of veiling challenged during the movements of the Reformation and the
Counter-Reformation?
3) What were the contemporary religious accounts of veiling women’s hair?
4) How did women consider the necessity to veil themselves?
5) Because the custom of veiling could vary from place to place, to what extent could women negotiate their right of expressing themselves under the legislation of local government and religious authority?
6) What were the consumption patterns of headcoverings, in general?
Above all, the session aims to question how we can reconsider the female experience vis-à-vis the veil and the practice of veiling in early modern Europe. Therefore, we would like to invite papers that focus on fresh materials, new angles, or special cases regarding the object of the veil and the custom of veiling.
Given that this was a global issue in the early modern world, papers concerning Asia and the Middle East are also welcome and will be presented as contrasting examples.

Please e-mail a short CV and a 150-word draft to both Mary Kovel (University of Arizona) Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein. and Chia-hua Yeh (Queen Mary, University of London) Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein. by the 20th of May, 2011.


Thanks to Hilary Davidson and the AHRC Early
Modern Dress & Textiles Research Network list for this announcement.

For more information about the conference see http://www.rsa.org/?page=Washington2012

(Politics first, textile stuff later - please scroll down if you are not interested in German politics.)

At noon yesterday, the German Minister of Defense has abdicated. I think that this is a very, very good thing - it proves that the voters do care about the integrity of their politicians, that plagiarism is still a crime and not a gentleman's crime, and that the Internet community has become an influence big enough to overthrow a person of political importance.

The abdication of her minister does not sit well with the German chancellor Merkel, though - she is actually accusing those not on Guttenberg's side of "hypocrisy and dishonesty" and says that "We do not need to have anybody explain to us what integrity and honour are in our society" ("Wir müssen uns von niemandem erklären lassen, was Anstand und Ehre in unserer Gesellschaft sind", here's the full German press article with those statements).

Well, at least as far as I'm concerned, it was not my aim to harm the CDU/CSU - but that's not how Merkel and her group see things (or state to see things). And now we can all wait and see whether the Fallen One will make a comeback or not... I hope that this time, the memory of Germany will prove to be longer than before. Because yes, I would agree that everyone deserves a second chance in life - but not a second chance to help lead a country.

On to other important things: Old rags. There seems to be a conference in London this weekend, and I'm sorry to pass this on to you on such short notice - I had not heard about it before. It went over the MEDTC-List yesterday, and I'll just repost the whole thing, since I could not find it on the Museum of London pages to link to.

Making it: Textile Technologies in Medieval Europe

Saturday 5th March 2011
Weston Lecture Theatre, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, London EC27 5HN
www.museumoflondon.org.uk

10.00: Doors open

10.30 – 10.45: Welcome: Hilary Davidson [MEDATS and Museum of London]

10.45 – 11.15: Professor Gale Owen-Crocker, University of Manchester,

 ‘Continuity and Change: an Overview of Medieval Textile Production’

11.15 – 11.45: Ruth Gilbert, Independent Scholar and Weaver, ‘Spinning technology in England in the Middle Ages (450 – 1500)’

11.45 – 12.15: Coffee, demonstrations and screening of DVD showing images of medieval cloth production from Semur-En-Auxois, in the Activity Room

12.15 – 12.45: Alan Raistrick, Independent Scholar, ‘Revelations and Calculations; developments in the spinning wheel during the Medieval Period’

12.45 – 13.15: Anna Nørgård, Weaver, author and demonstrator at the Viking Museum, Roskilde, Denmark, ‘The Early Medieval Warp-weighted Loom’

13.15 – 14.45: Lunch (not provided) and demonstrations in the Activity Room

14.45 – 15.15: Anton Reurink, Author, Historisch Openlucht Museum Eindhoven, The Netherlands, ‘The Medieval Process from Wool to ‘Lakense stof’ (Broadcloth)’

15.15 – 15.45: Kathrine Vestergård Brandstrup, Archaeologist,  ‘The Development of the Loom, 1000 – 1500’

15.45 – 16.15: Tea and demonstrations in the Activity Room

16.15 – 16.45: Dr Nat Alcock, Emeritus Reader in Chemistry, University of Warwick, and past President of the Vernacular Architecture Group, ‘Recreating the Medieval Weaver’s House and Loom’

16.45: Discussion

17.30: Close

Demonstrators - Glenys Crocker: warp-weighted loom - Ann Markwick: great wheel - Jo Wexler: tablet weaving
Speakers who will also demonstrate - Kathrine Brandstrup: naalbinding -Ruth Gilbert: drop spindle
Demonstrators Warp-weighted loom: Glenys Crocker, Vice-President of the Surrey Archaeological Society and member of the West & East Surrey Guilds of Spinners, Weavers & Dyers; great wheel: Ann Markwick, the East Sussex Guild of Spinners, Weavers, & Dyers; tablet weaving Jo Wexler, from the Cambridgeshire Guild of Spinners, Weavers,& Dyers.

The researches of some of our speakers demonstrate the contribution of practical experimentation to historical research and, in a museum context, ‘bring alive` many aspects of textile history.  Kathrine Vestergard Brandstrup is the editor, with Marie-Louise Nosch, of The Medieval Broadcloth: Changing Trends in Fashions, Manufacturing and Consumption, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2009.  Anna Nørgård is the author, with Else Ostergard & Lilli Fransen, ofMedieval Garments Reconstructed: Norse Clothing Patterns, Aarhus University Press, 2010.

What hand tools were used, how were they made, and what practical skills were needed – as well as what changes took place – will be discussed in relation to aspects of the historical and archaeological record. There will be demonstrations of some practical spinning and weaving technologies used in north-west Europe from approximately the fifth to the fifteenth centuries.  It is hoped that a new light will be shed on the production of yarn and woollen cloth.

I would love to go there, but it's too far away and  on too short a notice (and travelling to Britain is, alas, not so utterly cheap and fast). I also don't know if there's a conference fee to be paid or who organises the whole conference, so you might want to call the museum to find out details before you travel there.

I will stay here and play some more with my embroidery, in preparation of the workshop in Vienna that I will give in April. And more about that... tomorrow.

Working in historical textile crafts can be a very lonely affair. To help remedy this, we are organising the third European Textile Forum for people working in historical textile crafts. The event will take place September 12-18 2011 in the Urgeschichtemuseum Asparn an der Zaya, Austria.

The programme consists of three parts: Free time to work, try out things and talk about textile techniques; the possibility to give little show-and-tell presentations directly on your project during daylight hours; and a series of short paper sessions in the evening hours. We would like to present current projects, reconstructions, technical problems or research work during those talks.
As focus topic this year, we have decided on linen and other vegetable fibres, a very interesting and we think also very rewarding topic. Fitting in with this focus, Sabine Ringenberg is planning to do a series of test runs for her project of reconstructing historical methods for mordanting linen for a good, reliable dyeing result.

Papers or posters about our focus topic "Linen and other vegetable fibres" are thus especially welcome, but of course we are not limited on these fibres for the Forum.

We want to give up to thirty textile experts and enthusiasts the opportunity to meet at the museum for one whole week, each with his or her project(s), and there is free time to work, chat, demonstrate and talk about textiles and textile crafts during the day. The museum is open to the public and we welcome other weavers, spinners, dyers, to come so they can also sit, work and talk with both guests and participants. With this opportunity for everybody interested in textiles, we want to help establish a better communication between professionals and non-professionals like Living History enthusiasts.

The museum is graciously offering to support the Forum with the opportunity to sleep in a bronze-age house on the museum grounds. The museum facilities are very basic, so staying at the museum means bringing your own sleeping gear (mat and sleeping bag) - think of it like you would think of a camping trip. If you prefer a room, you can of course book your own accommodation in Asparn; information about rooms can be found on the Travel and Accommodation page. Full board consists of breakfast, lunch and dinner; water to drink will be available at all times. Breakfast will be served in the museum, while the other meals will probably be served in the restaurant doing the catering for lunch and dinner, a short walk from the museum. The conference fee, including sleeping space in the bronze age house and full board during the week, is 350 Euro per person.

Asparn an der Zaya is located about 60 km north of Vienna and is served regularly by public transport. We will try to make travel as easy as possible by providing the participants with information on public transport and transport schedules; additional information on the programme, the museum and transportation will be available over the website www.textileforum.org as well. If you have any questions, you can contact us directly via Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein..

For the Forum, we are looking for both paper or poster presentations and offers for show-and-tell presentations. If you can offer a workshop in connection with our Forum focus, please contact us via Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein.. Workshops will be booked separately by the participants, and teachers will receive a reimbursement.

To register for the Forum with or without a poster or paper presentation, please submit your current area of research, the title and abstract of your presentation (papers not longer than 20 minutes) until May 27 via the registration form. Please also pass this Call for Papers on to others who might be interested!
For any questions left, you can contact us directly via Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein..

We are looking forward to a wonderful conference with you!

There is a German idiom that goes "Erstens kommt es anders und zweitens als man denkt" (literally: Firstly things will come out differently than secondly you planned), and that was a bit the case with our Textile Forum planning this year. This has lead to - you have already noticed - a bit of a delay with our Call for Papers, which we originally had wanted to post a bit earlier than now.

The good news is that we have finally got a date and a museum to host us - we will have the Textile Forum from 12-18th of September 2011 in the Urgeschichtemuseum Asparn an der Zaya, and I'm currently working on the website and CfP. You can expect the Call to go out tomorrow, and the website to be updated accordingly. And we're very much looking forward to the Forum in 2011!