Repurposed Textiles:

Echoes of the TM’s “Second Lives” Exhibition

The “Logic” of Repurposing

Dida tube skirt from the Ivory Coast.

Central Asian silk ikat panel.

Textiles woven, or otherwise produced, using materials taken from other textiles.

Textiles , sometimes only fragments of textiles, used as covering of various sorts.

Textile fragments assembled to resemble other formats.

A textile made by cutting down a larger textile from another format.

Resizing. Cutting down or supplementing an item of clothing so that if fits a different person. (Perhaps a marginal case, since the basic purpose is unchanged.)

The More Usual Kinds of Repurposing

19th century rag rug

Amish rag rug

Japanese rag rug bedcover

Warp-faced Rag Rug

Moroccan Rag Rug “Boucherouite,”

(i.e., from scraps of material)

Boucherouites are woven in pile, using symmetric knots.

19th Century Hooked Rug

Older, “Poor Man’s” Hooked Rug

Single colors needed for background and borders

“Marrying the Coats”

Floral Design

Geometric Design

Landscape design

“Animal-tree,” Design

“Carpet bag” of hooked rug

fabric

Grenfell” hooked rugs are among the finer sort and were made from cut up women’s silk stockings and other underclothing.

Hooked Rug with a, Possibly, Unique Design

Navajo Blanket 1870Partly, fromraveled materials.

“Boro,” a Japanese urge toward economy

“Boro,” is a Japanese word theliteral meaning of which is “tatteredrags.” But the term “boro” isalso used to describe patchedand repaired bedding, clothing andsome utilitarian bags

Made by sewing together pieces of textiles, originally, part of something else.

When the pieced items become worn, the patches are patched.

Boro FutonCover

Boro Coat (front)

Boro Coat

(back)

Rice Bag in boro

White Boro Coat

“Zokins,” traditional, Japanese, multi-layered, cleaning cloths.

“Naganjubans:” patchwork garments from last year’s kimono pattern bolts.

Textiles used as coverings of various sorts.

Pillow covers.

Excluding those, like yastiks, etc., that were originally made for that purpose.

“Cathedral windows” quilt pattern.

1980,Pinner and Franses, “Turkoman Studies I”

I. G. Lownds“The Turkoman Carpet as a Furnishing Fabric.”

Covered with 16th century carpet materials

Covered with a Lotto rug Covered with a “Holbein” rug

Flemish tapestry, 17th centuryRenaissance revival chair frame

Lownds: Illustration of a room in which Turkmen weavings have been used for furnishing purposes.

Settee, covered with material from a Tekke main carpet;pillows made from Tekke bag faces.

Chair upholstered with an Indian, Robari wedding shawl material. Embroidered shawl before application on right.

Chair covered with Uzbek suzani embroidery

Chairs, upholstered with Japanese “boro” materials.

Chair, upholstered with a Bangladesh textile called “kantha.”

Pieced, very much like Japanese “boro.”

Favorite reading chair,upholstered with materials taken from a Caucasian rug fragment.

Tekke main carpet table runner.

Our next category in our “kinds of repurposing” outline is:

Textile fragments assembled to resemble other formats.

The most impressive example we have encountered is this Czar’s throne coverlet, composed of pieces of two different Persian embroideries. It came into the Russian Czar’s possession in 1582, but is much older.

(from Daniel Walker article in Hali, 161)

Greek embroideries have also, famously, been assembled to convert “fragments” into saleable formats, like this piece, a little over 2 feet square.

A little closer look

Another similar one.

Again, put together from smaller pieces.

Harold’s large “composed” example, with a niche design.

A complete khojin set, entirely constructed, probably to deceive.

Front and back views.

A closer look. Here is the front rotated 90 degrees.

Back, also turned.

Ten fragments have been put together to create a “complete” khojin set that might fool someone.

Constructed bag, but not with deceptive intent.

A Yomut tent band front and a jajim back.

Here is its front.

Jajim back.

Composed Coptic textile

5th to 7th century.

Composed of pieces of decoration taken from Coptic garments.

Kind of Coptic tunic on which these pieces occurred.

Arrays of decorative bands on Coptic textiles.

Central medallion, with four outlying ones.

Main border with birds.

I like it because it looks like a “little rug.”

“Rules” about constructed pieces be damned.

A textile format made by cutting down a textile of a different format.

Salt bag a likely format candidate for “construction.”

The “continuous” fabric indicator that I mentioned in relation to cut down salt bags, is not infallible. There are bags made originally by folding over and sewing a single piece of material. Sometimes this single piece is woven at the size of the bag and sometimes the bag is, in fact, cut out of a large piece of woven material, but still made originally as a bag.

The bag (the guesses have been Luri or Char Mahal) below is of the first sort: made to this bag size, then, simply folded over and sewn up both sides.

Not “constructed,” but seems like it is.

Bag was cut from a weaving as wide as this apron.

Cut from a larger piece, but still not “constructed” in the way we are talking about that here.

Here it is with a similar bag from Boralevi’s collection

Boralevi’s apron “wall”

Old Tekke chuval, repurposed twice

Our fifth and last category is sometimes more than an instance of cutting down, but it can also be the occasion for enlarging.

We’ve called it “resizing.”

A boy’s great coat, estimated to have been made in the 1930s

Note boteh lining

Cut down from its original size to be worn by a smaller child.

Shoulder patch from the uniform of a U.S. Seabee in WWII.

Quilted shoulder patches onto a red backing in a gul-like arrangement.

Last word on the varieties of repurposing of textiles has likely not yet been spoken.