02 Textile Design

02.1 Ethnic Influence

Granick, E.W. (1989). The Amish Quilt. Intercourse: PA: Good Books. ISBN 0-934672-74-1, 192 pages, $45.00.

Reviewed by Virginia Gunn, University of Akron

For the past decade, Amish quilts have attracted nationwide attention, wining the favor of museum curators, collectors, and dealers and constantly escalating in price. Until recently the emphasis has been on Amish quilts as works of art and little attention has been paid to sorting out the complexities of their use as material-cultural artifacts in the numerous Amish communities. Eve Wheatcroft Granick's book The Amish Quilt sets these quilts in social-cultural and historical perspectives and fills an important gap in the literature on American textile arts, quilts, and Amish textile traditions.
Granick clearly discusses the settlement of the Amish religious communities in North America and the related development of their distinctive quilt making traditions. She shows how changes in Amish quilts reflect both changes in Amish culture and the larger American culture. Her perspectives on the symbolic meanings of Amish quilts should be of interest to ACPTC members working in social psychology as well as historical areas.
Granick's outstanding contribution is to help the reader clearly understand the differences between Amish communities and how these differences are reflected in the quilts made by the various Amish groups residing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Canada as well as some of the newer settlements in Delaware, Florida, and Wisconsin. She notes and explains differences in colors, patters, fabrics, linings, bindings, and quilting. For example, fine quilting, of major importance in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania quilts, is secondary to pattern and piecing in Ohio quilts. Granick's main points are reinforced visually with high-quality color plates showing both overall views and important details of representative quilts, mainly from private collections.
Her research is based on extensive interviews and conversations with Amish families and with people who interact with Amish communities. She has also competently analyzed and synthesized historical data gleaned from sources including estate inventories, census records, The Sugar Creek Budget (a weekly national newspaper serving the Amish and Amish Mennonites since the 1890's), and surviving quilts.
The textile chapter contains valuable comments on fabric sources for Amish communities, but ACPTC scholars will notice signs that Granick is not formally trained in textile science. For example, she occasionally interchanges the terms fiber and fabric. She rather confusingly refers both to sateen fabric and a sateen weave, which she defines as a filling-face variation of satin weave. On two occasions (pages 56 and 57) she misstates W.H. Perkin's discover of the first analine dye which occurred in 1856.
These minor flaws do not seriously detract from the overall value of the book, which is a must for anyone interested in Amish quilts and a worthy addition to the library of anyone interested in decorative arts or textile history. Granick's book also serves as an excellent example of material-culture scholarship, based onwise use of oral interviews, historical records, and extant artifacts.

Niessen, S.A. (1993). Batak Cloth and Clothing: A Dynamic Indonesian Tradition. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9676530409

Reviewed by Heidi Boehlke, University of Minnesota

Batak Cloth and Clothing is a thoughtful integration of Batak dress and textiles and fills a void in the literature that emphasized Indonesian flat textiles. Niessen accounts for change in Batak dress that began with distinct clans and attendant dress codes and ended with vestimenuun communis, common clothing, and amalgam of Malay-Islamic and European dress, More importantly Niessen discusses "clothing substitution," "a dualistic process of affiliation with the origin of the newly adopted styles and differentiation from the styles that are thereby rejected" (pp. 123-124). She examines Batak clothing change thematically, focusing on Malay-Islamic, Christian missionary, and colonial influences in the late nineteenth century and that legacy in contemporary Batak textiles and dress.
In her introduction Niessen acknowledges the limitations and strengths of her data. Biases by gentleman travelers and male missionaries, prevalence of "Sunday best" genre photographs, absence of European female voices, and insufficient data of textiles and dress in museums are some of the challenges she faced. In approaching clothing as a riddle, Niessen asserts the primacy and power of the actual cloth, allowing her to extrapolate the evidence in the cloth to the past. She justifies using the social structural model as the starting point for interpretation, but points out its limitations by demonstrating that clothing is not always a "mirror of social structure" (p. 6).
Niessen argues that the way in which clothing elements are selected, rejected, or transformed are "the considered statements of the times" (p. 124). Change in Batak dress occurred in two phases. The first, pre-European contact, is essentially a diffusion process where higher status Bataks embellished indigenous styles with trade items. The second phase concerned the Malay-Islamic and European encroachment in Batak territory with the loss of control by the Bataks themselves. This acculturation phase is characterized by either resistance by egalitarian-style Batak groups (Simalungun and Southern Batak). In addition, European contact differentiated male and female dress. Batak men working in church and government positions tended to incorporate some or all features of European dress, while the women did not because they were not directly involved in the colonial system. Niessen's analysis of clothing substitutions brings to mind Erekosima and Eicher's (1981) concept of cultural authentication developed from their study of Kalabari pelete-bite cloth in Nigeria. Kalabari women create new designs in imported check, plaid or striped cloth by lifting and cutting threads, thus making the textiles uniquely Kalabari. This process of adaptation goes beyond straight borrowing and encompasses four steps of selection, characterization, incorporation, and transformation.
The lengthy captions accompanying the many photographs and illustrations allow the casual reader a cursory understanding of her focus. Her usage of "national dress" and "fashion" in the context of Batak clothing rises issues of terminology. An appendix of past and present textile types would enhance the reader's engagement with Niessen's fascinating analysis. A patient reader trying to assemble a listing of textile types may be frustrated. For example, I was unable to locate the Logoboti Porsea are on any of her maps. Neither was it clear that a photograph of textiles in Porsea market (p. 55) depicted the Porsea "conservative weavings" mentioned on page 112.
Batak Cloth and Clothing provides a careful analysis of the dynamics involved in Batak rejection or incorporation of intruder dress. The author tackles the complex matter of clothing change in a colonized tribal society. Niessen's achievement is a testament to the strength and validity of the material culture approach. This book is a welcome resource for the study of culture and dress and costume history.

Erekosima, T.V. & Eicher, J.B. (1981). Kalabari cut-thread and pulled-thread cloth. African Arts. (2). 49-51.