Fair Trade & Philanthropy

Saturday was World Fair Trade Day.  Following my previous post, the parallels of the living and working conditions in British Victorian slums to today's exploited textile workers in developing countries has again been on my mind.

I met the OCA Yorkshire group at Salts Mill this month with the intention of seeing the David Hockney exhibition '25 Trees and Other Pictures'. However, after our group catch up, I got distracted by the Saltaire History exhibition.  I've been researching my husband's family history over the last few weeks and discovered that he is descended from generations of Yorkshire wool weavers. (He is far less excited about this than me!) I was also hooked in on reading that Sir Titus Salt, who built the textile mill and village at Saltaire, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was my neighbour.  He lived on an estate at Crow Nest in Lightcliffe, less than a mile from my home now.

Built in just two years, in 1853 Salts Mill was the largest factory in the world. 33000 yards of cloth was produced daily by 3000 textile workers.  

Titus Salt took over the reasonably successful family woollen business in 1833. That year he discovered bales of alpaca fleece in a Liverpool warehouse. No-one else had been interested in the consignment as the alpaca fibres were tricky to weave.  Through persistence he eventually discovered that an exquisite cloth could be produced by weaving the alpaca on a cotton or silk warp.  The lustre cloth looked and handled like silk and was suitable for making fine dresses for the upper classes.  It was much cheaper than silk to produce however and this was how Titus Salt made his fortune. By 1848 he was the extremely rich Mayor of Bradford and the owner of five textile mills in the city.       

Meanwhile, Salt's social conscience was developing and he became increasingly concerned about the welfare of his workers.  He vowed to get his workers away from the hellish slums of Bradford.  George Weerth, a Revolutionary German poet and later a representative for textile workers rights, wrote about the exploitation of the working classes. He lived in Bradford in the mid 1800s and in an article for a German newspaper describes the city:

"Every other factory town in England is a paradise in comparison to this hole. In Manchester the air lies like lead upon you; in Birmingham it is just as if you were sitting with your nose in a stove pipe; in Leeds you have to cough with the dust and the stink as if you had swallowed a pound of Cayenne pepper in one go - but you can put up with all that. In Bradford, however, you think you have been lodged with the devil incarnate. If anyone wants to feel how a poor sinner is tormented in Purgatory, let him travel to Bradford."

This statement reminded me so much of an extract from a newspaper article journalist Liz Jones wrote on her travels to Bangladesh more than 160 years later in 2010:

"I'm standing on the brink of hell.  I'm on the edge of one of Bangladesh's biggest slums, Kuni Para, in the north of the capital, Dhaka, and a tide of humanity is surging past me.  No-one is chatting. No one is smiling.  It's 7am and the workers, mainly women, are off to their shifts in the garment factories that litter the city.  In front of me are three pieces of bamboo, propped above a sea of raw sewage and garbage, reaching into a warren of corrugated iron. It's already nearly 40 degrees, and the stench is overpowering.  It's drizzling and the bamboo is slippery: one false move and I will tumble into the fetid soup....."  

Extract from Article: Daily Mail (London) | July 19, 2010

 
Titus Salt may have had money but he still could not influence the politicians or other employers to take on his suggestions to improve matters.  Of course, besides the humanitarian aspect, he also appreciated that his workers were not much use if they were too sick to work.  Life expectancy for the children of Bradford textile workers was just eighteen.  Salt decided to move his workers out of Bradford to a healthier environment.  He began building the largest mill in Europe complete with many innovative features that vastly improved safety and reduced noise and air pollution.  A station was built to transport the workers in by rail from Bradford. Then came a purpose built village. A reservoir provided running water for 850 homes, each with a separate living and cooking area, its own privy and gas for heating and light. He built a school, church, wash houses and hospital.  The injured and elderly were taken care of in rent free almshouses and workers had pensions forty years before the state pension was introduced.  Keen for the workers to keep healthy and develop themselves intellectually he also gave opportunities for learning and pastimes with a library, community hall, public baths and park.    

Victoria Hall built for Salt's workers in 1869 with a lecture hall, library, sprung dance floor and games rooms. Today, it is still a thriving centre for learning, recreation and culture.

The textile workers houses were a vast improvement on the Bradford slums

By the time Titus Salt died in 1876, he had given away most of his personal wealth to charitable causes.  100,000 people were said to have attended his funeral.  On the drive to Salts Mill, I was listening to the radio and Chris Evans was talking about David Hockney topping the 2012 Sunday Times Giving List after giving away paintings worth more than twice his personal fortune to his charitable foundation.  It made me chuckle to think that Yorkshiremen are often typecast as tightfisted!

So who is going to take responsibility for improving the life of today's textile workers?  From what I have researched recently, as a consumer trying to make ethical choices, I need to wear clothes for longer, buy second hand and upcycle.  Developing countries still desperately need us to buy from them and when buying new, Fair Trade is the best choice I can make.  However, it's not been as straightforward as I thought.

To be on the safe side I bought myself an organic Fair Trade dress for my holidays from Ebay. ('What if it's stolen goods?", I worried, deciding next time to go one step further and look for second hand organic Fair Trade clothes to upcycle from Oxfam!) The dress arrived and it's far too big.  At least I'm going to give the local dressmaker some business having it altered.  My eldest daughter is also in need of some new clothes after a growing spurt and there's really not a lot of choice out there.  Quite a bit in women's clothing, particularly if you like shapeless sacks or the ageing hippy look.  There's a lot for babies, but hardly a thing for nine year olds - unless you want a load of t-shirts with slogans. We don't. I could get one or two parts of her school uniform but nowhere near everything we need. The proportion of Fair Trade garments on sale really is tiny.  I'm starting to feel like an activist and can feel a letter to the head teacher coming on with some suggestions about uniform suppliers.  We could start with PE T-shirts, then who knows!   

Reading List
Minney, Safia (2011) Naked fashion:the new sustainable fashion revolution. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications

 
Buying Fairtrade
www.peopletree.co.uk
www.traidcraftshop.co.uk
www.fairtrade.org.uk/products

OCA Textiles Study Visit - Cotton: Global Threads

Today I travelled to Whitworth Gallery in Manchester for an OCA study day led by tutors Liz Smith and Pat Hodson.  Pat happens to be my distance learning tutor so it was good to be able to meet her and hear some encouraging words about my first assignment that she had reviewed this week. I was also looking forward to meeting other textile students face-to-face.

Cotton boll my mother-in-law picked in Barbados

Preparation

Over Easter I'd been to visit my parents in Liverpool and took with me the study visit briefing pack the OCA had sent.  Two of the seven contemporary exhibitors particularly interested me.  There was Aboubakar Fofana who is dedicated to preserving and renewing the cultural textile heritage of his homeland Mali, resisting the effects of global mass production. Also Lubaina Himid, who explores the cultural contribution of people of African diaspora.  One of the suggested activities in the pack was to research into your forgotten family history, race and identity and consider ways to visually communicate elements of your past to share.  This idea interested me as I'd enjoyed the Sue Hiley Harris exhibition Ancestor Bags, where the artist's ancestry was represented by abstract woven structures.  I've traced my own family tree back to the 1700s and as my roots are in Liverpool I took advantage of my location and visited the Museum of Liverpool Life and the International Slavery Museum.

Liverpool - My home town

I'm guilty of being pretty ignorant of British history and though I've read about the horrors of conditions on plantations, I'd not considered before the relevance of the transatlantic slave trade on my home city and my life. In fact it could not have been greater. I discovered that Liverpool slave ships transported half of the three million Africans across the Atlantic to British cotton and sugar plantations. The trade played a vital role in the economic development of Liverpool and by 1770 Liverpool was one of the world's premier ports. The majority of Liverpool's merchants, renowned for being commercially astute, invested in the slave trade.  The enormous wealth it brought to the city, meant that most Liverpool citizens were involved in some way, whether through trading, supply or industrial development. Without the slave trade, I am reasonably sure that my ancestors would not have moved to the expanding town in the 1700s seeking work and I would not be here now.


'Almost every man in Liverpool is a merchant.....Many of the small vessels are fitted out by attornies, drapers, ropers, grocers, tallow-chandlers, barbers, tailors.'

J.Wallace, Liverpool Writer, 1795

A couple of days earlier, we had a trip to Speke Hall, a National Trust property and a place I often visited as a child.  At the slave museum, I read that the house had been bought by Richard Watt a Liverpool merchant who amassed a huge fortune from his sugar plantations in Jamaica.  As I started to look more closely at some of the fine buildings in the city centre, more signs of the source of the wealth become apparent such as stone carvings of lions, elephants and crocodiles. 

Speke Hall, puchased by slave owner Richard Watt

In the Liverpool life museum there was a display of objects that children had offered as something to represent themselves and their Liverpool life today.  I'd been thinking about what my object might be and decided that it would probably be the Sergeant Pepper album I used to play over and over as a child.  My parents watched the Beatles in the Cavern of a lunchtime when they were courting and had all the records but I was fascinated by the cover of this one and particularly loved Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.   Later at home, I acknowledged more African connections as the the Beatles were of course influenced by African-American music such as Bob Dylan, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. New American sounds were heard in Liverpool before many other parts of the country because of the sailors who brought the music home with them.  I also read that the infamous Penny Lane (where my school bus used to pass) was named after James Penny, a famous slave ship owner and ardent anti-abolitionist.        

The object epitomising my Liverpool life

The legacy of the slave trade and it's profits indirectly affected my ancestors after their immigraton.  The population of Liverpool grew from 6000 to 80000 in the eighteenth century.  This massive influx of people attracted by the town's prosperity resulted in a huge problem with housing and overcrowding that led to terrible living conditions and the spread of disease.  My great great grandfather, Thomas Beach, like his father, was an illiterate dock labourer or porter. In 1850, over 12000 men were casual labourers in Liverpool, queueing to compete for work loading and unloading ships for a pittance and there was no guarantee of returning home with pay.  They lived off Scotland Road, the poorest, most neglected area of Victorian Liverpool and probably the whole country. The influx of Irish immigrants because of the potato famine exacerbated the problem and thousands of people lived in cellars declared unfit for human habitation, under bridges or in warehouses.  Malnutrition, disease, drunkenness and crime were rife and life expectancy here in 1861 was just over 30 years.  The burial registers for the parish make grim reading with the high infant mortality rate. Thomas Beach lived in Hodgson's place at the time of the 1861 census.  Ironically, it appears it's named after Thomas Hodgson, a rich Liverpool merchant and slave trader who owned a Lancashire cotton mill. He was the brother-in-law of Samuel Greg who built Styal Mill.

My great grandmother Emma Beach was born into these conditions

Thomas Beach died about 1872, aged 39, sometime before his daughter, my great grandmother Emma's birth was registered.  The address on the certificate is 4 Court, Great Homer Street.  In the Liverpool Life Museum, there is a reconstruction of a Court.  My nine year old daughter was moved to tears by the idea that anyone could live in those conditions.  Often there were three families to a single ten square foot room, one communal water tap and one toilet for around sixty people.  Access to the courts was via a passageway that was dark and airless because of the cul-de-sac formation, usually blocked by a warehouse at the end. 

Emma Beach 1872-1911

These were hard things for my daughter to see and I felt that she grew up a lot that day. She wanted to come to the slavery museum with me too.  For the first time she heard about the horrors of the slave trade and the damaging legacy of racism and we both found it hard to comprehend the cruelty and the thinking of the times.   

We went on to see White Gold:the true cost of cotton, an exhibition exploring the complexities of the cotton supply chain and highlighting the abuse of labour rights in Uzbekistan, essentially modern day slave labour.  We were shocked by the plight of teachers being forced to take children as young as seven out of school for months at a time to pick cotton with their bare hands, often shoeless, for little or no pay.   

One Stage of the Cotton Supply Chain

Study Day - Task 1

Back to the Whitworth study day and after the introductions, our first exercise was to spend 45 minutes choosing one of the following four themes explored in Cotton: Global Threads. to learn more about.  These were:

Early global trade in cotton - the reputation and impact of India in development of cotton.
Revolutions in technology - the extent and adverse affects of demand, growth and inventions.
Global Cotton - trading leading to sharing and amalgamation of culture, ideas and technology.
Moral Fibre - environmental and ethical issues.

Moral Fibre was the natural choice for me after my Liverpool experiences. After reading about the conditions in Uzbekistan, I was adamant that I wouldn't buy clothes again until I'd researched where they had come from.  As well as a video about the exploitation of cotton workers there were shocking statements about the environmental impact of the production process. These were printed onto organic cotton t-shirts. I learned that producing a single t-shirt from non-organic cotton uses 2700 litres of water and the chemicals used often seep into and pollute water reserves. When I read '....organic farming comes with financial risks, as yields are initially lower and therefore prices higher', I was interested by the word 'initially'.  To me this implies that yields will eventually match non-organic but there was no further information displayed to back this up. 

Thinking about pollution reminded me that we had been to Parkgate on the River Dee that week to have look at the birdlife.  Estuaries such as the Mersey and Dee are vital for the survival of the world's migratory seabirds, other marine life and sustainable fish populations.  From 1715 when Liverpool's first dock was opened, industry and the town's population expanded and the pollution problems began.  The textile industry with it's bleaching, dying and finishing was a major contributor along with domestic waste which was historically disposed of directly into the river.  The Mersey clean-up has cost over £1 billion and taken 25 years to transform it from probably the most polluted river in Europe. My dad had told me he'd spotted seals for the first time on the Mersey this year. Salmon, otters and dolphins have returned for the first time in centuries.

Clean water in the Mersey & Dee estuaries is vital to sustain marine wildlife

The Moral Fibre facts were thought-provoking and in one display was a case of jeans, pretty much identical to look at, apart from the price tags.  Prices ranged from £5 for supermarket jeans to £195 for Sharkah Chakra jeans.  Sharkah Chakra jeans claim to be made from Malian Fairtrade organic cotton.  Then the jeans are hand-woven and hand-dyed in natural indigo in India, where the company focus on developing local skills and creating sustainable livelihoods.  I wondered why the jeans are not also woven and dyed in Mali, a country with a desperate economy on the brink of famine.  The indigo plant has grown here for centuries after all. I later found out the jeans are hand-finished in Italy.  Can they really be so eco-friendly if they've travelled 3 continents even before distribution?  

Now my problem is that I want guilt-free jeans but how can I be sure that product claims are all that they seem?  One of our handouts states that a high street retailer claimed it's t-shirts were Fairtrade cotton but this only applied to the growing, just part of the process and not the manufacture. Also I'm in no financial posion to spend 40x more for a very similar-looking product, although they are probably superior quality and possibly longer lasting (though I checked the product reviews for Asda jeans and they are very highly rated).  How do we get that price gap to close? I've started to read a book I bought in the gallery shop, 'Naked Fashion: the new sustainable fashion revolution' that I hope will give me some ideas.

Study Day - Task 2

After lunch our task was to spend 15 minutes scanning the work of the seven contemporary artists exhibiting and select 1 piece from each room that captured our interest (broad selection). Next we had another 15 minutes to choose just one work from our shortlist to re-visit (focused choice) and determine why, considering content, form, process and mood (critical enquiry). We then had 30 minutes in groups of three to share our thoughts,  then finally consider how our chosen work related to the four themes and evaluate the visit.

Mood
The work I selected was by Aboubakar Fofana.  It was the beautiful range of indigo shades that attracted me.  Indigo is a colour I often wear and it reminded me of my comfortable, familiar clothes. The blue structures on the sand evoked memories of being at the beach, feeling happy and warm surrounded by calm water and cloudless skies. 

Les Arbres à Bleus

Content
The title translates as 'blue trees' but the structures didn't make me think of trees at all (apart from the pattern on one that resembled bark). To me trees must branch and I think of a forest as a cool, shady, canopied place with dappled light.  These 'trees' seemed symbolic and spiritual and I assumed they represented family or ancestors as in the Native Americans totems they resemble.  There was definitely a relationship between them all, although each was different from all the others in some way. Some tall, some short, some fat, and some thin.  The shades of indigo made me think of variations in skin colour.  One 'tree' was particularly tall and stood out as it was left undyed.  This made me think of albinism.  The different patterns I imagined as characteristics.  The dyed loofahs on the sand I thought at first were pebbles but then I decided they could be seeds, ready to grow into new unique trees.

Form
Each structure was dyed fabric strips wrapped diagonally around a cylinder.  Though the patterns were simple, the appearance could alter considerably depending on the thickness of the cylinder, the angle that the pole was wrapped and the direction. A huge number of variations could be achieved just from a few differently patterned strips.  Straight lines become more exciting and energetic when arranged on the diagonal.  Overlapping the strips in places changes the distance between the lines and generates tension.

In the corner of the room, there was a lonely 'tree'.  On it's own it looked small and insignificant.  Perhaps this could be symbolic of an outcast or loner?  The large group together looked strong and impressive and it was interesting to debate how much the composition was planned.  Would the artist have sketched or used a computer to get the balance of shade, pattern, spacing and height that seems so right, or would the trees have been placed and rearranged until the result was pleasing? I can't imagine that they were completely randomly placed but I think the artist would have partly arranged them by eye, maybe starting with the tall, interspersing these with small and placing medium ones in between, checking as he went that the colours looked balanced.  I think he must have planned how many trees he would need to fill the space. This was the only exhibit in the room so there were no other distractions which helped make the composition so compelling. 

Why the lonely tree? 

Process
I'd done some background reading on the artist and indigo dying before the visit. Aboubakar Fofana says he uses organic Malian cotton for his trees, that is hand spun and hand woven and he dyes the fabric using natural indigo in a combination of traditional Malian and experimental patterns.  As you could get extremely close to the outer trees, you could see the weave of the cotton and the stitches.  It was very difficult not to reach out and touch. The slightly uneven qualities prove that these were done by hand and although I couldn't identify how all the patterns were achieved, I could see that some stitch resist techniques had been used.

The dying technique is complicated and requires skill. Although indigo is substantive, it still needs fermenting and deoxidising to become soluble in order to penetrate the cotton fibres. I haven't found out how the dye here was extracted from the plant. Usually it is by boiling but sometimes in West Africa, the traditional technique is to simply roll the leaves into a ball and leave to dry. The woven cotton is stitched with strong thread and pulled tight so the cloth compresses.  Then it is dipped into dye vats and the fabric would be repeatedly soaked for up to six days until the desired shade is achieved. Just part of the fabric could be redipped to achieve colour graduation. The fibres come out pale yellow until they are exposed to the air and the oxidation causes them to become blue, insoluble and colourfast. Stitches are removed and the pattern revealed in the negative where the dye has been resisted.

The cylinders are completely covered with the fabric strips that have been hand stitched into place so it is impossible to see what they are made of. The exhibit information label states the medium is metal, PVC, sand and indigo dyed cotton.  Presumably then the cylinders are hollow plastic pipes and the wrapped trees are inserted into the metal base.  These must have something like a wide plate hidden under the sand to keep them upright and stable.  

  
Relationship of chosen work Les Arbres à Bleus to the themes
Moral Fibre is the theme I feel most relates to Aboubakar Fofana's work. His inspiration for the exhibit is nature and though the work is contemporary, his methods are traditional and kind to the environment. Mali is suffering economically. A third of the population depend upon cotton for their survival but recent poor harvests and the all-time low price of cotton has plunged many Malians into debt and poverty and they cannot afford to send their children to school. Malians receive no subsidies, unlike cotton farmers in developed countries. Aboubaka Fofana supports the more sustainable production practises and uses locally grown organic cotton and natural vegetable dyes.

Group Work
In our groups of three we went together to our chosen exhibits.  I was pleased that someone else had chosen the same work as me to see if our thoughts were the same.  Some were - we had both been reminded of the sea for example but then she could easily interpret the structures as trees where I couldn't. I was also glad that the other group member had chosen Anne Wilson's Local Industry Cloth to study as this amazing long handwoven strip was on my shortlist.  We enjoyed just observing the colour combinations and effects of different widths and debating whether the kinks we found were deliberate or not.  Although we only had 15 minutes or so together, it was good to think out loud with like-minded people who love textiles and have their own opinions.

Anne Wilson's Local Industry Cloth

Deliberate kink?

Evaluation
I found the study visit a really positive experience beyond the opportunity of meeting other textile students.  Doing a little research to get some background knowledge before the visit I felt was very helpful.  It really enhanced my enthusiasm for the subject and the visit and I understood what I was looking at quicker. On the study day, the main thing I think I learnt was that I don't have to feel guilty if I don't stop and look at every exhibit in a gallery.  Even if I only have an hour, there's a lot I can gain from a visit, now that I have scanning and selection techniques to draw on. Focusing on the four components - content, form, process and mood - will help me to interpret work. I am sure that previously I've not considered stage by stage the practical skills needed to make and effectively exhibit a work. Also, I've previously avoided studying work I am drawn to if I feel there is not enough information available to help me understand it.

As for next steps, I've got my reading on sustainable fashion, I'm keen to try some indigo dying and I'm considering ways to visually display aspects of my own genealogy. I've an idea brewing that stemmed from the transatlantic slave triangle where I would plot (maybe on something transparent so I could overlay) the locations at birth and death of my ancestors by generation so I could easily see who ended up where and when, which could help me understand why.

Reading List
Benjamin, Richard and Fleming, David (2010) Transatlantic slavery: an introduction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press
Cooke, Terry (1987) Scotland Road: the old neighbourhood. Birkenhead, UK: Countryvise
Gillow, John & Sentence, Bryan (1999) World textiles: a visual guide to traditional techniques. London: Thames & Hudson
Minney, Safia (2011) Naked fashion:the new sustainable fashion revolution. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications
Roydon, Mike (2010) Tracing your Liverpool Ancestors. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword

Research Point - Visiting an Ethnographical Exhibition: Warriors of the Plains

Lotherton Hall in Leeds is the first stop for this touring British Museum exhibition that runs here from 18th June till 25th September 2011.  It complements the Native Americans of the Plains exhibition on display at the hall until the end of the year.  On display are costumes and accessories, mainly from the period in the late 19th century when the Native American Indians were in their heyday (today many Indians live on reservations, but live and dress much like any other Americans).   I visited on 4th and 5th August.


Is there a theme?
The theme is the warrior culture of the one of the seven groups of Native Americans from this particular vast region bordered by the Rocky Mountains to the west and the Mississippi to the east.  It stretches from the plains of Canada all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.  The Plains people were largely nomadic buffalo hunters, so for practicality their art needed to be portable.  They wore their beautiful things - adorned themselves and their homes.  The designs on their bags, shirts, war bonnets, teepees etc were often symbolic of their spirituality and the landscape around them.



Map drawn by Mark Sykes, exhibition co-curator



Is it well displayed?
The items were well spaced and helpfully themed in glass cases such as 'Childhood' and 'Womens Arts'.  I found it a little frustrating only being able to see one side of each item due to the wall behind the glass cases.  Not all of the labels were next to the items and it was not always easy to identify what the label referred to.  Some labels helpfully had a small picture of the item on.


Is the lighting appropriate?
The exhibition space was part of an historic stately home rather than a purpose built gallery so I expected the light levels to be low.  However, it was incredibly dim in the rooms and I heard many visitors commenting they found it difficult to see.  Even after my eyes adjusted, I found myself peering and headbutting the display cases trying to get a better look at the exhibits and it was difficult to see the colours accurately.


Is there enough explanation of the exhibits?
There was a brief sentence or two about each exhibit in plain English, enough for a general visitor to see and read about all the exhibits in a couple of hours without being overloaded with information. There was some general background information in each section but not really any detail or visitor guides if you wanted to find out any more.  However, I chose to visit on the day when the co-curator and local expert Mark Sykes was giving a talk about the exhibition.  I found this incredibly interesting and the chance to have my questions answered and listen to other people's was invaluable. It was also possible to see some items up close, touch and photograph them.


Seeing items up close helped to identify techniques

Is it visually stimulating and interesting?    
It's impossible not to be impressed when you walk in and see a huge feathered war bonnet, the iconic image of Native American Indians.  Children loved trying on the reproduction costumes.  It was a very colourful display with the bold symbolic designs primarily of red, blue, turquoise, yellow and green.  I sat observing and drawing for a few hours and both children and adults passing through seemed equally enthralled.  How much was down to the visual display and how much to the intriguing subject matter, I'm not sure.  I certainly found it stimulating, but much more meaningful after hearing the talk and particularly the surprising links with the north of England.  Maybe that's my learning style to listen and touch as well as look.  I really felt that afterwards I understood what I was looking at.


Choose three exhibits and look at each in more depth
1.) Honour Shirt - Painted deer hide with human hair locks and glass bead panels.  Once owned by Oglala warrior 'Grey Bear' Sioux (Lakota) 1876-1890

  
This shirt became more interesting to me the more I found out and I was struck that despite having intricate beadwork, it is a very masculine piece of clothing.  Initially it might look just decorative but it is also greatly symbolic and extremely functional.


Only the most esteemed warriors could wear an honour shirt that would be adorned with symbols representing their success in battle.  This one for example has long black triangle shapes that are very likely arrow heads.  The human hair on these shirts is often thought to be taken from the scalps of enemies.  However it's more usually locks of hair from the warrior's own family or tribe, representing the people they protect. The colours and motifs would help the warriors to recognise their allies and enemies like any other soldier's uniform.  The yellow paint at the bottom of this shirt is likely to represent the earth with the blue/green colour above being the sky.  Painting hide also had a very practical application by keeping flies at bay.


The Native Americans were hugely respectful of nature and their environment and every last part of the animals they hunted would be used in some way.  Hide was ideal in that it could be cut without fraying, was very hard wearing and offered good protection from the elements. Shirts and leggings were long to protect limbs from scratches.  Hide could also be smoked to make it more waterproof and wiping hands on shirts after eating meat would add to the protection.  Sinew would be chewed, twisted and used as thread to stitch and attach beads on this shirt.  It could be separated into strands of the desired thickness.  Even the thinnest strand of sinew would still be extremely hard to break.  It was durable, did not rot like cotton (enzyme in spit was the only thing that could soften) and it took up permanent dye easily.  No needle was required as a brad awl would make holes in the hide and the un-chewed end of the sinew would be pushed through fabric or bead.


In the 1800s chemical dyes and beads from Europe were available to the American Indians at trading posts and offered a whole new palette for decoration.  (They traded hides such as beaver which were popular for making top hats.)  As beads were much quicker to apply than the previously used dyed porcupine quills, they became the preferred decoration.  The beads on this shirt would have come from Italy, France or Prague and the colours on it were those popular at the time - red symbolising life or blood, blue for sky, yellow for earth and green for grass.  The colours are more subtle than the vibrant ones used in modern pow wow costumes and souvenirs, e.g. mustard yellows and rusty red rather than scarlet.


2.) Pipe Bag with Pipe Case - Cheyenne 1800s

I chose to study this chocolate brown hide pipe bag as these bags really embody the Native American culture.  This one seemed a good example of its type, with its abstract glass bead decoration being typical of the Plains Indians and I liked the movement of the slats. Unlike the Woodland Indians who had foliage to inspire their comparatively elaborate designs, Plains people often had a landscape of just baked earth and sky and so their motifs are what they could see, such as stars, or as the triangles on this bag show, mountains and tee-pees.  Design could also be inspired by dreams.


There is also a clear reference to the buffalo in the distinctive hoof shape decoration outlined with a yellow bead 'frill' attached to the top of the bag and at the end of the long ties.  The relief of the beads leave a hide background with the same hoof shape.  Plains Indians had a spiritual relationship with animals who they believed were their mythical ancestors.  Clothing and sacred items were adorned with charms and symbols of animals whose characteristics they wanted - the buffalo being a provider of food and protection and strength in battle.


Moccasins also showing typical designs,
such as the hoof-shaped flap and geometric stars and mountains

  
The glass seed beads look to be applied using 'lazy stitch', where rows of 7-10 beads are attached next to each other to form longer rows.  This was a relatively fast way to cover large surfaces quickly.

Lazy Stitch Technique
Reproduced with permission from http://www.matoska.com/siouxlazystitch.htm where the full tutorial can be found.


The pipe bag is approximately 1m long with a case for a pipe and bag to carry kinnikinnick - a mixture of tobacco, dried herbs and bark.  The piece is functional and very symbolic as only an authority such as a chief would have the honour of owning a pipe.  Tobacco, smoke and the pipe itself were believed to be sacred as they could establish connections with the spirits and give protection in battle.  As there were over 500 languages used by tribes, smoking, along with sign language, was also a universal method of communication and often used to seal a pact.  A man using a pipe was a mediator with other men and with spirits.   I wondered whether the importance they saw upon man keeping in balance with nature had any connection to the balance of these geometric designs?

3.) Small Bag, Northern Plains c.1890

The reason this little bag appealed to me is that is was the one item in the exhibition that I could imagine owning and using myself today.  It doesn't look like a 120 year old bag! The colours on the quillwork - turquoise, orangey red and corn yellow are fresh and brighter than on many of the beadwork items from that era. I also had to include something that had porcupine quills as I was intrigued by the technique of applying them.  They had to be chewed for some time to soften them before they could be flattened, dyed and attached with sinew.  It was apparently a common cause of death for Indian women to choke on porcupine quills!

Approximately 20cm tall x 15cm wide, the hide bag is a taupe colour with a gusset and hide strip tied in a bow on the front.  I couldn't see a handle or a flap to close over and there was no information about what this bag might be used for.  Plains tribes were originally pushed from Northern Woodland areas.  Woodland Indians made beaded bags to celebrate the birth of a baby so perhaps this is a possibility.  The hide strip didn't appear to close any part of the bag so maybe was used to attach it to clothing?  I can imagine it around the waist.

The border was again decorated with European glass seed beads in those typical colours, mustard yellow, black, deep red and dark turquoise using rows of lazy stitch.  The central panel has quillwork as described above and I was interested to hear that red dye was popular with the Plains Indians as the colour symbolised blood and life and the dye was readily available from trading posts.  It was cheap because it was made in great quantities being the colour of British army uniforms from the late 17th to early 20th century. (I have seen some of these uniforms in the Bankfield Museum collection.)  Before 1870 the British army used a madder red and by the time this bag was made c.1890 this had changed to scarlet, one of the colours on the panel.  Another interesting local link was the steel made in Sheffield that replaced the obsidian flint originally used in tomahawks.  Particularly during the time of the Buffalo Bill show, Native American souvenirs such as beaded whimsy boxes were very fashionable in Europe but few of the buyers realised many of the materials had originated there.

Certainly, the shirt, pipe bag and this bag would all be made by a woman.  Warriors were mainly (but not always) men, while the women would hone their skills making clothes and accessories and they could become celebrated artists.  However, it was considered bad luck for a woman to handle a war bonnet.  The exception was when her husband had been killed in battle and she would wear it as an 'honour bonnet'.  Each feather was added by the warrior owner while he told a story about how he proved his honour and courage in battle.

The circle design is intriguing.  The information panel says the meaning has been lost over time.  It certainly appears to be symbolic and the information suggests a sun dance, bow and arrow or a Thunderbird.  The sun dance was a four day ceremonial dance around an object.  Dancers believed that by harming themselves and staring at the sun, they would become stronger and spirits would give them protection.  I'm more inclined to think it's a Thunderbird.  This supernatural creature was commonly depicted in quillwork on ritual objects from the Northern Plains.  The stylised hourglass shape looks similar to other images I've seen, though I'm not sure why this one hasn't got much of a head!  Winged, powerful and feared, the Thunderbird could control rain and shoot lightning from its eyes when angered.  Ceremonies and rituals could divert the storms towards their enemies.