Women’s Work, Virtue and Social Space

2016

Medicine presents three essays that address the little explored subject of elite women and their textile work in the Lower Yangzi region during late imperial China. Grounded in art historical analyses of textile artifacts, Alexandra Tunstall, I-Fen Huang, and Yuhang Li (in the chronological order of their subjects) discuss three exceptional cases of innovation in textile technology, respectively, fine silk kesi weaving in the Southern Song (1127-1279), Gu embroidery and hair embroidery in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties (1644-1911). 1 1 These three papers were first presented at Panel #248, "The Boudoir Arts of Late Imperial China," at the annual meeting of The Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, March 29, 2009. The organizer of this panel, Alexandra Tunstall, invited Dorothy Ko and Marsha Haufler (Weidner) as commentators and myself as the chair. Following Dorothy Ko's suggestion, the three papers were initially planned to be published with my own paper on Huang Daopo, the female textile legend of Yuan dynasty, that I had presented at the 12 th International Conference on the

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021

The manuscript focuses on the autobiographical artistic practice of women artists and feminist expression in visual art, particularly those women artists who use embroidery and textiles as mediums, techniques, processes, styles, subjects, and themes. Women artists often use a variety of unique materials and techniques to create artwork which are primarily related to them and show a feminist identity. The research explores the mediums, tools and techniques applied by women artists in their artworks and the reasons behind choosing that particular medium and methods. In addition, women artists when, where, and how these diverse creation strategies have been adopted and developed over time are examined and analysed with the help of earlier literature, articles, research papers, art exhibitions, and artworks created by women artists. This manuscript discusses the chronological development of embroidery and textiles in the context of women’s art practice, the efforts and achievements of t...

In the Middle Ages, elite women acted as creators, donors and recipients of textile art. This article analyses a small but representative group of seventh- to thirteenth-century embroideries in order to examine the motivation for their creation and to investigate the ways in which women could mark their own presence through textile art. It discusses written sources alongside the material evidence; these sources include documentary, hagiographical and literary texts, which provide information about cultural norms and the expectations of society. Set within the context of these sources, the evidence suggests that society both channelled women’s creativity into textile art and idealised it. At the same time, as artists and patrons of ornamented textiles, noblewomen had creative control over the medium; embroidery became a field in which their works were noted and celebrated.

ZoneModa Journal, 2020

In the paper I pose the question of how, on artistic, aesthetic, and philosophical levels, decoration and domestic handicrafts as subversive strategies enable the undermining and breakdown of class-based and patriarchal divisions into high and low, objective and subjective, public and private, masculine and feminine. I explore whether handicrafts, in accordance with feminist postulates, are transgressive, transformative, and inclusive. I link handicrafts with the feminist perspective, since, in the second half of the twentieth century, it was precisely the feminist movement that initiated significant changes in the social and cultural perception of women, femininity, and gender relations. Thus I apply this perspective in the first place to the analysis of selected works of contemporary art in which handicrafts is used not only as a means of artistic expression, but also as a subversive aesthetic strategy. I also demonstrate how the world of fashion transforms and aesthetizes handicr...

East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 1995

This article is part of a broader study of the technologies that affected women's lives in imperial China, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. In it 1 examine domestic architecture and reproductive techniques as well as the technologies of textile production (Bray forthcoming). A more detailed account of the development of the Chinese textile industry and changes in the gender division of labour than space allows here recently appeared in the Annales (Bray 1994). Dieter Kuhn, Sophie Desrosiers and Pierre-Etienne Will have been generous with their help, and this paper also benefited from comments and suggestions by colleagues at the workshop on "Techniques et culture en Chine," held under the sponsorship of the Maison des Sciences de /'Homme in Paris in January 1994.

Late Imperial China, 2004

Having just put aside the silver plectrum, She sits down and picks up the gilded needle. To make drawing lots she writes in small standard script, Competing at gathering flowers she breaks her delicate nails. They are easy to turn over but it's hard to know what they express. They can reach out so one doesn't object to their softness. Holding a golden shuttle, she weaves by the loom, Close-fitting sleeves conceal slenderness. 1

Women in Arts, Architecture and Literature: Heritage, Legacy and Digital Perspectives, Brepols, 2023

Throughout history, textile work has been used to construct the feminine ideal of the virtuous woman, as it was useful to prevent idleness and encourage honesty and industriousness. But, compared to the simplicity of spinning, embroidery acquired a profane dimension linked to luxury and feminine inventiveness in the Renaissance that moralist criticism was quick to judge regarding its artifice and alleged vanity. The mistrust of the treatises reveals the worry that women would go beyond the limits of domesticity imposed on them by the patriarchal society.

This article examines a late Qing woman’s jacket embroidered with eight well-known Suzhou garden and temple sites. Such an object makes little sense within the conventional historiography of Chinese dress, long dominated by regulated garments like dragon robes and rank badges, and consequently, concerned with themes of imperial status and official rank. I argue that the jacket is best understood, instead, at the juncture of three wider historical processes: the popularisation of tourism, the commercialisation of embroidery, and the role of urban courtesans in nineteenth-century Suzhou. Combining close analysis of material culture with a wide range of textual sources, in particular folkloric records and urban “bamboo ballads”, the article demonstrates the impact of handicraft commercialization and widening material consumption upon late Qing women’s fashions, and explores the degree to which these developments enabled women to connect with and contribute to popular urban culture. The jacket thus highlights not only the economic salience of commercialized handicrafts, but also the growing visibility of women in the early modern Chinese cityscape.

West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture, 2020

In the patriarchal culture of imperial Russia, the collecting, preserving, and exhibiting of art works was an activity reserved predominantly for men; in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, a new type of female collector emerged. In both the capitals and provinces, women began collecting, exhibiting, and promoting folk arts and crafts and needlework. This article examines the focus on the part of specific female collectors and patrons on objects associated with women, their pastimes, domesticity, and femininity, all understood as an expression of both self and group identity. It examines this unfolding feminist project through five stages: (1) collecting artifacts associated with women; (2) displaying them at home or at private museums; (3) organizing and supporting the handicraft workshops and practical schools for peasant women; (4) popularizing those artifacts via printed editions; and (5) publishing ethnographic commentaries which reflected female pastimes, material culture, and crafts in the context of traditional culture and the arts and crafts revival.