European Textile Research Articles

The EuroWeb Textile and Clothing Terminology Network and the Digital Atlas of European Textile Heritage: Some Reflections and Results

One of the research areas of the EuroWeb project during the four years of the COST Action (November 2020 – October 2024) is the comparative study of textile and clothing terminologies in European languages across time. Inside the EuroWeb network, the research group on Textile and clothing terminologies has three topics of particular interest: 1. the specificities of these terminologies, and the strategies for naming textiles and garments; 2. the impact of European geography on textile and clothing terminologies, especially visible through textile terms formed after a toponym or through the circulation of loanwords; 3. the influence of textile and clothing terminologies on texts, languages, and literature. Although the geographical scope of the project is focused on Europe, it also includes neighboring areas. The terminology research group counted more than 120 people, specialists in the study of modern or ancient textile terminologies who have various disciplinary profiles: Historians, epigraphists, linguists and terminologists, archaeologists, art historians, and museums curators. The aim of the EuroWeb COST Action is to bring together these experts in different fields related to textiles studies through joint meetings, scientific conferences, and training schools, but also through collaborative research and brainstorming around the construction of common tools. Examples include a terminological vocabulary of the basic terms of our field of study, or an online platform to share knowledge on the terminology of textiles and clothing. In this article, we want to focus on the work carried out during the first years of the EuroWeb project (November 2020 – October 2024) by the terminology research group, starting with a focus on the collaboration with the team involved in the creation of the Digital Atlas of European Textile Heritage.

“What’s in a Name?” Toponyms and Loanwords in European Textile Cultures

Textiles as man-made products have been exchanged over distances for millennia. They can and have been produced almost anywhere; they are also, as a product, highly differentiated and quickly adjustable to changing demands. This brings with it naming practices to communicate about the goods in question. Textiles are labeled so that people can form expectations about them and rely on the reputation tied to the product’s identity. The terminology of textiles and textile items arises and develops in unison with technical innovations, discoveries, fashions, and trade patterns. Although the occurrence of toponyms e.g., in preindustrial trade (10th to 18th century AD) is widely used to study the development of textile trade, there are no studies that look at textile labeling practices across time and space in Europe’s history. This paper explores textile labels from Antiquity up until now, drawing on the expertise of an interdisciplinary group of scholars. Exploring labeling practices is worthwhile, as it allows us to better understand textiles as a phenomenon that has, across time, always connected regions, markets, and, not least, people. The discussion of naming practices of textiles, and especially the use of geographical indications (toponyms), is by no means only relevant to the study of the past as EU regulations show, namely the Geneva Act of the Lisbon Agreement of 2015, that defines appellation of origin as “any denomination protected in the Contracting Party of Origin consisting of or containing the name of a geographical area, or another denomination known as referring to such area, which serves to designate a good as originating in that geographical area, where the quality or characteristics of the good are due exclusively or essentially to the geographical environment, including natural and human factors, and which has given the good its reputation; as well as any indication protected in the Contracting Party of Origin consisting of or containing the name of a geographical area, or another indication known as referring to such area, which identifies a good as originating in that geographical area, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin.”

INDIAN CHINTZ-CRAFT IDENTIFICATION AS AN EXQUISITE HAND-PAINTED TRADITIONAL TEXTILE

The present social and environmental contexts are very importantly governed by the interplay of crafts, fashion, and sustainability. Their efficient combination contributes to employment generation and the creation of new economic avenues for the country. This is the key focus issue that research studies should attempt to achieve. There is a need to understand “craft”, with a perspective that exerts strength, glory, social and cultural connections. In present times, “Kalamkari” is an extremely popular Indian traditional textile craft in which, patterns are drawn with bamboo sticks called “kalam” on cotton fabric. This is a derivative of patterning the fabric with resist and mordant painting and then natural dyeing to pattern them. In relation to this painting tradition, the word “Chintz,” is a popular terminology from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the world of textiles. The term according to the researcher is referred to a textile, as well as a technique, involving the mordant and resist painting with natural dyes on cotton fabrics only. This textile, with its awestruck designs, revolutionized global trade and made India popular globally. During that period, the Chintz were exported to various countries like Japan, Thailand, Africa, and most importantly to European countries. The Indian Chintz export to European countries reached immense popularity, revolutionizing the “Chintz Craze” with drastically increased demand. During the industrial revolution in Europe, these beautiful hand-crafted textiles created a threat to the European textile Industry. Hence the chintz export from India was banned, which led to the downfall in their demand and the gradual extinction of these textiles along with the meticulously perfected techniques involved in making them. In 1958, Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay tried to revive this technique (mordant and resist painting with a bamboo pen) and termed it “Kalamkari”. This led to the evolution of two different forms related to this ancient craft based on the place it was revived, namely Kalamkari from Sri-Kalahasti and Machilipatnam. This paper is an attempt to retrieve the rich history of the Indian Chintz, with its main characteristic features, technique, and find differences between the present styles with the ancient traditional forms of mordant and resist painting technique with natural dyes. The researcher has made an earnest effort in establishing and retrieving the lost identity of this textile. It was also observed that there is a difference between the traditional style and revived forms (Sri-kalahasti and Machilipatnam) styles with respect to the materials, motifs, colors, and workmanship, as observed from painted pieces that were studied.

Product Recalls in European Textile and Clothing Sector—A Macro Analysis of Risks and Geographical Patterns

Textile and clothing (T&C) products contribute to a substantial proportion of the non-food product recalls in the European Union (EU) due to various levels of associated risks. Out of the listed 34 categories for product recalls in the EU’s Rapid Exchange of Information System (RAPEX), the category ’clothing, textiles, and fashion items’ was among the top 3 categories with the most recall cases during 2013–2019. Previous studies have attempted to highlight the issue of product recalls and their impacts from the perspective of a single company or selected companies, whereas limited attention is paid to understand the problem from a sector-specific perspective. However, considering the nature of product risks and the consistency in a higher number of recall cases, it is important to analyze the issue of product recalls in the T&C sector from a sector-specific perspective. In this context, the paper focuses on investigating the past recalls in the T&C sector reported RAPEX during 2005–2021 to understand the major trends in recall occurrence and associated hazards. Correspondence Analysis (CA) and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) were applied to analyze the qualitative and quantitative recall data. The results reveal that there is a geographical pattern for the product risk that leads to the recalls. The countries in eastern part of Europe tend to have proportionately high recalls in strangulation and choking-related issues, whereas chemical-related recalls are proportionately high in countries located in western part of Europe. Further, text-mining results indicate that design-related recall issues are more prevalent in children’s clothing.

Cotton Textiles and the Industrial Revolution in a Global Context

Abstract In recent decades, economic historians have revisited the Industrial Revolution in a global context. Their interpretations rely mostly on comparative methods. This article shows instead that there is a profound and significant relationship between industrialization and global exchange, and that consumption of cotton textiles was central to such a relationship. Yet, historians should not consider global trade in the context of separate world regions. The history of cotton textiles reveals the extent to which the worldwide integration of different spaces of commerce and consumption, most especially those of the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, brought advantages to European traders and manufacturers. Taking this view, the article argues that the demand and consumption of textiles were important in determining the scale as well as the shape and specialisms of European textile production. This was not only the demand generated by European consumers — as supported by much of the European ‘consumer revolution’ literature — but also the demand of a wider group of users in the Atlantic region. The reshaping of trade and consumption in turn had important consequences for the production of cotton textiles both in India and in Europe.

DRESSING IN OTHER PEOPLE’S CLOTHES. CHANGES IN CLOTHING DURING EVANGELIZATION OF RAPA NUI: A DIALOGIC EXPRESSION (1864-1877)

In all human societies, textiles play important roles in social, economic, and religious life. As in other Polynesian societies, on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the second half of the 19th century, textiles were important locally and served, above all, as objects of exchange with foreign visitors. This article examines cultural transformations that occurred on Rapa Nui, as reflected in the use and signification of textiles, particularly in the use of introduced cloth and clothing during the times of the first missions and the first colonial agents. Our analysis is based on information taken from missionary writings and from the reports of travelers and explorers who visited the island during that period. Understanding that material culture cannot be separated from the cultural practices in which it is embedded, our analysis will focus on accounts referring to material objects as elements that reflect the social and cultural transformations of the historic context in which they were created. We argue that the islanders redefined Western textiles that were introduced, using them in ritual contexts appropriate to the island’s culture. European textiles acted as status markers within a new social organization, and also served as sociopolitical markers among island groups (Christian converts and non-converts).

Integrating Sustainability into Corporate Strategy: A Case Study of the Textile and Clothing Industry

This paper aims to explore a set of institutional, organizational, and individual drivers of and barriers to the integration of sustainability into the corporate strategy of a European textile and clothing (T&C) company. The methodology is based on a case study of the exemplar VAUDE, a family-owned sustainable outdoor outfitter company. The results are in accordance with institutional theory and stakeholder theory as a theoretical framework explaining why companies deal with sustainability. The determined drivers depend on coherence at all levels of analysis, i.e., institutional, organizational, and individual. The barriers found are of an institutional and organizational nature only. The findings present significant practical implications for other T&C companies that seek to integrate sustainability into their corporate strategy and for the T&C industry to create a sustainability-friendly environment to drive more companies to become sustainable. It further supports T&C companies in identifying potential barriers, determining how to overcome them, and successfully integrating sustainability into their corporate strategy. To conclude, the results suggest that it only works if sustainability is strongly integrated into the corporate strategy and deeply anchored in all departments and daily tasks of a T&C company.

The Fabric of Empire in a Native World: An Analysis of Trade Cloth Recovered from Eighteenth-Century Otstonwakin

The residents of Otstonwakin, an eighteenth-century multinational Native American village in Pennsylvania, were involved in extensive trade networks that resulted in the incorporation, modification, and selective adoption of a variety of European-manufactured goods and technologies. Although Native Americans in the fur trade era like those at Otstonwakin negotiated the exchange of a wide array of commodities including alcohol, firearms, iron tools, and brass kettles, the most commonly traded commodity was cloth. Despite its role as a cornerstone commodity, colonial trade cloth has received considerably less scholarly attention than more durable objects largely because very few textiles have survived into the twenty-first century. This article reports on a rare find, a preserved European textile from Otstonwakin's burial ground recovered in the 1930s and hitherto unanalyzed. By analyzing the fabric fragments, sewing thread, and lace with metallic thread, I explore the material and social negotiation of colonial identity on the Pennsylvania frontier.

From passion to bereavement

Abstract The Finnish diplomat Harri Holma and his wife Alli, along with their son, art historian Klaus, created a private collection of 554 items. They acquired antique pieces and works of art in Berlin, Paris and Rome from the 1920s to the 1950s. The collection consists of Western and Southern European paintings, sculpture, furniture, textiles and tableware, dating from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Initially the objects were acquired by the Holmas to decorate diplomatic residences, but eventually they came to form a deliberately assembled collection. Following Klaus’s death, Harri and Alli Holma donated the collection to the Lahti City Museum in the 1950s and the 1960s. Here the creation of the collection is first traced then followed on its journey to Finland, with a focus on the developing relationship between objects, family history and museum institution. The shifts in the collection’s narrative from hobby to an expression of grief, and finally to a formal museum assemblage and a subject of academic research generate epistemological tensions.

Evaluation of a European textile sorting centre: Material flow analysis and life cycle inventory

Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have shown that the optimal treatments of textile waste follow the waste hierarchy. Consequently, there is great potential for environmental improvements through ensuring that textiles are collected, reused, recycled and disposed of in the best possible way. Despite the fact that textile sorting centres play a central role in ensuring a high reuse rate, they have either been left out of previous LCAs or modelled based on low-quality data. In this study, a material flow analysis (MFA) of the textile flows in a sorting centre, and a life cycle inventory (LCI), was undertaken for the period 2015–2017, along with an assessment of the main economic factors. The MFA showed that the majority of the sorted textiles were indeed reusable, but their numbers decreased in the reference period, from 79.8% to 74.9%. The LCI and economic analysis showed increasing resource consumption in terms of electricity, gas (trucks) and packing per sorted tonne. Furthermore, the quality of textiles has generally decreased over the last decade, which is reflected in the share of reusable textiles of the highest quality, which undergo additional fine sorting. While in 2015, almost 33% of the reusable textiles were sorted out for fine sorting, in 2017, this figure was down to 29%. The number of recyclable textiles increased over the period, from 12.9% to17.3%, and the amount of waste also increased, from 5.4 to 6.0%. The results presented herein are important for properly representing the sorting process in modelling textile waste management.

From Senegal to Augsburg: Gum Arabic and the Central European Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century

West Africa’s role in the early modern economy is usually reduced to that of a supplier of forced labour for American plantations while other types of trade — especially direct trade between Western Africa and Europe — are often marginalised in scholarship. This article argues that the West African substance gum arabic played a vital role in the large-scale production of printed cottons and linens in Europe — one of the major areas of popular consumption at the time. Its unique qualities and the fact that it was available in large quantities made gum arabic from Senegal and Mauritania indispensable in producing high-quality prints in large numbers for a reasonable price. The article advances this argument by looking at Central instead of Western Europe, in order to illustrate how pervasive this substance was in the eighteenth century. Even regions far removed from the Atlantic — such as the South German city of Augsburg, in today’s Bavaria — needed to find a way to access this Senegambian product in order to produce their popular textiles. The article thus seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Africa’s role in the development of European textile industries and its contribution to consumption patterns by following a specific material from Western Africa to Central Europe — from Senegal to Augsburg.

Characterization of membrane metal threads by proteomics and analysis of a 14th c. thread from an Italian textile

Abstract Beginning in the 13th century, membrane metal threads – made out of animal skins (leather, parchment, and vellum) or membranous material (e.g., stomach, intestine) coated with metal – were the most popular variety of decorative metal threads used in European textiles. This work provides the proteomics groundwork for the identification of the species and the type of membrane used in the manufacture of a 14th century membrane gilded thread. A protocol for small sample extraction and nanoLC-Orbitrap MS/MS analysis was first tested on standards of pig peritoneum and cow intestine metal-coated with or without the presence of an egg adhesive. The proteomes of each membrane were characterized and compared by qualitative and quantitative bioinformatics; in addition to the predominant collagen proteins in each membrane type, minor tissue-specific proteins (e.g., smooth muscle proteins from intestine standards) were detected. Species-specific collagen peptides (i.e., from collagen I and collagen III) were confidently identified to determine the species of origin, regardless of the application of metal and egg-based adhesives. Likewise, the thin layer of egg adhesive was successfully characterized with the detection of egg white (ovalbumin, ovotransferrin, lysozyme) and egg yolk (vitellogenin I, II, III) proteins. When applied to the thread from a 14th century Italian textile, this comprehensive methodology resulted in the identification of seven collagen I and III peptides specific to cow, as well as other proteins suggesting that the ancient thread was made with intestine or stomach membrane without the use of an egg-based adhesive.

Standardisation Versus Adaptation – Marketing Communication Strategies of Multinational Companies on the European Textile Market

The article presents an analysis of the issue of marketing communication strategy standardisation/adjustment by multinational textile companies on the European market. The own research is based on information presented on the websites of multinational companies operating in the European Union and on the results of a survey carried out among 246 young consumers from France and Poland in the first quarter of 2015. In the paper, firstly the results of studies concerning 50 multinational textile companies and their comparison with those of 100 multinationals from other sectors are presented, and the relations between the levels of marketing communication activity adjustment are discussed. Afterwards an analysis of the survey results is conducted taking into account the evaluation of standardisation/adaptation of promotional strategies on the textile market by young consumers. Analysis of the findings indicated that multinational textile companies partially or fully standardise marketing communications activities on the European market, and the level of standardisation of the communication strategies is higher on the textile European market than on the other European B2C markets. Results also support the assumption that textile products are more likely than other products to benefit from the standardisation of marketing communication activities. The results also emphasise a positive evaluation of the global communication campaigns of multinational textile companies by young consumers from France and Poland. Their attitudes as well as purchase intentions toward global textile brands promoted with standardised tools are stronger than in the case of global textile brands promoted with a locally adapted promotion strategy.

A European Structural Crisis Cartel as Solution to a Sectoral Depression?

Abstract Due to the decline of the Western European textile industry in the 1960s and international economic turbulences in the 1970s, the chemical fibre industry in Western Europe ran into trouble. The ten largest manufacturers of polyester fibres therefore applied for a structural crisis cartel in 1972. Even though the European Commission rejected the request, the question of a cartel agreement remained a topic of discussion at the European level for more than ten years. In June 1978, eleven European manufacturers of chemical fibres signed a cartel agreement in Brussels, but it was not compatible with the Treaty of the European Economic Community. It was not until 1980 that the companies submitted a new contract to the European Commission which was in accordance with antitrust law and renewed in 1982. The article analyses the course of negotiations as well as the driving forces and different aims of political and industrial players on the national and the European level.

An Ocean of Textiles

An Ocean of Textiles John Styles (bio) The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and Colonization in the Atlantic World, 1650–1800. By Robert S. DuPlessis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 369 pages. Cloth, ebook. OF all the manufactured goods traded between regions and continents in what European historians call the early modern era, textiles were the most prominent. As the object of the initial, crucial mechanical inventions of the Industrial Revolution, they also helped bring that era to a close. It is not surprising, then, that generations of economic and social historians have lavished attention on the manufacture of early modern European textiles. From fifteenth-century Florence to eighteenth-century Lancashire, the work performed by European spinners and weavers has been minutely explored by historians, as has its management by clothiers, merchant capitalists, and governments. Yet these histories typically conclude when the finished fabric enters the merchant’s warehouse. Far less attention has been devoted to its sale to retail customers by shopkeepers and peddlers, still less to its final use, predominantly as clothing or furnishing.1 One of three major methodological achievements of Robert S. DuPlessis’s pathbreaking The Material Atlantic is its reversal of this conventional textile [End Page 531] historiography, focusing on the final markets for textiles from Europe and beyond, rather than their manufacture. Appropriately, the book opens with the 1761 inventory of a shopkeeper in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, replete with linens and woolens, silks and cottons. His stock consisted mainly of textiles manufactured in France, Britain, Germany, and India, although the fibers from which they were made had a wider provenance, extending to southwest Asia, the Caribbean, and deep into eastern Europe. DuPlessis is sensitive to the origins of the textiles he discusses, drawing on the enormous literature on early modern European textile manufacturing, to which he himself has made notable contributions. Nevertheless, his emphasis is unerringly on the way these textiles were incorporated into the modes of dressing characteristic of the peoples—indigenous and immigrant, enslaved and free—who lived around the shores of the Atlantic basin beyond Europe. DuPlessis’s second methodological achievement is to provide a convincing comparative analysis of the clothing worn by these various peoples. To do this he employs a relatively simple scheme for categorizing clothing, formulated in terms of fiber, color, and key parts of the body (principally feet, lower body, and upper body). Further detail is added by identifying specific articles and categories of clothing, mainly European, but also African and indigenous American. This scheme proves capable of incorporating the widely divergent sartorial regimes characteristic of the many peoples and climates of the Atlantic basin without collapsing into the particularism characteristic of some traditional dress scholarship. It involves a level of generalization that will inevitably raise concerns among specialists in the dress of particular nations and communities. For specialists, differences within a category such as upper-body garments can be crucial. To take an eighteenth-century example, the upper garments worn by Anglo-American women included gowns, bedgowns, and jackets, but they employed different yardages of fabric and marked significant social distinctions. Fashion, moreover, often turned on accessorizing—on buckles, ribbons, and hats—rather than main garments. Nonetheless, some degree of generalization is indispensable if comparisons are to be made across cultures. Broad categories of this sort are, moreover, appropriate for handling one of the principal sources DuPlessis employs—the probate inventory. A key document in the administration of inheritance for most Europeans, and therefore available across the colonies of the “European” Atlantic, the probate inventory nevertheless varied between places and states in both the degree of detail it incorporated and the kinds of people it represented. In addition, the specialist textile and clothing terms employed in inventories are notoriously difficult to define, let alone translate from one language to another. Textile terminology was ambiguous and mutable—in the eighteenth century, the word cotton in English could refer to a heavy woolen fabric, or to a mixture of linen yarns and cotton yarns, or to a lightweight [End Page 532] muslin made entirely from cotton. Indeed, the variety, the ephemerality, and the sheer slipperiness of early modern sartorial taxonomy constitutes some of the...

Global inequities and emissions in Western European textiles and clothing consumption

Rising demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in Western Europe is well documented, as are changes in the Textiles and Clothing industry's globalised production structure. We apply a sub-systems global multi-regional input–output accounting framework to examine the sustainability implications of meeting Western European demand for textiles and clothing goods between 1995 and 2009. Our framework estimates environmental and socio-economic impacts of consumption in a consistent manner and shows where these occur both geographically and in the value chain. The results demonstrate that Western European textiles and clothing consumption remains dependent on low-cost labour from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC), principally in the Textiles and Clothing and Agricultural sectors. Conversely, we show that the wage rate for BRIC workers in the global value chains serving Western European textiles and clothing consumption has risen over time but remains low relative to the wage rate paid to Western European workers. Likewise, we find that profits are increasingly generated within BRIC and that they are now at comparable levels to those generated in Western Europe. We find a slight overall decrease in the amount of carbon emitted in the production of textiles and clothing goods for Western Europe between 1995 and 2009. However, the trend is not linear and the importance of different underlying drivers varies over the timeseries. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for a more sustainable future for Western European textiles and clothing consumption.

Modern alchemy: Collaboration and the value of social capital

Abstract This industry report focuses on the collaboration between Teixidors, a Spanish hand-weaving company and Zuzunaga design studio. It aims to draw attention to collaborative partnerships as a way of enhancing craft practice and product innovation. An interesting feature of the topic is how the maintenance of local knowledge economies and the enhancement of specialist and traditional community skills can contribute to a model of sustainable business. The report is underpinned by research developed through Plustex, a three-year European Union-funded project. Knowledge was gathered through study visits to European textile SMEs and theoretical review of regional policies designed to facilitate competitiveness in the European textile and clothing sector. The textile collection featured in the report, ‘Integrate: Time and Space’, evidences important factors that can positively contribute to the competitiveness of an enterprise: sustainable social capital, collaboration and the creation of shared value.

Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christine Divine in the Colonial Andes. By Maya Stanfield-Mazzi. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013. xv + 241 pp. $50.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christine Divine in the Colonial Andes . By Maya Stanfield-Mazzi . Tucson : University of Arizona Press , 2013. xv + 241 pp. $50.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesIn her monograph regarding the colonial Andean transition from three-dimensional statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary to two-dimensional imagery, Maya Stanfield-Mazzi argues that Andean beliefs became interwoven with Christian religiosity starting in the sixteenth century. Based on the idea that all Andean deities were given a physical form, the author asserts that Christian divine imagery stepped into a vacuum created by the colonial evangelical destruction of mummies and huacas (Andean sacred figures). Catholic imagery, such as the Christ of the Earthquakes credited with stopping tremors, grew even in the former Inca capital of Cusco. As a result, Stanfield-Mazzi concludes, is nearly impossible to isolate any purely non-Christian Andean beliefs, just as it is difficult to find Christian practices not informed by the Andean (177).The strength of Stanfield-Mazzi's book lies in her meticulous approach to material transformation. She asserts that with Spanish colonization, a new, independent artistic tradition sprung up in the Andes under the imperative of visualizing the Christian religion (2). By analyzing images, bultos (statues), and miracle narratives Stanfield-Mazzi explains how Christian imagery became rooted in Andean realities. Painting and other visual imagery was useful to Andean parishioners who must have memorized prayers phonetically, but was based, as was the Virgin of Pomata, on Spanish sculpture of the late Renaissance (67) as well as the inspirations of regional Spanish-trained artists. Stanfield-Mazzi argues that less-accomplished Spanish or mestizo artists trained in the peninsular style (such as those active in mining city of Potosi) may have created the statue. In contrast, Francisco Tito Yupanqui, a descendant of Inca colonists around Lake Titicaca, created the Virgin of Copacabana statute and supposedly engaged in Christian religious instruction. Like other native men who became sculptors by the late sixteenth century, Tito Yupanqui was a central participant in transforming the Christian Andes. Illustrating the integration of European aesthetic into Andean religiosity, Stanfield-Mazzi explains how Andeans donated European textiles to the saint in exchange for miracle work in a process of re-sacralization of the landscape, deepening scholarly knowledge of the Andeans who participated in the evangelization of the Americas.Proving the popularity of Andean Catholicism, Stanfield-Mazzi points to the survival, even to the present, of cults to colonial statues such as Christ of the Earthquakes, and other regionally specific images. By the late sixteenth century, the statues were working local miracles such as bringing back the dead, lighting their own lamps, and changing their facial expressions (119). The relationship between the viewers and the deity drew on European ideas of loyalty and worship as well as Andean reciprocity, with the practice of miracle painting as a form of the devoted's gratitude. In painting, created as early as the 1670s in Cusco and into the eighteenth century in Bolivia and Ecuador, rather than looking up to a statue, these works usually show a beneficiary looking up at a vision of the statue (139). …

Investigating the Blusa: The Cultural and Sartorial Biography of an Algerian Dress

This essay describes the evolution of the garment known as a blusa, worn by urban women in north-western Algeria. The blusa, a full-length dress with short sleeves, was conceived and developed in the cities of Tlemcen and Oran. It incorporates locally meaningful traditions as well as fashion styles in conjunction with different cultures. Its transformation illustrates how Algerian women resisted cultural assimilation through dress while creatively appropriating western European textiles, techniques and aesthetics in their clothing, during the French colonial period (1830–1962) and its aftermath. The exploration of the contemporary blusa variations reveals how the relationship between clothing and identity is still highly complex in Algerian cities. To date, the invention, the rituals, the design, and the production of the blusa dress has been little studied. This paper reconstitutes an historical puzzle based on recent object-based research and anthropological investigations. It seeks to interpret the blusa as an interface between tradition and modernity.

Polypropylene Fibres in Global and Russian Markets

Polypropylene (PP) fibres and yarns are sometimes called polyolefin (PO) when, along with PP, reference is made to polyethylene (PE), which comprise a minor part of them or fibres based on ethylene and propylene polymers. Currently, in terms of global production volume, PP fibres occupy the second place among all types of chemical fibres, lagging much behind polyester fibres [1], but taking part in realization of a growing raw material potential (Fig. 1) that will maintain the trend toward rising demand and capacities of the original polymer for a foreseeable period [2]. In Europe, to which PO fibres owe their origin, they comprise, according to European Textile Polyolefin Association data, 45.2 % of the chemical fibres produced [3]. On the average, about 12 % of the PP granulate produced is processed into fibres and yarns in the world, including Russia, although higher figures are often cited in some sources, which depends on specific regions, the range of products manufactured there, technological direction, level of development of the processing branches, and other factors. In 2011, all polyolefins (PO) of most widespread types of fibre products (Table 1), primarily film yarns, registered growth (+3 %) [4]. Outputs of complex yarns, which include BCF carpet tow, monofilament, and spunbond, attained a high level in Western Europe, China, USA, and Africa, and India, Canada, and South America recorded the highest growth rate. Large PP staple fibre production plants are concentrated in Western Europe, USA, and China (the growth rate relative to 2010 was the highest in the latter). In addition to spunbond, the most actively growing textile products from PP are film yarns (raffia) where China, Western Europe, Africa, Turkey, USA, South America, and Eastern Europe remain the leaders in terms of production volume, and South America, Japan, and Africa, in terms of growth rate in 2011 (+9, +7, and +5 %, respectively). From an analysis of Table 1 we find that a marked decline in production of all types of PO fibres in USA and Mexico. In USA, for example, complex yarn production capacity shrunk by 6 % over the past five years [5], and production of other yarns remained practically at the same level (Table 2). Let us describe in some more detail the situation in the European market since it significantly affects the Russian market. The share of PP fibres in the demand for all types of textile raw material in Europe is 38.9 % and in chemical fibre output is 44.3 % [3]. In this continent, 24.1 % of PP granulate is used for producing fibrous materials (Fig. 2). In the above-noted figures the share of polyethylene is minuscule. New PP spunbond production capacities are being actively introduced in Europe, especially in its eastern part, primarily in Russia where the annual growth rate is the highest in the world, and in Turkey (Table 3). In the context of the European Commission Directive 94/62/EC, PP spunbond must substitute PE film for making packages because it has the best performance properties (high strength, attractive exterior look, and wide-ranging decorative possibilities), reduces deleterious effect on the environment, the packages are capable of being used in a variety of ways and of undergoing secondary processing. Production of PP spunbond has been rising steadily: since 2010 the number of applications from different continents rose to 23 for installation of high-efficiency plants with total capacities of 400,000 tons/yr, which will meet in the period 2012-2015 the rising demand for this relatively light and strong material [6]. Appearance of new plants in South Africa, China, South America, and Indonesia is contributing to the growth of PP spunbond output in these regions. Among the known methods of nonwoven materials (spunlaid, airlaid, carding, spunlace, etc.) production, spunbond is the most popular right now. It accounts for almost one-half of the global production of all types of nonwoven materials (NM), more than 36 % of which is manufactured from PP (Fig. 3). In output volume, the second place belongs to NM produced by carding technique (cloth making from staple fibre) with an output of 3.4M tons in 2012 [4]. Needle-