download - OATG. Oxford Asian Textile Group

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the book signing, the display of amazing garments, notices of special events, lectures, sources,
and time to chat.
Sheila was having a strange day (following a positive meeting with the British
Museum concerning her collection – see last newsletter), but Felicity saved our part of the
day by remedying a “padlocked projector” situation – and yet, this only heightened the
erudite and sparkling talk which followed. The goddess motif, a fertility symbol, especially
when the arms are raised (dancing, worship, supplication) was contrasted with the lowered
armed stances symbolic of pregnancy and holding. And then the goddess morphed from a
Cycladic figure to a geometric cult object with a triangular base, point in the air (not to be
confused with female body parts). The triangular objects made of textile, wood, metal or
leather might have enclosed supposed suras from the Koran, cardboard, or even salt from the
Silk Road through north Uzbekistan. Pieces hanging from them came in threes, but this was
not a three-legged goddess. Nonetheless, as the zodiacal sign of Aries, the symbol is
associated with seasonal rebirth in spring.
That such images (antedating 2000 B.C.) remain an cowant, reflect, in Sheila’s words,
“the great regard for the environment and ecology embodied, for example, by the Bishnoy
people, the original tree huggers”. Although she did stress that it was “uncertain whether the
woman knows that she is embroidering a goddess”! Moving on to very remote Himalayan
regions typically forbidden to outsiders, Sheila nevertheless managed to photograph women’s
shifts, embroidered both with plant-like and goddess images. The people of the Swat valley
in northern Pakistan produced extremely stylised goddess images in brilliant pink. Other
striking colour references included bright green (spring) beads hung from stuffed triangular
textile embroidered amulets of northern Uzbekistan, and related figures embroidered in red
thread on white fabric as the costume for older women. In Kabul these goddess figures
worked in wool also served even to protect the cattle from the evil eye. From colour to
texture to function, we learned next that Samarkand brides continued to wear their ikat and
gold-worked wedding clothes for some time after the occasion. Let’s show them off; let’s
embody and celebrate a continuing marriage! Further extensions, both geographical and
iconographic, saw warp-dyed (ikat) fertility symbols take on a tulip form in central Asia.
Sheila’s focus (cf. Paine 1990) on embroidery is evident. Careful to preface her
Turkmenistan market slides of highly coloured thread for embroidered clothing with the
reminder of co-existent human rights problems, Sheila’s dizzying tour proceeded. On the
borders of the Caspian Sea, goddess figures appear on earrings and on hair pendants used to
protect against the “seductive and dangerous” qualities of a woman’s hair; bells are also an
option. (Hair also connects us with the air (spiritual world) and can be used in black magic if
let astray.) The Ethiopian (Christian) goddess embroidery fascinated the audience. The
evolution from triangle to cross displayed beautifully in large embroideries on the front and
back of women’s robes showed how the. cross replaces the goddess. The men themselves also
formed a cross in the photos she took of them at work in their pit looms. In fact in Sudan
(Nubia) the men make the clothes and the veiled women wear amazing masks.