NODEM 2014 Proceedings

Developing Awareness in Contemporary Fashion and Design Culture with Digital Design Archive
ties, and most of the products like fabrics, and machinery had been destroyed. After the rapid change in economic
and social conditions of the institution for the last thirty years, Sümerbank left behind a very important
textile archive after ceased its production from 2000’s.
Figure 4. Nazilli Sümerbank Factory building
Source: Barbaros Şansal photography archive.
Figure 5. A photograph of İzmir Basma Sanayii Müessesesi,
31 July 1961
Source: Sümerbank Aylık Endüstri ve Kültür Dergisi, Temmuz 1961,
Cilt: 1, Sayı:1, Devlet Nüshası, İsmail Öztürk Arşivi, 31 Temmuz
1961, p. 29.
Necessity of An Digital Archive and Turkish Textile Archives
In order to create an awareness of cultural heritage based on historical textiles and to build up and distribute
the knowledge of Turkish historical textiles and material culture, archives play an important role. Textile history
in Turkey starts from Paleolithic Ages and it has rich historical textile background. However, there is only few
museums related to textiles (except from Sadberk Hanım Museum, AVEM, Topkapı Palace etc.). 1 The understanding
of museology and archiving in Turkey had not been progressed that caused the deterioration of some
archives and lack of collections. In that respect, supporting archiving and new museology attempts would
prevent the deterioration of the textiles like other artifacts. Hence, the establishment of a textile and fashion
museum is an inevitable necessity in Turkey.
Insufficient value given to the cultural heritage in the institutional and social level, disconnection of the younger
generation and contemporary culture from cultural heritage, lack of expertise in preservation, documentation
of the cultural material, and lack of financial support created a necessity of an digital archive. In that sense,
proposal of developing a digital archive will provide solutions to the problems stated above, while meeting
with the needs addressing these problems.
The relevance of the proposal addressing the needs of Turkish culture and academic research and design culture
has been evaluated in this study within the context of Sümerbank Textile archive belongs to Sümerbank
İzmir Halkapınar Settlement. Under that respect, the archive of Sümerbank produced during the last 50 years
(from 1959 to 2001), will be digitally recorded and preserved under the Sümerbank Digital Archive Project. This
1
In Turkish printing history, the 15 th century printed textiles had a great importance in the Ottoman Empire. Apart from that, in the 15 th
century, the popularity of Indian prints which are also important goods in the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of Eastern Indian companies
by the Europeans had been created popularity on Eastern prints. Hence, the Anatolia had become a transition place between India
and Europe. Özlenen Erdem İşmal, Leyla Yıldırım, Tekstil Baskıcılığının Tarihçesi, Dokuz Eylül Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi, Yayın no: 1, İzmir,
2012, p. 43.
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