Houndstooth - Imprint (NYC)

Recommendations

Info

Chung The origins of the houndstooth-‐check as a simple pattern travelled some distance to become a symbol of well-‐tailored aristocracy, luxury in general, a bygone lifestyle, and ultimately a signifier that only vaguely references itself. In the process, it’s moved from a small-‐scale weave to large-‐scale printed patterns. From stark black and white to all manner of colors, from fabric to packaging and sculpture, from comfortable means of keeping warm and carry a lamb, to the cue for a stark and cold runway satire about luxury. People of different nations, time periods, and walks of life call the houndstooth-‐check by different names: hound’s tooth, hounds-‐tooth, houndstooth-‐ check, dog’s tooth, dogstooth, puppy tooth, four-‐in-‐four, gun check, and glen plaid. Presumably, all the variations on spelling are regional and predate the mass marketing of the houndstooth-‐check. A smaller scale version of the houndstooth-‐ check has frequently been referred to as puppy tooth or dog’s tooth. The terms puppy tooth, dog’s tooth, or dogtooth have all been attributed to the ornamentation found in architectural moldings during the 12 th century. Both in architecture and in woven fabrics, the terms puppy tooth, dog’s tooth, or hound’s tooth refers to a pattern resembling a canine’s tooth. These architectural patterns however, bear little visual resemblance to the textile pattern known as houndstooth. <strong>Houndstooth</strong> is “commonly made with wool with a broken twill weave that has been woven into an irregular check of a four-‐pointed star” and “a variation of the twill weave construction in which a broken check effect is produced by a variation in the pattern of interlacing yarns, utilizing at least two different coloured yarns…” 1 a duotone textile pattern, often in black and white, characterized by an 2
Chung abstract four-‐pointed shape. 2 The classic houndstooth-‐check is an example of a tessellation; the tiling of plane figures that fills a space with no overlaps or gaps. 3 All woven fabrics consist of warp yarns running along the length of the material and weft yarns run across the width of the material. The different methods of interlacing the warp and weft yarns create a particular type of weave, such as a houndstooth-‐ check. 4 The traditional houndstooth-‐check is made with alternating bands of four dark and four light threads in both warp and weft woven in a simple 2:2 twill, two over and two under the warp, advancing one thread each pass (See fig. 1). Today, the distinctive houndstooth-‐check tessellation commonly found in small-‐scale formal weave can be silkscreened or woven on a much larger scale. This scale emphasizes the graphical nature of the pattern. Textiles dating as far back as the third century AD convey a strong resemblance to the appearance and textile weave of a houndstooth-‐check. One of the earliest textiles found with a dog’s tooth pattern on fine spin-‐patterned wool twill was discovered in Scandinavian graves of the later Roman period, third century AD (See fig. 2). 5 A complete wool twill cloak with a dog’s tooth pattern was found in a bog at Gerumsberget in central Sweden. The cloak has been Carbon-‐14 dated to 400-‐200 BC. 6 Along with a number of slightly later finds, this suggests the skills and technology used for creating such a pattern would have been common in all Scandinavia. It’s not clear how much of this early pattern carried thru to the modern era, where houndstooth emerged as a variation of Scottish twill or tweed. The origins of the word tweed derive from the old Scots word, tweel meaning twill. Woven wool twill cloth dates back to the Scottish lowlands, to garments worn 3
Page 1: Imprint (NYC): The evolution of mot
Page 5 and 6: wide was used from local and un-
Page 7 and 8: Throughout the 1920s to the 1950s,
Page 9 and 10: with the size and scale of the houn
Page 11 and 12: Fig. 3. “H.R.H. Started It,” Vo
Page 13 and 14: Fig. 8. Geoffrey Beene, Fall 1966 H
Page 15 and 16: Notes: 1. Maitra, Encyclopedic Dict
Page 17 and 18: Bibliography Chung 17 “Dictionary
Page 19: Chung 19 Wilson, Eric. “McQueen L

Houndstooth - Imprint (NYC)

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?