Ah – spring – and nothing like a fresh garland of garlic. I just bought this one from a vendor who came to the gate a few minutes ago. Why would anyone here in Montevideo buy powdered garlic or crushed in a jar (with preservatives) when the wonderful fresh stuff can be had, so beautifully presented, and in such quantity for about US $8-50 ?
We always have one hanging on the back of the kitchen door. I will give at least half of this one away – we can’t get through all this, even though we eat a lot of it, there’s still a bit of the previous one, seriously drying out now, from the same guy 6 months ago. Of course in addition to imparting wonderful flavour, fresh garlic wards off colds and the dreaded grippe, they say. We know it wards off anyone else too, if you have been eating a lot of it!
So –this is today’s textile note – click on the image to get closer to the wonderfully plaited leaves that hold the whole thing together.
Ceramic bowl repaired using the Japanese kintsugi technique.
When this ceramic bowl broke, instead of being discarded, it was beautifully repaired using an adhesive or lacquer infused with powdered gold. This repair technique is Japanese, and known as ‘kintsugi’. The break lines are highlighted rather than camouflaged, serving to demonstrate the bowl’s importance to its owner. The changed appearance becomes part of it’s history as a functional object. I didn’t learn of kintsugi until some years after I posted about a wonderful exhibition Mike and I saw in Paris in 2007, at the Musee du Quai Branly. Rewording a bit, I’m going to write about Objets Blesses: la reparacion en afrique again here – because it made a huge impact on me. Unforgettable.
The title of the exhibition translates literally as “injured objects” which of course they were: they were broken and then repaired. On show were artifacts collected in several African countries by French colonists, traders, missionaries and explorers. Made from many different materials – wood, iron, precious metals, ceramic, leather, stone – every object in the exhibition had been repaired. None of the objects blesses were repaired using the kintsugi approach of course, but the array of repair techniques was fascinating – apart from images of pieces in the exhibition here on this page I found a wonderful Pinterest board here that I’ve been following for a while.
An impressive array of techniques were used in these repairs, and despite the mending process changing each object’s appearance, these repairs had all restored usefulness of these valued household tools and vessels, weapons, and religious and ceremonial objects symbolising community offices and powers.
Really interesting ridge pattern formed by repair work becomes an additional surface design.
My grandparents survived the Great Depression, where millions of people lost everything suddenly or gradually, and had to mend, make do or go without. Our parents lived with severe shortages and rationing of everything during World War 2. Inevitably, we baby-boomers were ingrained with the values of mending and making do, wearing something out before throwing it out. Thrift was necessary and virtuous. Today, with over 7.5billion people needing, expecting or requiring stuff, all imposing huge stresses on the Earth’s resources, at last there are signs that many people are making real efforts to avoid unnecessary wastage of the planet’s resources by recycling, upcycling and repurposing, though there’s so much more to be done and practiced daily.
One sad reality in the western world is that so much stuff we use cannot just simply be repaired at home if it breaks, and often can’t be affordably fixed by a qualified repair person, either, making it often much cheaper to just buy a replacement for the broken thing. Lots of footwear comes into this category, though I nearly always buy leather, which does last and is nearly always repairable. Of course, worst of all are electrical appliances and digital things like phones and TVs which feature built-in obsolescence, and we suffer frequent model changes that ensure that parts quickly become unavailable. Because of my upbringing this sticks in my throat.
Until I saw this really impressive exhibition, I hadn’t given any real thought to the activity of repairing something. But seeing these objects’ repairs, and reading about them, impressed on me that we repair things that are important or useful to us. We value their usefulness as daily household or work related items; we value objects which symbolise culture, politics, history or religion; some things we value because we simply find them pleasing or beautiful in some way; and sometimes objects are valuable because our ancestors owned and used them.
Repairing produces scars or visible marks, but that’s a very different expected outcome from the process of restoration, in which repairs are done as skillfully as possible to create the impression the object has been returned to its original appearance and function. It hadn’t occurred to me these are not really interchangeable words!
I don’t recall exactly, but think photography might not have been allowed, which would have been one reason I bought the catalogue; but the other would have been “Why the heck not, anyway?” Having bought two additional large suitcases in Cairo to contain textiles we’d acquired in Egypt, including two large Tentmaker hangings , we already had twice as much luggage as we’d set out with just a few weeks before !!
Gold in the lacquer highlights the break lines, producing additional surface design patterning – kintsugi.
That holds true for textiles as long as they have been properly cared for, of course. In France I could not resist this antique handkerchief/mouchoir, of hand embroidered linen batiste, from the late C19th I bought in the town of Bayeux, Normandy, where the antique dealer says she deals only in items purchased from north western France, mostly textiles and her stock cinluded some lovely lace edged things. Modern bobbin lace is made in that town, too, but I thought this piece was far more interesting and beautiful than even some of the most stunning and wonderful stuff the ladies down the road were making as we watched. It’s thin and soft, I like to think that it has been well used and carefully washed and stored between airings down the years. About 14″ square, it is a soft cream colour, photographed against black background. It is in very good condition with just a couple of teeny holes that could be moth holes. The opaque band is another layer of fabric appliqued to the front using minute stitching, and the decoration of that band is rows of satin stitched dots. The hand embroidery of the whole piece is so exquisite that you are hard pressed to tell the right from the wrong side in any part of it.
The prettiest bathroom I encountered on our travels was certainly this one at the temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel, Upper Egypt, We arrived after several hours on the road, early in the morning, just as other buses in the convoy were pulling in. It was peak traffice time at all the loos. The building is a lovely modern facitility but with the usual design problem of the architect not addressing the different time needs of male and female loo users – there was chaos in the narrow corridor from which both loos opened off. There seemed to be a male and female attandant adding to this general clogup, or backup. Our guide, noting the lineup at the ladies’ managed to arrange for myself and some other waiting women to go into the near empty men’s. We politely ignored the backs of urinating males as we hurriedly washed hands and headed out, but not before I noticed that it was clean, functional and did not pong. At the end of our time there before our return journey of several hours, so like the good traveller I am, I went again, this time into the now less chaotic ladies’. Clean, fully functinonal, and even a couple of containers of room deodoriser to hand, this one showed the touch of someone dedicated to her work. Being a loo attendant is probably mostly thankless and often unpleasant I imagine. This lady shares with an attendant in the Mercado del Puerto a cheerful dispositon and pride in a well maintained facility.
During our journey we came across the full spectrum of toilets, ranging from clean, shiny, modern, spacious and ventilated to cramped, dirty, smelly, seatless, doorless, ancient, and all possible combinations of the above. On our camping trip of course, we went perched behind a rock with breathtaking views all round, but requiring balancing and digging skills. There were plenty of stones around to make a little cairn above my copralite.
We in first world countries have been spoiled by ablution arrangements, and when we encounter what we feel are appalling bathroom standards we don’t understand that the differences are more than just about cost or unavailability of toilet cleaners and brushes. From the train between Luxor and Cairo, as the dawn rose we saw several people squatting within metres of the canal and defaecating in plain public view. It’s a matter-of-factness about bodily functions which we have been raised to hide and cover up with spray-pak deodorisers. If travel doesn’t actually broaden the mind, it certainly reminds us of how unequal Life is.
A highlight of our trip to Egypt was going to the area of the khan where these traditional craftsmen work and sell what they and others behind the scenes sew, traditionally tents and the colourful hangings that line them. I refer you right now to the blog by Jenny Bowker, http://jennybowker.blogspot.com posting August 2nd 2007 for some fabulous examples of the work by this dwindling group of people. The largest pieces are over 2m dimensions, and they are quite used to producing works much larger too – we saw one piece being commissioned as part of a large set of hangings(99) and it was about 1.5m x 3? 4? m length.
My pictures show: UL Ashraf seated cross-legged in front of samples of what he has designed and made or had some others make – he is a caligrpaher also, a passionate one, and this shows in some of his designs he explained to us, outlining the koranic content of the design. The protection of individual or special and innovative designs is important, a number of times we were shown pieces by people holding them up with their plain backs to the street and the curious eyes of nearby compeitors. UR is a closeup of the piece in Ashraf’s quick and nimble hands. What a wonderful person to meet and talk with, as were all the people we met in this expedition which took us around just some of the stands where Jenny is clearly a popular friend. We were made very welcome and felt very priveleged. LL is a shop set up as a tent, with a young boy sewing the traditional trimmings with tent lining designs on printed fabric, and many of which will be used to decorate homes and surroundings in the current season of Ramadan. LR shows one way the hangings were/are used -as windbreaks in the desert. I took this photo on our expedition to the Western Desert, organised by Jenny and i naddition to my DH there were a couple of other Australian quilters, Gloria Loughman and Sharon Hall plus DHs, and Esterita Austin from the USA. Our Bedouin guides are setting up the resting/sitting/optional sleeping area in a U-shape formed by the vehicles, lined up against the prevailing wind. The posts on which the fabrics are mounted are unrolled, the ends put in the sand, and the lower edges have sand shovelled up over them, then the huge colourful rag rugs laid down. All done in about 10 minutes. Most of us opted to sleep out under the stars on mattresses on the sand – one or two crept back into the sheltered area during the night as the wind rose a little. I slept out all night and awoke a couple of times in the moonlight after 2-30 am – and then again to see the early dawn and watch the sun appear. At this time, too, a little desert fox, fenneq, was busily scouting our camping area to make sure nothing by way of scraps from the previous night had escaped his notice. DH took a great photo which I might post some time.
The impossible competition from printed fabrics is causing the tentmakers’ number to fall dramatically. Tourism which has not yet recognised the value of this traditional craft, clearly offers hope. Readers of Jenny’s blog know that the exhibition she took to Australia earlier this year was a smash hit, and everything sold. Their art was greated with great admiration. She is currently doing a similar trip to France (read the frustrations of obtaining customs clearance etc in her most recent post) and no doubt when she returns home later this week will get to her blog and report another huge success. Through these exhibitions and the production of the book she has in the pipeline about their work, Jenny aims to raise the level of recognition so that one day arriving visitors will ask their guides and their hotels “Where do we find the Tentmakers?” and, that hotels and guides will know where to take or to direct them, of course.
Ah – spring – and nothing like a fresh garland of garlic. I just bought this one from a vendor who came to the gate a few minutes ago. Why would anyone here in Montevideo buy powdered garlic or crushed in a jar (with preservatives) when the wonderful fresh stuff can be had, so beautifully presented, and in such quantity for about US $8-50 ?
