Books and fabrics may not conjure up an immediate connection in the mind of some of us. Yet, if we employ etymology and take into consideration the terms "text" and "textile" we will soon find a key to unlock the perfect link. Both the words originate indeed from the Latin verb "texere", meaning to weave, but the two terms have also got material and cultural connections.
After all in quite a few legends, stories and novels, fabrics and yarns seem to have a protagonist's role – let's think about the three Fates or Morai, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, spinning, measuring and cutting the thread representing the life of a human being; Penelope weaving every day a burial shroud for Odysseus' elderly father Laertes and unravelling it by night to keep her suitors at bay, or Ovid's tale of Arachne, the talented weaver transformed into a spider by Athena, goddess of wisdom and crafts.
These inspirations are at the core of the exhibition "Text and Textile", currently on at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (until 12th August), and organised by Kathryn James, curator of Early Modern Books and Manuscripts and the Osborn Collection at the Beinecke Library, Katie Trumpener, the Emily Sanford Professor of Comparative Literature and English, and Melina Moe, research affiliate at the library.
The pieces on display were selected from Yale University's collections and combine literature, history, social issues and politics, proving to be a journey through different times and centuries.
Spindles reunite mythology, the dramatic reality of textile mills and the fairy tale dimension of sleeping beauties as proved by the selection in the exhibition including Eve spinning in the margins of a 13th century manuscript, the stories of the mill girls of New England in the 19th century and Arthur Rackham's illustrations for Charles Perrault's "La belle au bois dormant".
Some of the texts featured were selected according to dichotomies such as the domestic Vs the exotic, the industrious Vs the industrial, the department store and the factory floor, the workshop or atelier and the cotton fields, but there is everything for all sorts of tastes here.
Visitors into crafts will fall in love with Renaissance embroidered bindings, with Christa Wolf's "Quilt Memories", an artist's book made from a fragile antique quilt, and comprising dired leaves, petals, poems and newspaper clippings, and with Zelda Fitzgerald’s paper dolls for her daughter.
Graphic designers will be spellbound by Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero's "Lettera Apologetica", a very bizarre yet colourful esoteric text allegedly inspired by Incan quipus, a series of knotted colored threads used as a form of communication, and written by the mysterious Neapolitan alchemist; people into technology and textiles will get the chance to see manuscript patterns and loom cards from French Jacquard mills that inspired Charles Babbage's computer technologies and Ada Lovelace's further studies and will be surprised by Jules Laurent's weaving patterns that look like minimalist computer-generated artworks.
Impenitent fashionistas will be more interested instead in Gertrude Stein's waistcoat covered in embroideries of flowers, human figures and animals by her partner Alice B. Toklas, and in the "Souper" paper dress inspired by Andy Warhol's iconic Campbell Soup cans.
There's more to discover among the texts including the first folio edition of William Shakespeare's plays, Edith Wharton’s manuscript drafts of "The House of Mirth", poetry by Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Susan Howe, and Walt Whitman; a copy of Louisa May Alcott's "Spinning-Wheel Stories" from 1884 and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter", dated 1878.
While considering these pieces new comparisons will come to the mind of visitors: for example, we write with a pen or with the help of a computer and, in the same way, we create textiles by hand or using machines; the structure of any language consists of words, while textiles are made with yarns; texts deal with the verbal realm, while textiles focus in the visual dimension, but in both cases it is possible to stop on the surface or to delve deeper and discover the symbolisms and metaphors behind a sentence or the interlocking and overlapping structures of yarns.
The event is accompanied by a parallel exhibition - "Text & Textile in Arts Library Special Collections" at the Robert B. Haas Arts Library (until 6th August; highlights include a late 18th-century recipe for blue dye and a flipbook rendition of Scheherazade's nightly storytelling routine) and by a thematic wall display of works in the Long Gallery at the Yale Center for British Art. These events may not be grand exhibitions, but they prove that you can definitely spin a good tale if you know your history, literature and textiles.
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