United States Conferences and Symposia

Delaware

Winterthur Museum
NEEDLEWORK CONFERENCE 2008: Who's Your Daddy? Families in Early American Needlework
October 17-18, 2008

Mark your calendars for Winterthur's fall 2008 Needlework Conference. The exhibition and related conference will explore how family ties are honored and strengthened through needlework and the ways in which needlework can serve as primary-source material for historical and genealogical research. We'll explore the theme of families in early American needlework through lectures, workshops, hands-on classes, and a special exhibition (on display October 4, 2008 through January 9, 2009).

Speakers include Kathleen Staples, Marla Miller, Susan Schoelwer, and Jane Nylander. For more information, visit the web site http://www.winterthur.org or call 800.448.3883.

Hawaii

Textile Society of American 11th Biennial Symposium
Textiles as Cultural Expressions
September 24-27

Sheraton Waikiki Hotel, Honolulu
Join the Textile Society of America at its 2008 Symposium in Honolulu. Hawaii is the most geographically isolated island chain in the world and a crossroad of cultures between the East and West. As the melting pot of the Pacific, Hawaii’s diverse cultures will be highlighted at the many tours offered before and after the symposium. For more information about the 2008 Symposium, including schedule, registration information and exhibition calendar, please see symposia_2008.htm.

North Carolina

The UNC Center for Craft, Creativity and Design
Inspired Design: Entrepreneurial & Jacquard Textiles
A conference on five textile design growth areas
January 7-10, 2009

This conference features international speakers in five growth areas of Textile and Entrepreneurial textile design: 1) Smart Textiles (e-textiles) with electronic components woven into textiles, 2) Performance and Interactive textiles designed as performative textiles for costume, stage, and dance or computer designs created by sound, 3) Textiles for Boutique Clothing – fabric designs for limited-edition boutique clothing, 4) Interior Textiles for furniture, panels, wall-coverings, and 5) Textiles as Fine or Commissioned Art. For more information, please visit http://www.craftcreativitydesign.org.

International Conferences and Symposia

France

7th International Shibori Symposium
Provence, Lyon and Paris, France
October 30 – November 10, 2008

Paris American Academy and World Shibori Network present the 7th International Shibori Symposium, a multicity event celebrating shibori's dynamic connections across the world - bridging cultures, languages, and nature across time. Join us for a unique site-specific symposium from Provence to Lyon to Paris as we tour some of France's fabled towns and cities whose textile traditions and material culture remain steeped within the earth. This year’s theme, “Textiles in Nature,” emphasizes the importance of integrating handcrafts into everyday living if we hope to protect our cultural ecosystems. Through this symposium, we hope to encourage others to take a closer look at personal culture within a larger, global context and contribute to the perpetuation and evolution of our craft practices. For more information, please visit http://www.shibori.org.

Italy

Florence, Italy
Costume Colloquium: A Tribute to Janet Arnold
November 6-9, 2008

Costume Colloquium is an international interdisciplinary symposium on historical dress, costume for performance and contemporary fashion. All facets of dress and fashion history, design and interpretation will be explored, and the colloquium will provide a stimulating platform where participants can exchange ideas and information. The range of perspectives include art history, social history and textile conservation; designing costume for the performing arts and living history; as well as the use of historical dress as inspiration for contemporary fashion. Costume Colloquium will include papers, demonstrations, tours and excursions, providing participants with unprecedented access to Italian venues crucial to the study of dress history. The topics to be examined vary from the analysis of clothing in burial finds and the interpretation of dress in documents and visual images, to the re-creation of historical dress and contemporary fashion design, incorporating both theoretical and practical perspectives on these subjects. For more information, please see http://www.costume-textiles.com/