Find of the Day

I love how the central band in this small Kuba cloth from Allan Arthur (Bennett Street in Atlanta) vaguely resembles a giraffe's neck. Arthur has a variety of vintage and new pieces priced under $100, including some that might be suitable as upholstery on a petite bench or footstool.

As the Textile Museum explains, cloth made from raffia has traditionally been created by the Kuba people in what is now Zaire, and it is typically decorated using a number of techniques, including embroidery, embroidered pile and appliqué.

I always like to check Jayson Home's inventory for ideas. European-style furniture covered with Kuba cloth can sometimes be found in the "flea" section. The chair above was a past find.

[Photo by Missy McLamb via Little Augury.]

And if you haven't already seen the project, visit Little Augury. to see how her client lives with Kuba cloth.

The Zucchi Collection

Today's site of interest is The Zucchi Collection, home to 56,000 printing blocks used to produce handprinted fabric over the course of three centuries from 1785 to 1935. Shown at the top left is one of four 19th-century English wood handblocks needed to create the print on the right. Featured categories of blocks encompass geometric, floral, ornamental, pictorial and abstract designs, as well as styles carved for cashmere. Subcategories deal with fabric borders and blocks made for specific cloth pieces such as ties, bandanas, and scarves.

Due to its efforts to preserve these blocks, the Collection received a 1997 Guggenheim award for outstanding cultural project.

[Photo by Henry Wilson as seen in Selvedge, issue 24.]

The teak block above is not part of The Zucchi Collection but belongs to Toy and Joy Singh. (I just love the image.)

A Stitch in Time

[Rare quilt of glazed pink and green worsted, American, late 18th/early 19th century © Sotheby's.]

We've been talking about some of the new millennium's most popular pieces that have roots in centuries-old design, and there's buzz about the return of quilts, so I couldn't pass this by. Those bold glossy pink zig-zags look rather modern, don't they? But this quilt was made 200 years ago in New England. It is one of the lots in Sotheby's upcoming Important Americana sale, Friday and Saturday, January 22-23. The auction catalog notes that the design incorporates panels of glazed light jade green and salmon and coral pink zig-zags with undulating vine and diagonal line quilting.

By the way, in Atlanta Gramercy carries Madeline Weinrib's zig-zag pillows and rugs.

Term of the Day: Chimi Technique

Hali's winter issue features a nice story by contributing editor Katie Loux that looks at Bolivian textiles. Shown here is one of the dynamic pieces used to illustrate it, an 18th or 19th century Camelid wool Aymara mantle. According to Loux, this example represents a rare form of Aymara weaving characterized by the chimi

technique seen in the central pink band. Using the technique, weavers pile different colored yarns together creating a speckled effect; the blending of colors yields a whole new hue for the weaver's repetoire.