TEXT-iles
This week's lecture focused on interpreting the 'language' that objects convey to us. This language can vary across different societies or cultures and an object can take on various different meanings depending on the time, manner or place it is being viewed. I have read extracts from du Gay's ''Making Sense of the Walkman' in Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman' and W. Benjamin's ''The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' in Illuminations, and I have visited the V&A in order to try and decipher the meaning of a few examples of textiles from their collection.
In the first of my examples, 'Willow', a print made by William Morris, originally printed on cotton and then printed onto wallpaper, gives me the impression of being something of high value, that it highly prized or sought after by the masses and implies a kind of lifestyle associated with the middle or upper classes of society. It exudes prestige and heritage. The amount of work that went into the production of the wallpaper also adds a value to the object. I think this language is not universal - this print is mainly popular in Britain and so most of these meanings will on be understood by the people of the country it was produced in. Maybe with the popularity of 'heritage English style' being broadcast in period dramas all over the world, people in other countries/cultures may also be able to make sense of what it being communicated.
My second example is of the Egyptian tunic from 450-650AD. As someone born and bred in the United Kingdom in the 21st Century with little or no knowledge of historic Egyptian clothing, any meaning I acquire from this example is based purely on visual language - what I can make sense of visually e.g. the condition of the fabric implies a great age, the style of the clothing and the decorative borders imply that this garment originates outside of Europe. The fact that is still intact despite it's age means that it must have been an important item of clothing to both the original owners of the tunic and the various museums or institutions that may have preserved it over the years.
My third example is of 'The Ushuk Carpet' originating from Western Turkey. My first impressions are of something that resembles a Persian rug. In du Guy's 'Making Sense of the Walkman', he talks about something called 'semantic networks' which describes how people tend to use the names of similar objects to describe or name an object they are unfamiliar with. As I'm not immediately sure of the origin of the carpet when first presented with it, I fall into the trap of using this semantic network in order to make sense of it. It is similar to the Persian rug stereotype that I am familiar with, so I describe it in that way. The connotations that are associated with Persian rugs are also applied to the Ushuk carpet - images of grandeur of the palaces or grand homes that may have such rugs.
In the gift shop of the V&A, there are many postcards and books containing William Morris designs. The reproduced prints have a different 'meaning' to the original screen printed design. The high value and prestige of the original cannot be reproduced. It lacks the hand-finished process and 'man-hours' of production - it is merely a digitised, scaled down shadow of the original. The object itself had been design to be reproduced, but on a smaller scale with a lot of physical input in the production. The postcards and images in books have been produced on a mass scale, so it loses the uniqueness of the hand finished original.
References:
du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., and Negus, K. (1999) ‘Making Sense of the Walkman’ in Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Sage.
Benjamin, W. (1970) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Illuminations, Fontana.