On Monday, we went to the Warner Brother's Studio, where they filmed Harry Potter. I'm not into Harry Potter at all, so I was strongly considering not going, but I decided I should keep an open mind and try to experience everything while over here. I did have a ton of work to do that I was stressed about though, so I ended up bringing my computer on the bus and writing an essay for the Shakespeare class I'm taking while in Oxford, on the drive over (it was a pretty long drive, so totally worth it). There was no internet on the bus, but I pulled up a word program to type it up. Do not recommend. My essay was supposed to be 1500 words, and I ended up writing nearly 2500 words, because I had no word counter. I mean, I suppose it was a productive two hours, but now I have to go through and cut half of my essay so…
At the studio, we saw some really cool costumes that were used in the Harry Potter movies. I would love to have a job working in the movie or theater industry, creating costumes like this. You’re not only creating clothes - you’re creating a world with your work! Of course, the
iconic dress that Hermione wore to that dance was there, and it was just as beautiful as I remember it. It was really small though - I had forgotten how young Emma Watson was when that was filmed. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there were clothes that the giant from Fleur De La Cour’s school wore. They were huge. Obviously, a lot of that was movie magic, but the clothes still had to fit a giant. I also saw the tapestry that had the family tree with burned spots, which was created especially for this movie (like all the costumes). I can’t imagine weaving a tapestry like that and then purposefully burning it. Even though the burning was part of the creating, it feels so destructive and wrong, after having spent so much time weaving!
The most unexpected textile I encountered in all of the Harry Potter studios were the giant spiders. There were ones dropping from the ceilings, and moving about in the shadows, and honestly I don’t know how the little kids made it through that section, because I certainly didn’t like it. Anyway, it turns out the hair on the spiders was made with coconut fibers. One of my friends on this trip, who is also in a textiles program, and I were discussing what we though the hair could be, and we were thinking either stiff animal hair, nylon, or polyester (because everything seems to be made with polyester here days). I suppose if you count a coconut as an animal, we were correct!
On Tuesday, we went to the Pitt Rivers museum. There was sooooo much cool stuff there!
There were three floors and tons of rooms chocked full of cabinets upon cabinets of objects. There were even more things in drawers beneath the displays, that you could just pull out to look at. I could have easily spent a full 24 hours there, but I had to head to the library to get some work done. Even so, I spent multiple hours gazing at weird and random objects. I had heard there were some shrunken heads, so I was on a mission from the start to see them. I did find them, and they were very gross and cool. Apparently, when the humans from which these head came from were killed, then their skin would be removed from the scull, and shrunken. I had always wondered how the scull was shrunken, so it makes sense that the
bone would not even be in there. There were also lots of taxidermy animals, that you could actually touch! It’s very rare to be able to touch things in museums, so I quite appreciated that aspect. The bear, here pictured with Mary, was very soft - I was not expecting that. I was also not expecting so many weapons - there was an entire floor dedicated to weaponry across the ages. While it was very exciting to see all of the weapons, it was also disturbing to think about how humans have been killing each other since we first walked the planet. With that being said, I still appreciated the tools of killing. The circles pictured left are throwing knives. How smart is that? Literally no matter which end hits your enemy, it will cut them! This is so much more effective than throwing regular knives, because if the hilt hits your enemy it won’t do much, other than maybe give them a concussion. The trap pictured below looks like a bear trap, but it is actually a mantrap - meant to get poachers. There’s some poetic justice in that.
There was a whole section on North American weaving. It is thought that people used a finger weaving technique starting in 1500 BC, but they did not have any examples of that. They only had examples of early hand-loomed woven fabrics. They were quite beautiful, and remarkably well-preserved. Honestly, if I had seen these in store, I would be inclined to buy some of them. Also in this section was a dance apron, made of deer skin and twined fabric that is “woven by hand on a vertical frame, warps of shredded cedar bark twisted with wild goats’ wool and weft of pure wool.” It was dated 1877. There were pieces of leather with patterns on top make of puka shells, like the garment worn by Pocahontas’s father, that I found in the Ashmolean museum. There were banana-leaf stencil-plates that were used for patterning bark-cloth. I knew that cloth was sometimes made out of bark (I had read about that happening in Hawaii before the Americans came in and ruined everything), but I had not thought about banana leaves being used in that process, or that there were stencils for he making of this cloth. I wonder if anybody still makes cloth from bark these days? On the other end of the sophistication scale, there were old English crochet patterns, that looked like lace from afar. There were bags and African textiles and rows upon rows of textiles stacked on top of each other (they were hung over poles that were arranged vertically, so you could see part of each textile, and they were not damaged). There were raffia leggings, which looked and sounded itchy, and really bright, fun looking clothing from Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan. There was some Chinese clothing as well, like this Mancha sleeveless outer jacket. There were some really pretty feather and fur cloaks, that looked extremely luxurious and cozy. I would never condone the use of those materials these days, but historically, it made sense.
There was a moose or bison hide coat, and a blue wool Huron suit. This suit was particularly interesting, because it “became popular with Native people because it was warm and did not require extensive preparation as hide did.” Additionally (though this was not mentioned with this suit), wool insulates even when wet, which is great for when it rains, or you are planning to be near a body of water, and perhaps falling in. I firmly believe that wool is the superior textile, not only because of the reasons above, but also because it is natural and sustainable (without killing animals), and it feels glorious! I absolutely love the texture of wool, and am at my most cozy when I am wearing wool socks.
Right next to the suit, there was some other Native American clothing, including a somewhat current T-shirt. I always appreciate when museums showcase the modern (or at least more modern) objects along with the old, to show how things are progressing. After all, everything becomes history soon enough.
There was a really beautiful 1700 Naskapi caribou-hide coat, with an absolutely glorious painted textile pattern. The coat was “adapted from European patterns, but were worn by Naskapi hunters to show respect to the spirits of the caribou.” Moving forward on the timeline, I saw a beaded dance or ceremonial dress (made in 2001 - see? Modern!).
Probably the most interesting thing I saw was a diagram of an animal hide, detailing how people historically cut them up to obtain the lengths of fabric they needed for their clothes. It
showed how the hide could be folded in half, to make a silhouette similar to that of a romper (not that it was used as a romper - that is much too fashionably advanced for the time), and manipulated from there.
There was intricately elaborate and colorful West Greenland clothing, the production of which was used to “testify to strong feelings of pride and identity within Inuit culture.” The girl’s traditional outfit had “white vertical strips visible on the thighs [made of] dog or caribou
fur. The white boots are made of bleached, de-haired sealskin, and decorated with panels of cloth, lace, and floral embroidery.” I had heard that sealskin was quite insulating, so I bet these boots were real warm. What strikes me most about both examples of Greenland clothing is how beautiful they are. I suppose if you live in a snowy wasteland, you’d want to brighten it up any way that you could. But, there were many practical concerns as well. The next two pictures are parkas made from seal intestines. They are simultaneously gross and fascinating. I wonder who first looked at a seal and thought “Why don’t I cut this up, take the guts out, and stretch them into something I can then put on myself?” How smart though, and so much better for the environment than the micro-plastic shedding rain jackets I use! One of the parkas is “made of thin horizontal strips of bearded seal gut, hand-sewn together so finely you can barely see the seams. The edging is red- and black-dyed sealskin embroidered with caribou hair dyed red, blue, and white. Given the fragility of the material, the quality of workmanship is extraordinary.” First off - red, white, and blue? How American! Secondly, I’m so impressed. I think my new goal is to get so good at sewing that I could make something like this. Not that I would make anything out of seal intestine. The Aleuts (who made this cloak) aren’t even making them anymore, which just makes it all the more impressive that this museum had an example of this workmanship.
I saw a Nigerian mask and masquerade outfit that was honestly startling - it looks like some
bird-human creature that would suck out my soul! But hey, in Nigeria this is art, so as long as nobody jumps out in front of me, wearing this in a dark alley, then I think it’s great.
There was a bodacious suit of armor made from coconut fibre (just like the Harry Potter
spiders!) from Micronesia, Oceania before 1929. Firstly, I didn’t know anybody made armor from coconut fiber. I new about animal skins and metal of course, but it had never occurred to me that coconuts would be the go-to for protection. Secondly, the plaque accompanying this piece was absolutely hilarious: “The high back protected the wearer’s neck and head from stones thrown by the women of his own side at the enemy. . . . Fighting in [so many] layers must have been quite difficult and descriptions of duels mention each warrior having an assistant to help keep them upright and pointed in the right direction.” I just can’t help imagining something out of a Monty Python film, where two buffoonish warriors are trying to right each other, but they keep falling down and floundering around like turtles on their back. They need their little apprentices to shove them up and, with hands on shoulders, orient them in the direction of their enemy.
I found another samurai outfit! Gosh, these just keep popping up! Do you remember how many times I’ve mentioned finding them?
One of my most unexpected textile finds was this glass-covered table filled with archaeological textiles. I had never previously considered that textiles could have been
excavated from the ground, since they usually decompose so quickly (except for all the manmade textiles that are being produced and worn these days - that’s part of the reason they are so bad for the environment), but here was a whole variety of textiles in the archeology section!
I saw this tapestry sort of thing - a piece of fabric entirely covered with beads, that make up a pattern. I cannot fathom how long this must have taken to make, but it is absolutely beautiful. It’s made up of thousands of beads, artfully arranged and sewn to the backing. While I appreciate its intricacy, I can’t help but wondering why someone would go through the trouble to make it. In what situation would the hours upon hours of labor be worth it for such an object?
Jeannie (one of my textiles friend) and I had an ongoing debate about what counted as
textiles or not. I was saying that leather counted, because you could make clothes out of it. With this thinking, chip bags are also textiles, since I made a two-piece set with those, but that is beside the point. Leather starts out with hair on it, which is definitely a textile, and has historically been used to make clothes and shoes. In fact, I saw some bagpipes in this museum, made out of leather and some kind of intestines. Jeannie contended that leather is not a textile, because it is neither woven nor knitted. I rebutted that it is then considered a non woven. To be fair, she is in Polymer and Color Chemistry, and I am studying Fashion Design so textiles have different meanings for the both of us. We did not come to a definite conclusion, and moved on to arguing about whether metal was a textile. There was armor in this museum, which could be counted as clothes. And, some chain mails were woven or knitted together, so I think it checks all the boxes. Jeannie has a much more traditional view about what constitutes a textile.