Connective Threads
It’s no surprise that something so fundamental, so important to human civilization, and so part of our everyday lives as cloth is also such an important part of how we talk about ourselves. The ‘fabric of society’, the ‘tapestry of human history’, ‘the weft and weave of the community’, the weaving of stories and families, the ‘threading together’ of all sorts of things.
I’ve spent years experiencing, specifying, and intrigued by cloth, fabric, and tapestry in all of their many forms. Through them I’ve created spaces and experiences for clients that have in turn helped define their own sense of place and belonging. And, in the turbulence of the last few years, I’ve also realized the value of cloth in helping us understand important things about community, legacy, and persistence.
The production of textiles is among humanity’s oldest arts, with examples dating back over 35,000 years. This makes it part of our cultural DNA as a species, something UNESCO recognized by adding it to its compendium of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage.
It is through the production and use of textiles that we’ve found, and often even in highly commoditized markets still do, those characteristics of what it means to be social animals, coexisting not just for the now, but for the future as well. Collective problem-solving, intergenerational knowledge exchange, storytelling, the transmission of tradition and its transformation to meet new challenges, the embodiment and celebration of individual creativity in a context that can be both intensely local or outrageously global, all are about what it means to be human.
And then, of course, there is the art and the beauty—a value and function as important as any other. The late great Jack Larsen talked about textiles as “the perfect blending of architecture, poetry, and painting,” a testament to human creativity. Regardless of your personal view of what art can offer us, it’s undeniable that the weft and weave of a tapestry, or the undulating etherealness of silk, or the satisfying roughness of raw linen make the world a better place. And keeps us warm, maybe stylish, and certainly a participant in a never-ending conversation about what and how we are all doing here.
Which gets me back to my point. As we slowly begin to draw out of our individual and collective shells to rediscover life post-pandemic, we’re able to appreciate the time for respite it offered, and the sense of understanding that we are on this journey together. But, we are also acutely aware that there is much to do, that the dynamism and creativity that is our hallmark needs others. Textiles, like art, music and food, have the awesome potential to offer a bridge between competing values and a deeper appreciation of the societies and communities we call home. Metaphorically, the tightly woven, but endlessly variable cloth of belief systems, philosophies, histories, traditions, cultural norms, genetics and language can literally be found in cloth itself, which has much to teach us, if we will listen.
—Steffany
