Elisa van Joolen and Vincent Vulsma

The development of textile culture has been dependent on a global network of trade routes and markets that have existed since antiquity. These routes carry forms, symbols, techniques, tastes and people – they move in zigzags. To trace cultural transfers and interconnections is to be attentive to changes in forms and values, and the way they are smuggled from one place to another: their joint work Technique [Technik] (2012–2013) brings together textile objects featuring a popular geometric Navajo pattern. Four items are hung on a clothing rail: a handwoven Navajo blanket adorned with a traditional motif, a so-called Indian trade blanket made by the Pendleton company, an Ikea carpet, and a sweater from a collection by Bernhard Willhelm. Together, these form an ensemble which chronicles appropriation, exploitation, reproduction, trade routes, and, above all, the value of textiles. It is a story of the cultural appropriation of the pattern, but also of how it has been able to survival under changing socioeconomic conditions. American textile manufacturer Pendleton’s appropriation and use of the typical diamond pattern reveals a perverted form of industrial colonization: blankets with Navajo designs were sold to the Navajo, who were left unable to make their own following the theft of their territory. The Ikea carpet ultimately presents the entire framework of globalization, in which a mass produced piece, appropriated in Sweden and manufactured in Egypt, is made available to millions of people worldwide. Two factors continue to dominate the history of international trade: the pursuit of both profit and supposed authentic “originality”. Finally, in the world of luxury fashion, the pattern returns as a handmade, exclusive item. In this way, the collaborative work of a fashion designer and a visual artist questions the way indigenous patterns repeatedly migrate into fashion, feeding into its designs, and interrogates the materiality of the various production techniques used.