International webinar Waag: Technology as a means of preservation

Online, four heritage experts along with moderator Nicole McNeilly conducted an international webinar focused on how technology can be utilised to preserve heritage crafts. During the presentation, the audience learned more about the three Mingei pilot projects, on glassblowing, silk weaving, and mastic growing, which will create tools for heritage craft presentation and guide future research.

The Mingei project platform and different technologies like 3D reconstructions, used to preserve and represent heritage craft, were also demonstrated. Following the presentation was a panel on various topics like the inclusion of AI in craft preservation, how the Mingei project can serve to pass on informal heritage craft knowledge to a broad audience, and how this knowledge of the past can serve to inform our future.

rewatch the webinar

Local session Waag: Fashion as a thread between past and present

At Waag, creative Director Dick van Dijk provided an overview of the Mingei project and introduced the attendees to keynote speaker and renowned fashion designer Antoine Peters’ work, saying that it ‘looks into the past and provides new context’ for the future. During the keynote, Peters discussed several of his projects including his collaboration with the Zeeuws Museum. For the museum, he reimagined a traditional nineteenth-century garment from Zeeland, the yak, as a modern garment: the Jaktrui. In creating the Jaktrui, Peters ‘wanted to communicate something from the past to the now and translate it in my own way’. The zero-waste folding technique was then used for economic reasons, but now is very relevant from a sustainability perspective.

Following his presentation was a workshop on the craft of repairing clothing. This workshop was designed based on the Reflow project aiming to share knowledge on how to rethink, repair, and revalue your wardrobe. During this workshop, attendees were encouraged to rethink items of their own clothing focusing on both aesthetic and technique in clothing repair.

• Rewatch the workshop
• Watch the instruction
• View the photos of the workshop (photo credit: Jimena Gauna)
• An impression of the local sessions from the European partners will be published on the Mingei website.
   

How heritage can shape the future

So how does the Mingei project serve to connect the past, present, and future? Inspired by the Mingei movement in Japan, which originally served as a response to Western mechanisation in the mid 1920s, the Mingei project today focuses on the digitalisation and accessibility of heritage craft, both tangible and intangible.

Through use of modern technologies like interactive Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality, Mingei seeks to tell stories not only about the craft objects themselves, but about the rituals, practice, and knowledge that accompany these objects. The application of modern technology to heritage craft can then serve to build a bridge between the past and present.

In regard to the connection between past and present, Antoine Peters notes that ‘a design or a translation now always has this reference captured in it. So you have these little bridges – in storytelling or in the visual part’. When Peters was researching the yak, he found that no documentation existed detailing its construction proces – namely, how to take one piece of fabric and fold it to create the jak. Instead, he learned the folding technique from 91-year-old craftswoman Mrs. Vos.

This mirrors a challenge that was discovered during the Mingei project: during a glassblowing pilot in Paris, there was no documentation that outlined the movements and rituals of past glassblowers. Similar to the work Peters did to understand the historical process of crafting the yak, those working on the glass pilot had to find alternate methods to learn craft heritage techniques and movements and were able to reverse-engineer steps required for glassblowing. Both Peters and the glass pilot help to further an understanding of the past while contributing valuable knowledge to the future.

Through work like the Mingei project and Peters’ collaboration with the Zeeuws Museum, modern concepts and technologies can be applied to the past in a way that creates bridges between the past and present. When talking about heritage, Peters noted that the past and present cannot be separated; that ‘it’s all connected’. Examining these connections allows us to see the thread that connects the present day with the past and tells us stories that can be leveraged to imagine the future.

Exhibition CNAM Paris

CNAM organised an exhibiton where the worlds of academics and professional activity come together. It is the only higher education establishment dedicated to life-long professional training. A dedicated space at the cathedral which is part of the museum invites you to experience the craft of glassblowing and use actual glassblowing tools.

Local webinar FORTH – Greece

FORTH organised two webinars for Mingei Day (videos are in Greek).

Mingei Day Geneva – Reenacting 3D craft people

But Mingei Day is not over yet. On 9 and 10 July MIRAlab is organising a local session for Mingei Day in Geneva during The Night of Science. The partners main goal is to assure the perennity of certain gestures and attitudes when former people were doing crafts. Through digital simulation, we can preserve the intangible heritage.

Miralab intend to present videos of the “making of” of the digital craft people who are reproducing the gestures of our 3 activities: Glass, Mastic and Silk. As well as the setup of the three pilots.

In the last four years, Waag and nine European partners and craftsmen have experimented in Mingei project by documenting and digitalising crafts, storytelling, interactive Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and motion capture.

During this webinar on Mingei Day we would like to share and discuss the results and knowledge we gained. In four online panel discussions, experts from all over Europe will discuss and share their views on how to preserve crafts and how we can keep improving this in the future. During the webinar, participants will also have the opportunity to ask questions online.

Join the conversation! The link to the meeting will be provided to you by email. This event will be recorded.

Programme

16.00 hrs – Welcome Mingei Day – host Nicole McNeilly (Impact Evaluation Advisor Waag)
16.05 hrs – Introduction to Mingei Project (Xenophon Zabulis – Project Coordinator Mingei)
16.15 hrs – Expert panel discussion will cover the following questions:

1. What is the urgency of preserving and documenting crafts?
2. What is the impact for the craft and heritage community, education and future generations?
3. What tech advances are helping us make steps in the preservation and documentation of crafts?
4. How could the Mingei platform be useful for future users to make the impact sustainable?

17.35 hrs – Q&A from participants and recap lessons learned
17.45 hrs – Closing

Panelists

• Xenophon Zabulis – Research Director FORTH, project coordinator Mingei
• Carlo Meghini – Research Director at CNR-ISTI and developer Mingei platform
• Arnaud Dubois – Research Associate at CNAM, social anthropologist Mingei
• Eirini Kaldeli – Researcher and AI expert involved in the Crafted Europeana project
• Marinos Ioannides – UNESCO chair Digital Cultural Heritage at Cyprus University of Technology

Have a look at this episode of Euronews (Europe’s leading international news channel) dedicated to one of the many innovative ideas of Mingei that engage today’s youth with past traditions.  

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 822336.

Pattern design once was a well-respected vocation within the textile sector. The pattern designer or ‘dessinateur’ was the first craftsman involved in the production of splendid silk fabrics for, amongst other things, liturgical vestments. How did one become a pattern designer? And why has this once established vocation turned into oblivion?

The road towards pattern design

In the mid-19th century, the silk industry in and around Krefeld was made up of around 90 companies which required an increasing number of different skilled craftsmen. Therefore, both industry and small trades called for the establishment of a textile college, where the subjects appropriate to the production and processing of fabric, in particular silk, would be taught. As a result, the “Crefeld Höheren Webschule” (Krefeld Textile College) was set up in 1855. This was the only vocational college focussing on silk production in Germany and it soon gained a very good reputation. It was associated with a valuable textile collection right from the time it was established. Both the historical and the contemporary sample collections provided the basic requirements for design work and were a source of inspiration in particular for pattern designers.

This college, which was re-named “Textilingenieurschule” (Textile Engineering College) after the Second World War, provided the ideal opportunity for young men and women in Krefeld to learn an interesting and respected vocation, particularly if they had artistic talent and dexterity. This was indeed so in the case of Dieter Blatt and Günter Göbels, now active volunteers at Haus der Seidenkultur (HdS). As youngsters, both of them enjoyed drawing, were creative and were encouraged by their families to undertake the appropriate vocational training.[2] Today – over 50 years later – they are still happy to demonstrate their skills to visitors at Haus der Seidenkultur.

For the three important crafts required for Jacquard weaving, the basic curriculum took 3 years to complete and was very varied. The theoretical part alone included weave theory, material science, point paper design as well as life drawing, morphology and chromatics, composition and pattern design. The two HdS volunteers also explained that free-hand drawing, which was essential for design, was taught and practised during evening classes.

Having completed the basic training, the apprentices could choose one of the three specific crafts, namely pattern design, point paper design or Jacquard card punching. At the time in the mid-20th century, there was a clear differentiation between the three crafts. Once the apprentices had completed their training, some of them went on to work in independent technical workshops comprising 3 to 30 experts which served small silk production companies including weaving workshops for ecclesiastical textiles, whilst others were employed in technical workshops at the large textile factories in Krefeld and the surrounding area.

From established crafter to computer expert

The vocation of pattern designer was officially recognised on 4th November 1949. However, as a result of the increasing mechanisation and the re-structuring of vocational training in the textile sector, the vocation designation was abolished again on 1st August 1978. Nowadays the tasks of the pattern designer and point paper designer are all carried out by computer by one single expert, referred to as a “Textile Pattern and Product Designer”.

Pattern design was one of the most respected crafts in this sector. The pattern designer definitely needed to be creative and before starting on the design he had to carefully take into account many different aspects of the fabric to be produced – quality, final use, colour composition, pattern size and repeat.

Not only had he to consider historical patterns, former and modern art trends (e.g. Bauhaus), customer specifications but also to create his own abstract designs. He was responsible for determining the optical appearance of the fabric, had to be aware of the effect the choice of weave would have and take into account the chromaticity of the finished fabric. The number of colours used in the design depended to a large extent on the final product. For a print design, there was virtually no limit to the number of colours which could be used, but for a woven pattern the number of colours was determined by the actual production conditions. In the course of the 20th century, more and more synthetic colours and fabrics were introduced which needed to be handled differently to natural colours and fabrics.

In the case of Jacquard weaving, the pattern repeat is determined by the size of the loom harness. The maximum repeat width which the pattern designer has to take into account depends on the warp thread density per centimetre and the harness repeat.

Having considered all the above, the pattern designer went to work sketching the pattern as a picture which he then coloured according to the requirements of the finished fabric using brushes, paint and coloured crayons. For damask tablecloths which are white-in-white, the pattern design was produced in various tones of grey. The pattern designer also determined the weave to be used, as this gave the design its final character. Then he handed it over to the point paper designer for the next stage in the preparation prior to weaving.

Written by Cynthia Beisswenger and Andreas Deling (HdS)

References

Have you ever wondered how the pattern in splendid silk fabrics is created? Or asked yourself how many steps are involved in the process? The answer is Jacquard weaving. But what does that entail exactly? Haus der Seidenkultur takes us along the journey of Jacquard.

The original draw loom

The story behind Jacquard weaving dates back to China in the second century B.C., when the first draw loom was invented for silk weaving. In order to weave an intricate silk pattern or picture, it is necessary to raise or lower each of the sometimes thousands of warp threads individually to form a shed through which to pass the shuttle.

At that time, this was done by a so-called draw-boy who sat on top of the loom. Every single row of weaving required different warp threads to be raised or lowered and consequently the production process was very slow and required meticulous attention. This was the main reason why over a period of three-quarters of a century several inventors turned their minds to constructing a better system.

Basile Bouchon improved the traditional draw loom in 1725, when he substituted an endless band of perforated paper for the bunches of looped strings previously used. In 1728, Jean-Baptiste Falcon used perforated cards manipulated by a draw boy. Jacques de Vaucanson combined these two inventions in 1745, placing his machine where the pulley box had previously been. Finally, the breakthrough came from Joseph Marie Jacquard who took these inventions one step further to speed up the process and remove the need for a weaver’s assistant.

Developing Jacquard weaving

Joseph Marie Jacquard was born into a master weaver’s family in Lyon France in 1752. He spent most of his time helping in his father’s workshop gaining experience in the various facets of weaving rather than going to school. Some say that he actually worked as a draw boy. After the death of his father in 1772, Jacquard half-heartedly took over his business. However, he must have started his late career in silk loom-making around 1799.

Jacquard’s dream was to build a revolutionary new machine for weaving pictures into silk brocade. He had an innate talent as a craftsman and inventor, carving the pulleys and other components himself. Other master craftsmen and businessmen obviously had faith in him because he was offered financial support to keep working on his machine until it was perfected. He finally took out a first patent in December 1800, which is registered in the archives in Lyons for a “machine designed to replace the draw boy in the manufacture of figured fabrics”. The patent for his brocade loom, with which he is most known for, was finally granted in 1804.

The draw-boy is replaced

On Jacquard’s loom, the weaver controlled the pattern with the help of a punched card system. Each punched card was pressed once against the back of an array of small, narrow, circular metal rods. Each rod controls the action of a weighted string that in turn controls one individual warp thread. If the rod encountered solid cardboard, the rod would not move and the warp thread stayed where it was. If the rod went through a hole then the warp thread would be raised to form part of the shed. The pattern or picture was embodied in an endless string of cards which were advanced one at a time by the weaver depressing the treadle of the loom.

Fabulous ornate silk fabrics could now be woven much faster. Napoleon and his wife visited Jacquard’s workshop in 1805, having previously decreed that his ceremonial garments be woven by the silk weavers in Lyon; no doubt on a Jacquard loom. He also declared that Jacquard’s loom should be public property, in return for which Jacquard received a handsome pension. Jacquard looms soon spread around Europe, including to Krefeld in Germany.

Moreover, Jacquard’s invention has influenced industries beyond crafts. The use of replaceable punched cards to control repetitive operations is considered important for the development of computer hardware. Jacquard’s idea of punched cards to control a machine was taken up by Babbage and Ada Lovelace and incorporated in his “Victorian” computer.

At Haus der Seidenkultur in Krefeld, Jacquard looms originally dating from 1868, just 30 years after Jacquard’s death, can still be seen in action in the original workplace. Experts are still demonstrating the preliminary skills required to prepare the harness for a Jacquard loom and transfer an ornate picture to fabric via point paper and punched cards. The Mingei project aims to preserve and represent the knowledge and skill of these crafters.

Written by Cynthia Beisswenger of Haus der Seidenkultur

Sources:

Encyclopaedia Britannica Ltd., London, Copyright 1957
Jacquard’s Web, James Essinger, Published by Oxford University Press, First Paperback edition 2007

As a way to represent and preserve Heritage Crafts in the context of Mingei, Virtual Humans are used to reenact and recreate the crafts in Virtual Environments. The Virtual Humans are created using either face scanning or third-party software. We explained this process in our previous article about the creation of virtual avatars.

Our next step is to utilize these Virtual Humans to reenact the crafts that have been digitised by other partners in Mingei. We have started with the pilot on loom weaving, conducted at Haus der Seidenkultur in Krefeld.

Conceptual decomposition

According to Mingei’s approach, we conduct a conceptual decomposition to get an overview of all elements that make up the craft of loom weaving. This includes both the machine used into its functional parts, and the motion that takes place during the craft execution into its basic steps. This decomposition of the craft in separate steps is made possible by the Mingei ontology and the process schemes of crafts, which is explained in detail in this article by CNR.

The machine and its parts utilized in each craft have been digitized with 3D reconstruction by FORTH, and the movement of the crafters has been captured by Armines. The results of these processes have been combined to create the virtual reenactment. We provide a generic approach and this segmentation can be applied to any craft.

For the case of loom weaving, and according to our approach, the weaving process is decomposed into 3 actions. The first step is shedding, when warp threads are separated to form a shed. The second step is picking. Weft is passed across the shed using the shuttle. The third and final step is beating. Weft is pushed against the fabric using the beater. Thus, the decomposed loom interface components are the shuttle, treadle and beater. The whole process can be visualized as in the diagram below.

From diagram to reenactment

In order to reenact the movements of the practitioners during craft execution, Motion Capture is used. This has been conducted by project partner Armines in Krefeld in March 2019. The Virtual Humans’ motion is driven by these Motion Capture (animation) files. However, we do not have Motion Capture for the movements of the machine parts or tools used; this is rather induced from the human motion.

The movement of the machine parts is thus the result of the motion of the human. First, we defined the body parts that utilize and move each machine part. Then we defined appropriate grip postures, orientations and attachment points. And finally, we created appropriate mathematical formulas that describe the movement of the machine part, according to the motion of the human. The result can be seen below. where a Virtual Human is operating the treadle of the loom machine.

This reenactment aims to contribute to the representation efforts of the craft, and help in its promotion and dissemination. For the time being, we have implemented this methodology successfully for the treadle (pedal) of the loom. Future work will include achieving this for the beater and shuttle.

Written by MIRALab Sarl

Pure silk, one of the oldest known natural fibres, is still highly fashionable even after thousands of years. This beautiful and elegant fabric fascinates mankind with its precious radiance, gossamer touch and strength.

The history of Krefeld (Germany), also referred to as the “Silk and Velvet Town“, is closely linked to this magical material. Today there is a small museum, Haus der Seidenkultur, which shows how the history of silk has shaped the development of the town over the past three centuries. The silk pilot of Mingei also takes place at Haus der Seidenkultur. It’s about time that we dive into the rich history of silk.

Discovery

It is undisputed that silk production originated in China around 5000 years ago. From there the exceptional thread spread to India, Persia and Japan, via Byzantium as far as Rome and Venice. It took the caravans six to eight years to transport the valuable freight 10,000 km along the legendary silk routes to Europe.

For more than 3,000 years the Chinese were able to safeguard the secret of silk production. The most well-known story in connection with the discovery of silk, is that of Empress Si Ling Chi. It is said that she used to sit under a mulberry tree in the imperial garden and drink tea. One day a gust of wind blew a small white object into the drink. When the empress tried to remove it, she found that she could unwind a gossamer thread. This gave her the idea to have a gown woven from it: silk thread had been discovered!

For almost three thousand years the Chinese emperors prohibited the export of the eggs of the silk moth and the seeds of the mulberry tree on pain of the death penalty. It was not until the 6th century after Christ that an imperial princess succeeded in smuggling the secret of silk production out of the country.  She was about to marry an Indian prince but did not want to have to forego her habitual silk clothes in her new homeland. Therefore, she hid both the eggs of the silk moth and the seeds of the mulberry tree in her bouffant hairstyle. As the guards did not dare to touch the hair of such a high-ranking person, silk was finally able to cross the border.

Origin of mulberry silk

In the autumn, the silk moth (Bombix mori) lays between 300 and 400 pin-head sized eggs on the leaves of a mulberry tree. When temperatures rise in the spring and the first tender green shoots appear, black-hairy caterpillars 2-3 mm long hatch from the eggs. The caterpillars spend the next four weeks eating the fresh, juicy mulberry leaves without a break.

Initially the tender leaves have to be cut into small pieces, then the caterpillars are fed on the delicate shoots and subsequently rough leaves and small branches. During this period the silkworm devours 40,000 times its own body weight in leaves and increases its length by 25 times. Having shed its skin four times, it now measures 8-10 centimetres and has reached the end of the eating phase.

After resting for two days, it begins to produce silk thread. Glands beneath the head secret a double thread which solidifies in the air. The silkworm attaches it as a loose, disordered web in the straw swags, nets or lattices prepared by the breeder. Hanging in this so-called flock silk, the creature then starts to spin its cocoon. Over a period of three days the caterpillar winds an endless thread around itself in the form of a figure eight, moving its head around 250,000 times in order to do it. The silk threads are then cemented together to form an impenetrable shield with a glue-type substance serecin.

Within this secure shield the caterpillar pupates to emerge after 2 weeks as a hairy, whitish moth. Male and female moths from perfect cocoons are brought together to breed. After mating, which can take up to 12 hours, the male moth dies immediately, and the female dies within three days after she has laid her eggs.

Silk Production

The cocoon must remain intact in order to salvage the lucent endless thread. Therefore, the breeder harvests the pupating creatures after a period of around 10 days and kills them using steam or microwaves. In a tub of hot water, the silk glue is dissolved and rotating brushes find the start of the endless thread. Around 800 metres of double thread can be unreeled from the cocoon and these produce the valuable filament silk. The tangled ends from the outer layer are also after being untangled, combed and spun. Long-fibres produce schappe silk, short-fibres coarse silk. The glue is removed from the filament silk by boiling it in soap water and the intensity of the process determines the lustre of the thread. The completely “degummed” silk, from which all the sericin has been removed, is the most valuable, lightest and best quality silk.

Properties and use

Silk is very precious because of the complicated process that is required to obtain it, and because it is not available in large quantities. It accounts for less than one percent of global fibre production nowadays. However, its excellent properties guarantee a constant demand for silk products.

Silk captivates initially because it has lustre and is light and supple. It can be dyed in brilliant colours; it warms in winter and cools in summer. In addition to its elegance and hint of exclusivity it has exceptional wearing properties. The structure of the silk thread is closely comparable to human skin structure.

A silk thread measuring 500 metres weighs only one gram, but it is possible to suspend a weight of 80 grams from it. Consequently, a silken rope can carry more weight than a metal rope of the same thickness. For example, Dschingis Khans’s warriors reportedly reinforced their armour with layers of silk to protect themselves from the enemy’s arrows.

In the 1930s and 1940s, when there was a shortage of textile fibres, silkworms were once again bred in Germany on a small scale. In eastern Germany there were even silkworm breeding projects as recently as the 1970s.

Silk cloth has always been and still is woven and processed in the area of Krefeld. Splendid ecclesiastical vestments that have lost nothing of their magnificence – in some cases over hundreds of years –  bear witness to just one of the important niche markets for this remarkable material.

Written by Christel Naber (HdS) and translated by Cynthia Beisswenger (HdS).

Chinese silk has a history of five thousand years. The unique techniques used, the vivid colours and its fascinating history have all contributed to the fact that silk occupies a very significant chapter in the history of Chinese – but also global – culture.

From 20 September until 20 October 2019, the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP) and the China National Silk Museum presented the exhibition “Tradition Meets Trend” at the Foundation’s Silk Museum in Soufli, Greece. The exhibition included modern clothes and accessories of silk from the collections of the China National Silk Museum.

The exhibition used silk apparel to recreate the charm of silk craftsmanship via four sections: embroidery, silk-screen printing, weaving, dyeing. Both tradition and modern design trends are applied to create objects – works of art that showcase the inexhaustible vitality of Chinese silk.

The exhibition highlighted the greatness of silk culture and functions as a bridge between the two civilisations, Chinese and Greek. An embroidered coat of red satin with flower and bird patterns, the qipao brocade, blue-dyed silk scarves and many other spectacular creations, offered visitors the opportunity to “travel” to distant China.

The exhibition, which was under the auspices of the Culture & Tourism Department of the province of Zhejiang and the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Greece, came under the framework of the co-operation agreement signed between PIOP and the China National Silk Museum in October 2017. In the same context, providing for cultural exchanges between the two entities, PIOP will lend artefacts from its collections to be displayed at the China National Silk Museum in 2020.

Written by PIOP