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Textile Scholar Gives Lecture At Florida Tech Today

By  //  December 4, 2012

Event Open To The Public

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Florida Institute of Technology will host Japanese textile scholar Ann Marie Moeller as part of the Friends of Textiles Lecture Series on Tuesday, Dec. 4.

Shown is a five panel e-gasuri (picture ikat) futon-ji (bedding cover) depicting a battleship on early 20th century cotton from the Krauss Collection at The Fowler Museum, U.C.L.A. (Image courtesy of Bill Landesz)

The lecture will be at 6 p.m. in the Denius Student Center’s Hartley Room on the Florida Tech campus and will be preceded by a reception at 5:15 p.m.

Moeller will lecture about images representing the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) woven in e-gasuri. E-gasuri is an ancient, labor- intensive, “ ikat resist” technique; in this, threads are dyed before being put on the loom in a way that produces a picture when woven.

This traditional hand-dying and hand-weaving technique was used to create prized trousseau pieces for brides who would use the cloths to decorate their beds.

The use of an ancient technique to create imagery of modernization and industrialization is a seeming contradiction that Moeller will explore in her lecture; similarly, she will explore the conflicting messages inherent in the production of war imagery for the marriage bed.

Moeller is an independent curator and Japanese textile scholar who has collected kimono since her student days at Harvard. She has lectured for a wide variety of institutions including The Smithsonian Associates, The Asia Society, The Textile Museum, The Smithsonian Renwick Gallery and the Embassy of Japan.

She has curated exhibitions for The Kennedy Center, The International Monetary Fund, The National Cherry Blossom Festival and the Embassy of Japan.

This event is held in conjunction with the center’s current exhibit, Battle Worn: Masculine Ideals and Military Identity in Modern Japanese Textiles, currently on view at the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts through Dec. 15.

The cost for the lecture is $10 for the general public; it is free to Friends of Textiles members and full-time Florida Tech students with ID.

For more information, visit http://textiles.fit.edu or call the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts at 321-674-8313.