Surface Design Journal Fall 2005

Machine Embroidery: Maturation of a Means

Editorial

While the Fall issue always begins a new volume, this time the change from Volume 29 to 30 marks the turn of a decade—surely cause for celebration. This is a good time to express gratitude for the Surface Design Association’s support of the Journal through the years. We can also appreciate those early editors who nurtured the growth and development of the magazine from its first appearance as a pulp document after the first surface design conference in 1976. (It takes less time to start a publication than to establish a not-for-profit corporation, so the Surface Design Association became a legal entity one year after the Journal was launched.) Glancing through some issues from the formative years, it is interesting to see that many of the contributors have retained their association with SDA and the Journal. Glen Kaufman, a past SDA President, is among the writers whose bylines appear frequently. As it happens, you can turn to page 24 and find that byline again; we are grateful to Glen for his ongoing interest in sharing his knowledge of textile art and artists in Japan.

As long as the celebrational mood is upon us, and since our theme is “Machine Embroidery,” we might note another anniversary. Thanks to the internet’s limitless capacity for rescuing facts from obscurity, we’ve learned that exactly 250 years ago a British patent was issued to a German inventor for the first needle for a sewing machine. Various sources agree that there is no record of a machine designed to accompany Karl (or Charles) Weisenthal’s (or Wiesenthal’s) needle, so the notion of mechanized sewing lay dormant until 1790, when Thomas Saint received a patent for a machine with an awl-like needle for leather. Although that machine didn’t work, it foreshadowed a century in which innovators like Elias Howe and Isaac Merritt Singer brought the sewing machine into the industrial mainstream as well as the domestic realm. The machine’s trajectory from a tool for manufacturing boots to a tool for artmaking was fraught with the kinds of conflict—e.g., tailors’ rebellions—that seem to accompany each introduction of time and labor-saving technology. Jump ahead to the mid-20th century and there’s a fresh point of conflict sparked by the emergence of craft as an art form: can machine-sewn embroidery claim the same validity as that stitched by hand?

From today’s perspective, the question seems irrelevant. Starting with explorations in the 1960s, artists have found that the sewing machine is not just a speedy substitute for handwork, but is able to produce visual effects that couldn’t be imagined without it. During recent decades, sewing machine technology has advanced to include devices that override the limitations of straight seams and linear patterns. For example, there is the “walking foot” that allows the freedom to fill large areas of fabric with stitches. Needless to say, computerized machines have amplified the possibilities.

In gathering material for this issue, Barbara Lee Smith provided invaluable assistance. In addition to giving us time to probe her views on machine embroidery as a contemporary art technique, she served as a collaborator by suggesting other artists who have contributed original approaches to the medium.

-- Patricia Malarcher

CORRECTIONS
We regret the misspelling of Joanna Staniszkis’s name on page 4 of the Summer issue. Also in the Summer issue, the review of Silk Symphony (pages 50-51) omitted the names of the exhibition organizers, Susan Louise Moyer and Suzanne Punch.