Contributors

 

Bonnie Corwin, Publisher-Editor
Bonnie Corwin enjoyed a career as the creator of packaging and displays in New York for Revlon and L'Oreal. Her love of Asian textiles developed in the early 1980s when she lived in Hong Kong for two and a half years. Travel to Thailand, Laos, Indonesia and other South East Asian destinations introduced Bonnie to the intriguing world of batik, ikat and complex supplementary weaving. Bonnie and her husband returned to Hong Kong in 2005 where she became a member of the Textile Society and eventually editor of their newsletter, a job she continued after moving to Japan in 2008. Bonnie worked to build relationships and support for the newsletter and came to appreciate the unique position a newsletter has among Asian textile enthusiasts internationally. After the demise of the Textile Society of Hong Kong, in 2009 Bonnie continued with the new publicationTextiles Asia.

 

John E. Vollmer, Advisor
John Vollmer is an internationally renowned curator and scholar in the fields of Asian art, textiles and costumes, decorative arts and design. Prior to becoming a Consultant in 1991, John held a wide range of academic positions at universities in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. He also has extensive international curatorial experience and was Director of the Kent State University Museum, Ohio, and the founding Executive Director of the Design Exchange, Toronto. John is the author of 30 museum exhibition catalogues, and his articles have been published in many international journals and publications. He is the author of several books on Qing dynasty dress, including Emblems of Empire, Selections from the Mactaggart Art Collection at the University of Alberta, co-authored with Jacqueline Simcox.

 

Rosemary Crill, Contributing Editor South Asia

Rosemary Crill is a specialist in South Asian textiles and was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London from 1980 to 2016. She gained a BA degree in Turkish from SOAS, University of London but joining the V&A’s Indian Department in 1980 led to India becoming the focus of her career. She has published and lectured widely on Indian textiles and paintings: her solo books include Indian Ikat Textiles, Marwar Painting, Indian Embroidery and Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West. Co-authored publications and exhibition catalogues include Tie-Dyed Textiles of India, Colours of the Indus: Costume and Textiles of Pakistan, Trade, Temple and Court: Indian Textiles from the Tapi Collection, Textiles from India: The Global Trade, The Indian Portrait 1560-1860 and The Fabric of India. She has served on the committees of the Oriental Rug & Textile Society of Great Britain, the Indian Art Circle, the Society for South Asian Studies and the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the V&A and continues to publish, lecture and travel to India.

 

Maria Wronska-Friend, Contributing Editor Indonesia
Maria Wronska-Friend is a social anthropologist who, as a researcher and museum curator, has for almost thirty years been pursuing her interest in Indonesian textiles and dress. The focus of her research is batik of Java in global perspective and the impact of technique and aesthetics of these fabrics on textile traditions in other parts of the world. Her PhD from the Institute of Arts at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, investigated the influence of Javanese batik on European Art Nouveau and Art Deco and was the outcome of extensive research conducted on Java as well as examination of European museum holdings. Since 1992 she is associated with James Cook University in Australia where currently she holds the position of Adjunct Senior Research Fellow. She is the author of several books and museum exhibition catalogues on Indonesian textiles, including Batik Jawa bagi Dunia. Javanese Batik to the World (Jakarta 2016) which examined the impact of Javanese batik technique, technology of dyeing and aesthetics on textile traditions in Europe, Africa, India and Australia. Her curatorial and advisory work includes more than ten major exhibitions promoting Indonesian and Laotian (Hmong) textile traditions, organised in museums and art galleries in Australia and Poland. 

 

Dale Carolyn Gluckman, Contributing Editor Tibet and Chinese Minorities
Dale Carolyn Gluckman earned her BA and MA from UCLA in art history and costume history, respectively. As a Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from 1980 to 2005 she curated many exhibitions, published, and lectured widely. She was the lead curator on the multiple award-winning exhibition When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan (1992). From 2006 she was a member of the international team establishing the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles (QSMT), Bangkok (opened in 2012), remaining a senior consultant there until 2018. With  her QSMT colleagues she curated the current exhibition, A Royal Treasure: The Javanese Batik Collection of King Chulalongkorn of Java, r. 1868-1910, accompanied by a 320-page catalogue. She has led over a dozen Asian textile study tours, including several to Southwest China and the Tibetan Grasslands

 

Gill Green, Contributing Editor Cambodia
Gillian Green is author of Traditional Textiles of Cambodia (2003) and Pictorial Textiles of Cambodia (2008). ). She was an Honorary Associate in the School of Letters, Arts and Media at the University of Sydney, Australia and is immediate past President of The Asian Arts Society of Australia (TAASA). She is now an independent scholar. .

 

Anna Jackson, Contributing Editor Japan

Anna Jackson is Keeper of the Asia Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum. A specialist in Japanese textiles and dress, she is the curator of the 2020 exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk and editor of the accompanying publication. Her other books include Japanese Country Textiles (1997), Japanese Textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum (2000), and Kimono: The Art and Evolution of Japanese Fashion – the Khalili Collection (2015). Another major research interest is the cultural relationship between Asia and the West on which she has written widely. Anna has also contributed to a number of V&A exhibitions and their related publications including Art Nouveau 1890-1914 (2000) and Art Deco 1914-1939 (2003). In 2004 she was co-curator of Encounters: the Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800 and in 2009 lead curator of Maharaja: the Splendour of India’s Royal Courts.

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Sumru Belger Krody, Contributing Editor Central Asia
Sumru Belger Krody is Senior Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Collections at The Textile Museum. Over the years Ms. Krody has presented many lectures in public and scholarly forums, written many articles on textile art, curated numerous Textile Museum exhibitions and authored or co-authored four books written to accompany some of her major exhibitions: The Sultan's Garden: the Blossoming of Ottoman Art (2012), Colors of the Oasis: Central Asian Ikats (2010), Harpies, Mermaids, and Tulips: Embroidery of the Greek Islands and Epirus Region (2006) and Flowers of Silk and Gold: Four Centuries of Ottoman Embroidery (2000). Born in Izmir, Turkey, Ms. Krody received her B.A. and her M.A. in Classical Archaeology from Istanbul University and from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, respectively. Her specific research interest concerns the late antique and Islamic textiles with special focus on the influence of textile technique and structure on the artistic, social and economic power of textiles.

 

Linda McIntosh, Contributing Editor Thailand
Dr. Linda S. McIntosh specializes in mainland Southeast Asian textiles, particularly examples produced by the Tai ethnic groups. She grew up listening to the repetitious beats of her Lao mother's loom and first learned how to weave from her mother at the age of six. Her Masters degree in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin, USA, focused on the textiles of the various Tai groups of Thailand, and her doctoral thesis from Simon Fraser University, Canada, explored Phuthai textiles of Laos. Field research has led her to collect data not only in Thailand and Laos but also in Vietnam, Cambodia and Burma. She is an advisor to the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre in Luang Prabang, Laos, and serves as a consultant on development projects in her mother's country. Her curatorial work includes two exhibitions at the Jim Thompson Art Center: Status, Myth and the Supernatural: Ritual Tai Textiles in 2005 and Weaving Paradise in 2007-8. In 2014 she curated the exhibit Handmade in Asia: Weaving the Cosmic Serpent in Laos at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. She served as curator for The James HW Thompson Foundation and the Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection in Bangkok. Her book Art of Southeast Asian Textiles: The Tilleke & Gibbins Collection was published in 2012.

 

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