Brain of an African Bushwoman two figures, views from above and below. Lithograph by E.M. Williams after H. Watkins, 1864. Courtesy of Deanna Bowen.

F.8.1 Pattern Drawers in Paisley, Scotland’s Nineteenth-Century Cashmere Shawl Industry – Imitation and Innovation

Sheilagh Quaile, Independent Scholar

Facilitated by increased trade between Asia and Europe, handloom-woven shawls from the Kashmir region of the Indian subcontinent became fashionable in Europe during the latter half of the eighteenth century. By the 1780s, European manufacturers had picked up on this trend, producing textiles which imitated Asian patterns, but which sold at lower prices to meet a wider market. Kashmiri shawls and their imitations were ubiquitous in Britain by the mid-nineteenth century and were particularly favoured by women as an outer layer of clothing. In this paper, I investigate the imitation Kashmiri shawl industry of one of the most renowned and prominent European producers – the town of Paisley, Scotland – to assess the artistic innovation of its products between 1805 and 1870. How much did Paisley’s pattern drawers rely on the designs of their competitors – European and South Asian – to produce their own work? To do this, I look at the pattern drawers’ training, sources, tools, and methods. I describe stylistic changes to the shawl designs over time, including the geometric abstraction of Asian floral motifs by European designers. Some scholars have proposed that this aesthetic evolution reflects Orientalist perceptions of the East as less rational and more sensuous than the West. However, by connecting with scholarship on the contemporaneous British design reform movement, I indicate that for Victorians this development suited a new aesthetic – one that was considered fitting to an age of industrialisation and increasingly mechanised production. I will explain how Indian and Persian shawls became inspirational models and pedagogical tools in British design education, at a time when Victorians sought to make scientific study of the principles of design, and when good design was thought to promise Britain’s sustained global supremacy in textile manufacturing.

F.8.2 Photographer Emma Jane Gay: Performing and ‘Documenting’ Gender and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century Idaho

Anna Dempsey, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Emma Jane Gay, a self-taught photographer went to Idaho in 1889 at age 58 to document the government’s implementation of the Dawes Act (land allotment law) with the Nez Perce. She travelled with her companion, ethnologist Alice C. Fletcher, the government official responsible for parceling out the allotments. Gay’s photographs and memoir of her sojourn with the Nez Perce (Choup-nit-ki) evidence her struggle to reconcile conventional white nationalist values with her sympathy for the terrible impact Euro-Americans had on indigenous peoples’ lives. While in Idaho, she photographed herself as two personas: a conventionally garbed “Cook” and a gender neutral “Photographer” who always faces away from the viewer. The practical Cook is there to document the implementation of the Dawes act. By contrast, the Photographer is free to imagine and perform: to occupy multiple identities and positions.  In these self-portraits, Gay not only subverted gender binaries, but also expanded gender possibilities. She positioned herself as both insider and outsider. As Georgi Finlay observes: Women’s “positioning... within an expansionist discourse is essentially unstable, oscillating between national loyalty and the privileging of personal relations. It is these fissures in some women’s western narratives that contain a cultural critique which shatters the conventional binary narratives.” As I will argue, Gay’s creative work opens up a fissure that allowed for, as Rosi Braidotti states, “a play of multiple, fractured aspects of the self... [that] require a bond to the ‘other’.“ For Gay, the ‘other’ represented the Nez Perce woman: “She will tie her cradle-board to her saddle and gallop off as free as her husband; freer... she owns her children, her horses, her home.” Although Gay contradicts this sentiment elsewhere, her work represents a late nineteenth century effort to destabilize conventional gender and ethnic norms by opening up a “fissure” in which she could perform multiple identities—identities that at times allowed her to see the “other.”

F.8.3 Blanche d’Antigny (1840-1874), Ève Lavallière (1866-1929) et Liane de Pougy (1869-1950) : des Madeleine modernes?

Mathilde Leïchlé, Université de Montréal/Université PSL (École Practique des Hautes Études)

Au XIXe siècle, la vie de la sainte Marie Madeleine et ses représentations sont entremêlées à celles de femmes contemporaines. Des textes comme Les Marie-Magdeleine de Charles Marchal (1857) ou Les Madeleines repenties (1869) d’Alexandre Dumas fils portent une réflexion sur la prostitution contemporaine en passant par le mythe, transposant une trajectoire typique du péché vers la rédemption sur la vie de femmes du XIXe siècle. Au cours de leurs carrières d’actrices et de courtisanes, Blanche d’Antigny, Ève Lavallière et Liane de Pougy sont rapprochées de la pécheresse repentie. En 1858, Blanche d’Antigny pose pour La Madeleine pénitente de Paul Baudry et Jean Béraud aurait représenté Liane de Pougy en 1891 dans La Madeleine chez le Pharisien. Marquées par ces imaginaires, ces femmes se les réapproprient et intègrent la sainte dans leurs vies : Blanche d’Antigny offre un chemin de croix à a collégiale Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Mézières-en-Brenne, Ève Lavallière fait le pèlerinage à la Sainte-Baume, se retire dans une maison qu’elle appelle Béthanie et devient sœur Ève-Marie du Cœur de Jésus tandis que Liane de Pougy devient sœur Anne-Marie-Madeleine de la Pénitence. L’étude des traces qu’elles ont laissées (journaux intimes, correspondance, vente après décès) permet de comprendre leur part active face aux images et aux constructions, leur volonté de maîtriser leur postérité. Comparer cette perspective avec les nécrologies et biographies qui ont été écrites par la suite montre dans quelle mesure certains schémas du XIXe siècle sont repris, prolongés, effaçant la femme derrière le type et comment d’autres entreprises leurs rendent la parole.