This thesis investigates embroidery / textile art in Ireland from the 1960s to the present day. It does so by drawing on the knowledge and experience of practitioners, educators and related professionals as a source of primary data, collected through interviews. The thesis questions how textile art emerged in Ireland, what structures and influences shaped its development and in what ways it is still relevant. It also questions if textile art in Ireland reflects specific cultural and regional identities and examines the relationship between contemporary textile art and the continuum of textile history. The project interrogates issues such as art and craft; specialist and generic skills; regional identity; ways of being a practitioner; circumstances of making; placement and curatorship of work and the role that textile practices play in society. The inclusivity of the project is broad, encompassing amateur and professional practices, the use of textiles in art, textiles as an art practice and textile arts and crafts in the community. The focus is on embroidery / stitched textiles although textile work using other materials and processes is included where relevant. The project is based on a Social Constructivist paradigm, with the artists and makers as active participants in the research. Their voices fashion the emerging themes; which are understood in relation to substantive and formal theories from interdisciplinary research areas such as women's studies, material studies and new craft theory. The research contributes to knowledge by constructing a contextual analysis for the understanding of textile arts in Ireland. This can be used to develop contemporary models for the transference of knowledge and skills, and to explore the possibilities of textile arts in society and art in a textile culture. It establishes a body of knowledge that can be used as an entry point and resource for future researchers.

Photodegradation of naturally dyed historic silks is a problem that confronts many museums. It continues as long as the objects are displayed, as both ultraviolet and visible light are capable of causing degradation. Degradation may be seen in the fading of the dyes and in the loss of textile strength. Five photodegradation inhibitors were tested on silk dyed with natural red dyes and dye combinations in order to evaluate their ability to increase the light fastness. The selected additives belong to the classes of UV absorbers and antioxidants, and combinations of those were also tested in order to investigate a possible synergetic effect. The preparation of sampling material was based on original silk samples taken from Greek museums and identified in detail using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis and high performance liquid chromatography. Evaluation was focused on the colour induced changes after artificial ageing of the treated samples and also on the tensile strength, the application methods, and the prospective reversibility of the additives. Exposure to electromagnetic radiation was performed with British Standard method BS1006:1990 using blue wool standards, by gradually covering the samples in order to investigate the fading rates over specified time periods, with an increase of temperature to 50 C and in three different relative humidity levels of 30%RH, 50%RH and 80%RH keeping stable temperature at 35 C. Colourimetric measurements were used for the evaluation of colour changes using the system of the Commission International de l'Eclairage (CIE). Comprehensive SEM investigation was performed on the inhibitor-treated samples. Benzophenone and hindered amine types showed promising results on individual samples, but an inhibitor combination of an ultraviolet absorber and an antioxidant showed good performance over a wide range of dyes and dye combinations. Synergism was confirmed in two inhibitor combinations which improved light fastness at all three humidity levels, with the best performance shown at the lowest humidity. In every case, the inhibitors proved more effective on the more light stable dyes such as madder and cochineal, while less photoprotection was given to the more sensitive dyestuffs such as brazilwood and safflower. Consideration was also given to the ethics of using photodegradation inhibitors in historic textiles. The research has shown that the use of the selected photodegradation inhibitors is not recommended on historic silks according to the present conservation requirements and codes of practice.

This research investigates the role of the designer educator in the development of digitally created and digitally printed textiles. The term designer educator has been created and defined for this research to describe individuals who engage in their own creative design practice and work in design education. Creative practice is defined as a designing or making based activity. This thesis argues that, for textile designer educators, working in an increasingly digital age, undertaking creative practice is of critical importance, due to the significant benefits that engagement in this activity provides for the individual, students and education institution. The rationale for undertaking this research arose from personal observations and experiences, supported by situations existent in contemporary textile design higher education (HE) in the United Kingdom (UK). This thesis responds to pressures placed upon educators by the contemporary education system which can be counterproductive to undertaking own creative practice. As equipment and processes are continually evolving, this situation is considered particularly problematic for individuals involved with teaching digital technologies. Designer educators’ creative practice is seen as a means to update skill and understanding, which can be used to enhance teaching and curriculum content. A self case study, quantitative survey and case studies with other designer educators, primarily consisting of qualitative interviews are used to investigate the role of the designer educator and in particular those working with digital technologies. The project centres on textile design HE in the UK, although it is anticipated that findings and conclusions will be transferable to other art and design disciplines. This thesis increases understanding surrounding the nature of the contemporary textile designer educator role operating in UK HE; in doing so the multifarious nature of the term is exposed. The importance of designer educators’ creative practice has been identified in view of the benefits that participation in this activity brings to the individual, students and educational institution. In particular, engagement in creative practice has been found to be critically important for those involved with teaching digital design and printing technologies, due to the need to keep pace with technological developments. Although forms of support exist for designer educator creative practice, issues and difficulties are encountered. This thesis proposes a series of strategies directed towards individuals, educational institutions and organisations to enhance support for the maintenance and development of designer educators’ creative practice.

At the end of the Second Millennium, the creative talent of British fashion designer 'stars' was considered so outstanding that they were frequently poached by leading European fashion houses; Dior, Givenchy, and Chloe, bastions of the French couture establishment were all headed by British designers. However, according to Kurt Salmon Associates (1991), there existed a paradox in that the British fashion designer sector was a 'cottage industry' characterised by poor commercial performance. Preliminary investigation revealed very little theory or scholarly research about the sector or its designer 'stars', and whilst there were some commercial consultancy reports, these appeared to be methodologically flawed. A need was therefore identified to explore contemporary practice in designer fashion houses, visit major promotional events such as fashion shows and exhibitions, and explore the designer's perspective. The methodological approach developed in this thesis has subsequently been endorsed by the Getty Conservation Institute of California (1999), which recommended the simultaneous analysis of 'creative' and cultural industries in terms of both their artistic and market dimensions, to explore positive associations between the two. This study applied a multi-stranded research strategy, which subscribed to phenomenological assumptions and adopted a range of research techniques from the traditions of anthropological fieldwork. These included an exploratory survey, participant observation, observation, in-depth elite interviews, and document analysis. It also draws upon developments in interpretative anthropology and includes experiments with the construction and presentation of text. These include the juxtaposition of commercial and art history discourses, numeric data with narrative, and popular with scholarly texts. This is sought to invite the reader to enter into a negotiation of new meaning, incorporating previously disparate discourses about designer fashion phenomena. The conclusions of this research were that the term 'cottage industry' was not an appropriate descriptor for the British fashion designer sector in the late 1990s .The industry had attained a positive international profile and London Fashion Week was a major international media event. However, the sector could be better supported as a national asset, in particular by establishing a permanent national exhibition in London to promote British fashion in a sustained and coherent manner.

The research is concerned with ’textile semantics’ and explores the communicative capacity of printed textiles in public spaces. The research investigates the influence of content, cloth and context on the reading of textiles, exploring the semiotic sign systems that enable textiles to function as a channel for the production and exchange of meaning between designer as encoder/producer and viewer as receiver/ consumer. The research examines historical precedents for textiles functioning as a communication medium and considers the designer’s role as encoder of cultural meaning through the visual image in textiles, identifying modes of communication in both historical and contemporary examples. A critical theoretical framework based in semiotics and communication theory is adopted as a generative and analytical tool in the research to explore the communication process through textiles. The development of this critical framework is supported by existing research from areas such as product semantics, consumer behaviour studies and material culture studies, and the application of semiotic theory in related art and design disciplines such as fashion is discussed. Methodologies developed from this framework were implemented in two practical case studies where printed textiles encoded with specific meanings were installed in public spaces and responses to the work evaluated. This enabled testing of communication intent and effect, comparing the practitioner’s communication intentions with the meanings viewers ascribed to the visual content but also determining the influence of medium and site on their readings, demonstrating variation and commonality of responses.

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The main aim of this project was to find new tools and finishing techniques for designing recyclable, aesthetic ‘surfaces’ within the context of a ‘closed cycle polyester economy’ (Livingston, 2003). This can be explained as a mechanism of industrial ecology where all waste can be reused in a perpetual material metabolism or system. Of the total textile fibre produced globally, up to 65% is lost, post-consumer, to landfill, incineration or composting. Of this, at least 50% is said to be recyclable (Laursen et al, 2005). In particular polyester, a synthetic fibre group derived from oil, is responsible for as much as 79% of the global synthetic fibre market, at 31.9 million tonnes in 2009 (Engelhardt, 2010), and therefore represents a significant proportion of this textile waste. Polyester is a thermoplastic material and as such is fully recyclable, thus making a closed cycle polyester economy a theoretical possibility. Therefore sending it to landfill is an unnecessary waste of a non-renewable resource. However, if this textile fibre is used without an understanding of its material make-up, this inherent recyclability can be inhibited. Many design approaches to recycling are end-of-life interventions that can be described as ‘extended life techniques’ rather than ‘design for recycling’. In order to design fully recyclable polyester textile products, potential barriers to recycling needed to be identified and ‘designed out’ at the production stages. Current processing and finishing methods such as chemical coatings or lamination, commonly used in the industry’s ever growing desire for performance and functionality, often create barriers to this continuous cycle, by mixing materials with different reprocessing needs into an irreversible state. These complex hybrid materials leave a legacy of waste and prevent inclusion in future fabrications (Allwood et al, 2006). If polyester textile products are preserved as monomaterials during their production they can be returned for reprocessing into virgin quality material over several cycles through chemical repolymerisation. The research set out to find new, technological alternatives to these traditional finishing techniques which could be employed to preserve monomateriality in polyester materials in order to work within the boundaries of a Cradle to Cradle metabolism (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). Laser processing was selected as the most appropriate tool for development, because of its ability to manipulate thermoplastic materials through heat and its potential for flexible control through digital means. The resulting prototypes showed that several finishes which would normally need chemical coatings or adhesives could be achieved without any added agents. In summary, this research contributes to knowledge firstly by proposing a new model for designing ‘Cradle-to-cradle (C2C) textile products’ that can contribute to a future closed- loop material economy and secondly by presenting a new application of laser-welding technology as a tool for the finishing of 100% polyester textiles which can be repolymerised at end-of-life.

This research project examines the language of grief in textile art practice. It takes as its starting point the idea that, as individuals with experience of bereavement, we may carry with us an element of unresolved mourning. This is not the pathological condition of melancholia or complicated mourning, nor the fully resolved, completed state where mourning is over, but is a space between; a set of emotions which continue to be felt and may be brought to the surface by an event, situation, set of circumstances or encounter with, for example, artwork which may bring back feelings of grief and loss long after the death of someone close. This project investigates how cloth can be used in textile artwork to make a connection with this unresolved mourning and thereby contribute to the progression of the viewer’s work of mourning. The aims of the research are to explore how textile art can be used as a metaphor for grief and mourning and to consider how the staining and mending of cloth in contemporary art practice has been used in my studio practice as a way of understanding and expressing mourning. This is a practice based research project, the outcomes of which consist of a written thesis and a body of artworks created through studio practice. The dialogic relationship between the practice and the written research is integral to the outcomes of both the written work and in the studio practice. The written thesis builds on existing research into the psychoanalytical interpretation of mourning and melancholia; the development of the understanding of the process of mourning, trauma theory and the material culture of mourning to establish a rationale for the use of cloth in textile art practice to materialise the work of mourning. The thesis and body of studio practice make an original contribution to knowledge by bringing together the sociological and cultural use of cloth with psychoanalytical theory and the consideration of the affectivity of artwork. The overarching approach of the thesis is a two-part focus on the use of cloth and how it can be used in textile artwork. The first chapter sets out the context of the research both in terms of previously published written work and the studio practice of other artists. Chapter 2 examines the methodology of the research and how the work has been shown to viewers and the means by which any responses have been obtained. Both written and verbal responses to the work by viewers have been used to substantiate the proposal that textile artwork can connect with the viewer in such a way as to allow a progression of their work of mourning. Chapter 3 considers the materiality of cloth; its manipulation and transformation using processes such as staining and mending, and the utilisation of metaphor and metonymy in the creation of artworks in cloth. The final chapter ‘Connecting with the Viewer’ explores the affectivity of artwork and how it is able to facilitate an emotional connection with the audience.