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This thesis delineates a problem with researching and theorizing about craft. It argues that traditional epistemologies and academic conventions have not given sufficient recognition or value to the epistemologies and lived experiences of craft practitioners, and that they have served to obscure the centrality of practice to meaning. Consequently, there is a need to make craft practice and practitioners accounts more accessible to researchers. It proposes and tests a method using video recordings of practitioners working and interviews with practitioners in the loci of their practice as a tool, which, it is contended, provides a rich source of data about practice so that theory can be generated in a grounded way from practice. It is argued that the idea of 'the crafts' is a late twentieth-century construct, but it has its roots in an ideological and intellectual tradition, expressed in the writing of the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement. That writing was primarily concerned with the organisation and ownership of labour, with the moral and social purpose of art, and with creativity, given expression through the making process. Since the 1970s, we have seen the emergence of a legitimizing infrastructure for 'the crafts' as a category, separate from but relating to art and design. The institutional craft world attempted to distance itself from Arts and Crafts ideology and from associations with the rural and the traditional. A key feature of the institutional discourse has been attempts to establish a definition of 'craft' as a singular thing within the sphere of its influence. The thesis argues that the problematic relationship between theory and practice stems partly from this disjunction between the institutional craft world and the ideological and intellectual heritage of William Morris and his followers. It demonstrates that data gathered using the method proposed could make a positive contribution to emergent discourses on craft as experience. Within the complexity of the data gathered using the proposed method, concepts and patterns are consistently observed. The subjects are seen to be engaged in self-determined activities which are nevertheless socially situated. They are using knowledge that is embodied and enacted, and which evolves through the practice. The data shifts the focus of critical attention from the objects that are being produced and onto the practice itself. This research method makes craft practices available to the researcher and opens up a critical focus on crafting as intrinsically rewarding activities that are facilitated by learned, embodied competence, based in shared values and standards.

Master of Science / Department of Apparel, Textiles, and Interior Design / Sherry J. Haar / The overarching goals of the project were to acknowledge both traditional and modern aspects of Turkish culture, inform designers and researchers of natural dye and screen printing methods, and advance the developing practices of sustainable design. Mixed methodologies of scientific and practice-based research guided the project. A collection of 25 prints inspired by the Anatolian region of Turkey were screen-printed with thickened natural dyes onto sustainable fibered fabrics. The research of traditional Turkish art and culture led to the inspirational concepts and brought the textile prints to fruition. Understanding the dyeing practices, regional traditions, and political rule of this nation informed the design process and directly influenced the composition and imagery of the designs. The final outcomes were exhibited at the Kansas State University student union art gallery. Research was conducted on the use of natural plant-based dyes madder, weld, and woad for screen-printing by determining the most effective thickener and thickening method. Thickening agents gum tragacanth and gum arabic were tested for fabric hand and the printed natural dyes were tested for colorfastness to light. Gum tragacanth at a ratio of .9875 g agent to 10 ml water emerged as the most smooth and pliable when evaluating fabric hand. Colorfastness to light was as expected for madder and woad with excellent to good fastness. Weld had an unexpectedly low rating indicating further study is needed. The developing practices of sustainable design were advanced as I used sustainable materials (natural dyes, natural gums, naturally fibered fabrics) and methods (hand screenprinting) throughout the project. The information from this project may be valuable to artisans to further develop their natural dye and screen-printing techniques; to researchers to provide a foundation for testing additional thickened dyes; and to industry professionals to modify their practices.

This thesis examines the effects that the religious changes heralded by the Counter Reformation and the decrees regarding religious imagery and the Eucharist promulgated at the Council of Trent had on the decoration of Venetian churches from the close of the Council in 1563 until the first years of the seventeenth century. Although politically Venice shielded her independence from the power of the Papacy, she nonetheless responded in conformity to the Tridentine decrees and played an important role throughout the Cinquecento as a centre for religious renewal. In turn this had an important impact on the fabric and decoration of the city’s churches, particularly in the last two decades of the Cinquecento. Focusing on four Venetian churches that were the objects of extensive decorative programmes during the late Cinquecento; San Giacomo dall’Orio, Santa Maria dell’Umiltà, the Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore, this thesis combines archival and visual evidence to reach a deeper understanding of how the decoration of the Venetian church changed in this period. The central tenet of this thesis is that Venice made an important and early contribution towards developing the ‘ideal’ visual response required by the Council of Trent. In the immediate aftermath of the Council of Trent until the end of the century Venice enjoyed a period of important artistic renewal and achievement. This ‘golden age’ emerged in the years following Trent and in a period characterised by ongoing war and ravaging pestilence. Yet far from discouraging creative genius, the contemporary religious and political upheaval appears to have challenged artists and patrons to ever greater achievements. It thus appears that the conditions imposed by the Council of Trent created a framework within which artists could better represent the values of the renewed Catholicism of the late sixteenth century.

Founded on the premise that the existing literature on Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel does not give a comprehensive, balanced and objective survey of the dress designs produced by the house from 1916-1929, the thesis ‘Reviewing Chanel’ provides a catalogue raisonné of the designs shown in British and French Vogue during this period. This representative sample of Chanel’s work facilitates the very necessary and overdue re-assessment of Chanel’s early career and contribution to twentieth century fashion. Part One of the Introduction includes a review of the existing literature on Chanel and explains the rationale behind the production of a catalogue of the dress designs reproduced in British and French Vogue. Part Two serves as the introduction to the twenty-eight essays which outline the principal developments in each of the dress design collections presented by the house between 1916-1929. Each essay provides an analytical summary of the key themes and developments of the collection and relates Chanel’s work to that of the other leading houses in Paris during this period.

Modernism is a plurality, not a singular concept. This project explores examples of Art Nouveau nudes to describe the particular expressions of the modern through varied and complicated allegorical bodies. The female nude as a nexus for ideals of gender, art, and beauty, is informed by and constructs the understanding of these ideals within society. Art Nouveau thus employed the nude to represent complex manifestations of modernity. Three diverse cases provide the subjects of each chapter. All explore modernism through objects and interiors, in public and private environments, and each connects the decorative arts with accounts of European modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The modernist movement, in these decades, is still predominantly understood through painting. This project draws its case studies from Paris, Glasgow, and Vienna, each a distinct cultural arena during the 1890s and 1900s: the sculptural furniture of François Rupert Carabin (1862-1932); the metalwork of Margaret Macdonald (1865-1933) and her sister Frances Macdonald (1873-1921); and the graphic motifs of Ver Sacrum, created by the artists of the first Vienna Secession (1897-1905). In conception and expression, these nudes articulated the diverse representational practices of different modernisms. They each embody drastically different histories, aesthetics, and social expressions. Their varied modernisms expose the prominent nationalism of Art Nouveau. Examination of these three very different cases expands and complicates current understandings of the nude, allegory, and the modern.

This document provides an elaboration of the critical, contextual and methodological rationale for a practice‐based PhD research project undertaken at London Metropolitan University 2009-2013. This four‐year project was an exploration in identity, space and location. It looks at the transitions, journeys and stories of migrant women. Specifically this exploration has been developed through the language of the cultural practices of Iban women. The Iban are an indigenous group of people from Borneo, predominantly living within the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Significantly the Iban practices have migrated from the jungle, to urban areas, and globally, and inevitably the identity of these practices has developed as the locations have changed, much like the women performing them. My father is Iban and my mother white New Zealander, and I grew up in both Sarawak and New Zealand before coming to live in the UK in my 20s. My performance training has been within a Western context, both in New Zealand and the UK. This project has been a personal exploration, which has wider consequences in developing performance practice and understanding the discourses of home, belonging, migration and identity. This has led to questions around migrating Iban performance and cultural practices to a western contemporary context. These questions have been investigated through the cultural practices of the Iban pantun (chapter three), the Iban ngajat (chapter two), Iban weaving (chapter four) and the use of space in the Iban longhouse (chapter one). This project was an interdisciplinary investigation; in each chapter I pull together performance theory from western practitioners and post‐colonial feminist literature with the Iban performance practice. This project has asked the question: "Can Iban cultural and performance practices be ‘migrated’ to a contemporary western performance context in order to explore experiences of women’s migration?" My research question was central to the practice‐based research I conducted, the methodologies developed through practice as research, and are central to all the work covered in this thesis. Within this context the practice is submitted as an outcome alongside this written narrative. Additional details can be found on the website: www.fromthejungle.co.uk.

Key pattern is a type of abstract ornament characterised by spiral shapes which are angular rather than curved. It has been used to decorate objects and architecture around the world from prehistory onward, but flourished in a unique form in Insular art (the art of early medieval Britain and Ireland, c. AD 600-1100). Ornament of many kinds was the dominant mode in Insular art, however, key pattern has remained the least studied and most misunderstood. From the 19th century, specialists mainly have relied on simplified, line-drawn reproductions rather than original artworks. These 'correct' hand-made details, isolate patterns from their contexts, and in the case of Insular key pattern, de-emphasise its important physical structures. This resulted in misunderstandings of key pattern's structure and an inability to recognise evidence for medieval artists' working processes. Postwar art historians and archaeologists then largely abandoned study of ornament structure altogether, in critical reaction to this earlier method. For two centuries, academics have overlooked the artists' role in pattern-making, and how their creative agency is reflected in patterns' internal structures. In response, this thesis presents a new, artist-centred method for the study of Insular key pattern, which adapts Michael Brennan's pioneering approach to Insular interlace (a different pattern), to suit key pattern's distinct structure. Close examination of objects and monuments, rather than idealised 'types', has revealed how Insular artists themselves understood key pattern and handled it in the moment of creation. The core of the thesis is an analysis of key pattern's structural properties, i.e. its physical parts and the abstract, often mathematical concepts that Insular makers used to arrange and manipulate these parts, in order to fix mistakes, fulfill specific design goals, or invent anew. Case studies of individual artworks support this analysis and demonstrate how key pattern is a vehicle for accessing Insular artists' thought processes, as they improvised with the pattern's basic structures for maximum creative effect. For the first time, this thesis also places Insular key pattern in its global context, via comparative analyses of key patterns from other world art traditions. This investigation has confirmed key pattern's origin in prehistoric basketry and weaving technologies and explains why Insular key pattern's geometric complexity remains unparalleled. The adaptation and expansion of this new analytical method for key pattern also proves its applicability to any type of ornament from any culture, making it immediately useful to art historians and archaeologists. This thesis therefore represents a larger paradigm shift that brings ornament study into the 21st century.

This thesis deals with the life and artwork of sculptor Čeněk Vosmík (1860 - 1944). Thesis contains an overview and evaluation of his artworks in the context of his time. Vosmík's artistic creation is followed from the beginning, which he spent studying in Vienna, through the period of the first successes and early artwork to the stage of his later artworks, when he devoted himself primarily to the religious art. Besides of the religious art thesis deals also with the allegorical, decorative and portrait work as well as restoration works. They are not neglected nor his unrealized proposals of works of art. Is especially emphasized Vosmík's early period of arts and his most important sculptures - The reprobate, The shepherd with bull and The Christ in the desert. Thesis also includes a comprehensive inventory of his art work. Keywords Čeněk Vosmík, sculpture, religious art, allegorical and decorative arts, portraits

This thesis surveys the ninth-century metallic threads decorating silks discovered at Famen temple in Shaanxi province, China. In this research, metallic threads decorating Famen silks have been studied and documented in detail in order to understand how they were produced and how they were applied. Samples of metallic threads were selected and optical microscope and SEM/EDS were used to determine their morphology and composition. Problems regarding the current terminology used to describe metallic threads are briefly considered, and a systematic renaming of different types of metallic threads is suggested. Analysis results show that most Famen metallic threads were made of gold strips without substrate wound around a fibrous core, and that very few are silver strips without substrate wound around a fibrous core. Silver strips with paper substrate wound around a fibrous core are found among Famen silks, providing very early examples of this type of metallic thread in the world. Technical evidence demonstrates that the Famen metallic strips were cut from hammered metallic foil. It was found that metallic threads of different metal composition with different physical characteristics were selected according to the decoration techniques used and the function of the silks. The use of metallic threads with different grades of evenness in dimension and morphology for different decoration techniques was also found. The gold contents of these gold threads are all very high, and the thicknesses of the gold strips are large. All these characteristics are probably related to the function of Famen silks as objects of Buddhist worship that had been donated to the temple by members of the Tang imperial family and other high-ranking people. Technical investigation into the manufacture of modern traditional Chinese metallic threads was carried out in this research. Combined with analysis of the morphological, structural, and material nature of Famen metallic threads, the key technical characteristics of modern traditional metallic threads were found, which provided important evidence for deducing the manufacturing techniques of Famen metallic threads. Successful reconstructive experiments that produced metallic threads similar to Famen metallic threads were carried out in the laboratory by the author. The use of other known related techniques to produce Famen metallic threads was eliminated on technical grounds. With the above evidence, the manufacturing of Famen metallic threads, especially how the metallic strips were wound around the fibrous core, are reasonably deduced here. By investigating a number of currently accessible Chinese historical metallic threads from other periods, the evolutionary principles of Chinese metallic threads are concluded. The special characteristics of Famen metallic threads, the reasons determining these characteristics are better understood, and their role in the development of Chinese metallic threads is assessed.