Tim Parry-Williams, NO
Patterns of Origin – Coded cultures of Anglo-Norwegian cloth trade and dress
Papers of Jas Winchcombe - Records of Scarlett orders (detail) - Image T.Parry-Wlliams © Gloucestershire Archives
Women’s folk dress (open front detail) Image T.Parry-Wlliams © Norsk Folkemuseet
Emerging from the project [Beyond Heritage: Material, Making, Meaning] (2022-2025), this presentation will share preliminary findings from investigation into potential textile-based links between England and Norway, through the apparent use of imported British woollen cloth in pre-1900 Norwegian folk dress.
Traditional raudtrøyer dress from the Telemark region of Norway, included jackets, waistcoats, and stockings, made from a fulled (or felted) woollen cloth, typically scarlet red, but also navy blue and black. A common element in both Womens' and Mens' wear, was a patterned band at the hem of the garment. This feature, typically a natural ‘white’ wool, with a black or blue and white, lengthways stripe, is in-fact an undyed border to the piece-dyed cloth. The detail, long recognised, but little understood, appears to demonstrate the incorporation and distinctive use of an imported cloth tradition known as ‘saved-lists’ once produced in Stroud, England. Interestingly, limited research of this mode of cloth making and ‘marking,’ suggests that the selvedge indicated both the grade and origin of the cloth.
Within the frame of the wider project, recent museum and archives-based object study is revealing the information needed to map and illustrate an emerging story of trade and aesthetic assimilation of very specific cloth-making and dress traditions - a history that has until now, been unknown.
What are the chief characteristics of these garment textiles? How did they contribute to ideas of local or national identity? And, what wider socio-political and cultural histories are woven together through their apparent movement across geographies?
Tim Parry-Williams, GB
Tim Parry-Williams (b. 1974, Gloucester, England) trained in woven textiles at ‘Farnham’, now University of the Creative Arts in England, and later at Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts in Japan. The holistic, craft-based education experienced in these environments, and in particular the encounters with direct material production and cultural contextualization, has continued to inform and drive a portfolio practice which has encompassed research, writing, consultancy, curation, education, and textile making. To date, diverse professional activity has included independent studio production of high-end fashion and interior accessories and applied arts, collaborative work as an Associate Designer of apparel fabrics in industry, academic research publishing through international conferences and subject journals, and numerous expositions in the UK, Austria, France, Japan, and the USA.
Tim has been a recipient of several international grants including most recently a Norwegian Artistic Research Programme award for project [Beyond Heritage: Material Making Meaning]. He is a Trustee and Acquisitions Panelist at the Crafts Study Centre UK, Advisor - European Textile Network, Peer Reviewer for several international subject journals and funding bodies, and an International Juror. He is currently Professor of Art: Textiles at the University of Bergen in Norway.