Following our goals in terms of preservation of the #silk heritage, we visited the Museu i Col·legi de l’Art Major de la Seda (Museum & College of High Silk Art) in València, on 31st March 2021.

The College of High Silk Art is one of the most prominent buildings of Valencian architecture and culture. It is located in a special area in the historical heart of the city of Valencia: Velluters’ (velvet artisans) neighborhood.

With the transformation, restoration and renovation of the building (it dates from the 15th century) in the last years, driven by Hortensia Herrero Foundation, a piece of material and immaterial history of the city has been recovered, as the guild of silk weavers was reference in the world and one of the engines of the Valencian economy. The archive of the College of High Silk Art  is the most important in Europe and maintains a large number of copies from its inception to the present in scrolls, books and file boxes.

We met with some of the Board Governors from the nowadays Velluters’ Guild, building contacts and partnerships. First we presented our project and the updated results, as our Thesaurus, ADASilk and the Virtual Loom, tools which we offered to being used in their museography as much as the could be useful. We also encouraged the Board members to add their digitalized records to the huge database SILKNOW project is building in collaboration with Mueums, institutions, etc.

But, our main and central discussion was about the shared worries on the future perspectives of silk weaving tradition, threatened by multiple circumstances and challenges. In this moment, local artisans are suffering the consequences of the world pandemics of COVID-19, as the festivities and celebrations are not taking place, and most of their textile production is focused on folklore dresses. The transmission and legacy of the weaving techniques knowledge and textile craft was another key point of our meeting, as there are no ways to coach new artisans and professionals in the traditional techniques, there are not any educational plans or programs which include weaving tuitions.

Because all of these, we agreed in continuing working together, along with the creative industries in order to build a new plan on silk preservation, which would be send to the Spanish Government, to emphasize the need of concrete and useful measures, taking steps in the safeguarding of this traditional craft.

Three distinguished scholars explore the visual and material heritage related to the development of silk in Spain, starting with the pioneering production of silk in medieval Iberia to the new uses and meanings of silk in contemporary society. The lectures are hosted by the Zurbarán Centre at Durham University and organized in collaboration with the University of Leeds, the Instituto Cervantes-Manchester and SILKNOW.

The lectures will be delivered live on zoom, each will last ca. 35 minutes and be followed by a brief presentation of the digital tools developed by SILKNOW.

The lecture series is free and open to anyone interested in European silk heritage.

Plase register here and reeive a Zoom link for the lectures.

Friday, 7 May at 6:00 PM : Dr Maria J. Feliciano, Staging Medieval Silk in Iberia: Treasure, Ritual, and Ornament.

Dr. María J. Feliciano is an independent scholar based in New York City. She specializes in the visual culture of the late medieval and early modern Iberian worlds. She has published extensively on the influence of the arts of Islam in the artistic developments of Peninsular and Viceregal societies. She is the director of the Medieval Textiles in Iberian and the Mediterranean Research Project and a member of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion in the Americas (Yale University) and The Medieval Iberian Treasury in Context (CSIC), among other research groups. Dr. Feliciano’s lecture will be followed by a brief demo of the digital tools developed by the SILKNOW research project, in connection with the subject of the lecture. The presenter will be Jorge Sebastián, Professor of Art History at the Universitat de València.

Friday, 14 May at 6:00 PM: Dr Ana Cabrera, Revisiting Sericulture and Silk Production in the Kingdoms of Spain, circa 1300-1700: local and global networks

Dr Ana Cabrera is Director of the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España since 2020. Previously she was curator of historical fashion at the Museo del Traje in Madrid (2018-2020), Marie S.-Curie Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2016-2018), and curator at the National Museum of Decorative Arts of Madrid (2002-2016). She has curated the exhibiton Alfombras y tejidos del Museo de La Alhambra in Granada in 1997 and Extra, Moda. El nacimiento de la prensa de moda en España with Maria Prega at the Museo del Traje. She is the author of four books, several book chapters and articles about museum documentation, the history of the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, and historical textiles. Dr Cabrera’s lecture will be followed by a brief demo of the digital tools developed by the SILKNOW research project, in connection with the subject of the lecture. The presenter will be Mar Gaitán, Research Technician, Universitat de València.　

Monday, 17 May at 6:00 PM: Professor Cris Carr: “Silk in contemporary society, beyond its ornamental use”

Cris Carr is Professor in Textile Technology at the University of Leeds, with a key focus on Healthcare Textiles, and he was Head of the School of Design until September 2020. He has published widely through research publications and conference presentations and is a member of several Editorial Boards for international research journals. In 2015 he was awarded the Society of Dyers and Colourists Gold Medal for his outstanding contribution to Textile & Colour Education and is currently a Trustee on the Society of Dyers and Colourists. Professor Carr’s lecture will be followed by a brief demo of the digital tools developed by the SILKNOW research project, in connection with the subject of the lecture. The presenter will be Cristina Portalés, Ramón y Cajal researcher, University of Valencia.

Although silk textiles were for many centuries very precious trading goods across the Eurasian continent and further, the knowledge about how production started in Europe and its culture surrounding it is not very known or easily accessible anymore. Textiles, clothes, furniture and so many other objects are scattered around museums and collections and information about them are not easily accessible, neither for researchers nor for the fashion industry and the broader public.

To solve this issue, we created ADASilk (Advanced Data Analysis for Silk heritage), which integrates an exploratory search engine and a Spatio-temporal map, is built on top of the SILKNOW’s knowledge graph that contains nearly 40,000 fabric entries with images and other relevant information describing them (e.g., production place, production timespan, material, technique, etc.). This repository is named ADASilk after Ada Lovelace, the British mathematician whose connection to the origins of computers is well known by now.

The data contained in ADASilk comes from the archives of Boston Museum of Fine Arts, CDMT Terrassa, Garín 1820, Joconde Database of French Museum Collections, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mobilier International, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Musée des Tissus, Paris Musées, Red Digital de Colecciones de Museos de España, Rhode Island School of Design, Sicily Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian, Versailles, Victoria and Albert Museum.

ADASilk is based on a generic exploratory search engine for knowledge graphs being developed at EURECOM and includes scientific contributions from Universitat de Valencia, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – Lyon 2, Universita Degli Studi di Palermo, GARIN 1820 S.A., Institut Jozef Stefan, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universitaet Hannover, Monkeyfab, and Instituto Cervantes.

The Virtual Loom and Spatio-Temporal Maps visualizations have been developed by Universitat de Valencia.

On the  25^th and  26^th of November, the SILKNOW team held an online meeting to discuss the project’s progress. This is the second meeting held virtually, due to the COVID-19 circumstances. It was, initially planned to take place in Palermo, with our partner UNIPA as host.

Each team from each work package presented their advancements & progress and we continued our task of cooperation on the interdisciplinary work.

We discuss and make some steps in the integration of all of our tools that would be available through ADASilk website.

Also, we scheduled the evaluation calendar & content, that will be open to evaluators soon.