Tomás Harris Lecture 2025: Sylvia Houghteling

Lecture 1: “Fleeting Dyes and the Seasons: Cloth, Waterways, and Colour before the Rise of Synthetics” 

This talk explores the meaning and materiality of quickly-fading dyes made from flowers and fruits that were widely used but seldom remain visible on textiles from South Asia and the Indonesian archipelago dating to the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. In literary verses and painted images, the short-lived nature of these bright dye colors offered metaphors for shifts in emotions and the passage of youth that conveyed a sense of impermanence. On a material level, colorants such as turmeric and saffron doubled as foodstuffs, meaning that, unlike contemporary synthetic dyes, they were gentle on the bodies that wore them and the waterways where they were rinsed. By foregrounding the history of a non-European exchange in perishable dyes, this research helps to recover what were, by necessity of their ephemerality and seasonal uses, regional and local exchanges. In these connections, we find meanings of celebration and healing, devotion and mourning that rarely surface otherwise. 

When: Tuesday 6 May, 17:30-21:00
Lecture: G06 Sir Ambrose Fleming LT in Roberts Building (17:30-19:00)
Reception: Grant Museum (19:00-21:00)

Dyeing Workshop with Sylvia Houghteling

When: Wednesday 7 May, 11:00-13:00
Where: Garden Room, Wilkins Building

Open to UCL staff, PhD and MA students only.

Lecture 2: “To Wash, to Darn, to Wear: Cycles of Reuse, Conservation, and Care” 

At times of celebration and festivals, textiles were unfurled and then rolled up again for brief periods of time in the early modern period. In between these moments of usage, those who made, wore, and oversaw the maintenance of textiles developed practices of washing, storage, and care that acknowledged the delicacy of dyes and fibers. They also employed often-overlooked techniques to periodically refresh the cloth, including the use of dyes that protected the fibers and what the textile held inside from mold and insect damage. Textiles were thus renewed by being temporarily or seasonally worn, washed, spread out, or hung. This talk looks critically at the history and material conditions of colonial-era collecting whereby textiles from South Asia and Indonesia were removed from their contexts of use and sequestered in museum storage. I open the possibility that textiles, as well as paper, stone, metal, or ceramic objects, might in some cases be simultaneously eroded but also reinvigorated by their contact with human users and the elements of their environments.

When: Thursday 8 May, 17:30-19:30
Where: G06 Sir Ambrose Fleming LT in Roberts Building

Image Credits
Lady Alone at Holi Festival, c. 1780, Opaque watercolour on paper, Kangra, South Asia, Harvard Art Museums, 1971.133
Reverse lining of a velvet textile, eighteenth century, mashru (silk and cotton textile), Gujarat, South Asia, Yale University Art Gallery, 1937.5326