Like the heirloom clothes and other textiles my family has passed down from generation to generation, these garments speak volumes about the people who wore them. A high infant mortality rate meant that families engaged in "lavish celebrations and rituals" to try preserve the lives and ensure the prosperity of their precious children. Wishes for well-being and prosperity were often woven right into the children's clothes: symbols (like lucky or protective animals and plants), auspicious colors, and even the stitching itself conveyed the parents’ fervent wish that the child should flourish.
One custom in particular, practiced in both China and Japan(!), should by now sound familiar to you:
in China… the Hundred Families Coat [was presented] during the child's first month. This coat was made from silk fragments from many different families and symbolized the combined good fortune of one hundred families. This custom was also practiced in Japan where the robe was called the Hundred Virtue Kimono.(Asianart.com, "Family Ties in Asian Textiles")
While the Academy was not able to obtain any such robes for this exhibit, an article from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin confirms that the curator had "seen them in a couple of pictures."
(As documentation from an actual textile historian, this finding is tremendously exciting to me. I am considering trying to contact the curator to try to learn where she saw these pictures!)
What symbols do we have in Western culture that convey to a child of the early 21st century just how much she is valued? Will they continue to speak eloquently 100 years hence; or will a textile of our time be so steeped in our popular culture, all Disney Princesses and Dora, that our descendants will need a cultural historian to decode its meaning?
I can't wait to see how the friends and family members who contribute squares for the Good Wishes quilt address these questions. (If the fabric itself remains cryptic, there is always the wish scrapbook!)
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