The Stamina of Things: Jean Toury's Nightshirt

Authors

Janet Pollock, Independent ScholarFollow

Date of this Version

2024

Document Type

Presentation

Citation

Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium

Shifts & Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, November 12-17, 2024, a virtual event

Comments

Published by the Textiles Society of America

Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission

Abstract

“Stamina. from Latin stamen (Pliny), literally "foundation in weaving, thread of the warp" ......also threads spun by the Fates.”

A seasoned forager of forest and flea markets, I have tempered my eye to both the unassuming and the unexpected. I make and study textiles of every stripe. The subject of my presentation, this nightshirt, traveled 5500 miles and 80 years to reach my neck of the woods. Tailor-made and monogrammed, well-worn and deeply stained, it was suddenly dispatched into the world, to be sold "as is". I asked and was given a name, a place and a date. Jean Toury. French Resistance. German concentration camp. 1944. I asked again and received the seller’s email address.

Not all histories want to be remembered. The story of this nightshirt was a painful one that three generations had tried to forget. But I had a name, a place and the internet. And the more I learned of Jean Toury, the more willing his granddaughter became to share what she knew. And so the fact of this garment extended and elaborated beyond the physical trace of a person to become a remembrance of a life courageously lived.

In a studied placement of color, symbol and text, I embroidered the rediscovered 'vital statistics'—both familial and forensic--of life and death upon this one surviving garment. And the re-figured nightshirt provoked other memories, other histories and other artifacts. The work continues and will perhaps carry the nightshirt back to France.