| Author | : Annette B. Weiner |
| Publisher | : Smithsonian Institution |
| Total Pages | : 448 |
| Release | : 2013-08-06 |
| Genre | : Design |
| ISBN | : 1588343847 |
Cloth and Human Experience explores a wide variety of cultures and eras, discussing production and trade, economics, and symbolic and spiritual associations.
| Author | : Virginia Postrel |
| Publisher | : Basic Books |
| Total Pages | : 320 |
| Release | : 2020-11-10 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1541617614 |
From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.
| Author | : Robert Ross |
| Publisher | : John Wiley & Sons |
| Total Pages | : 248 |
| Release | : 2013-05-02 |
| Genre | : Design |
| ISBN | : 0745657532 |
In virtually all the countries of the world, men, and to a lesser extent women, are today dressed in very similar clothing. This book gives a compelling account and analysis of the process by which this has come about. At the same time it takes seriously those places where, for whatever reason, this process has not occurred, or has been reversed, and provides explanations for these developments. The first part of this story recounts how the cultural, political and economic power of Europe and, from the later nineteenth century North America, has provided an impetus for the adoption of whatever was at that time standard Western dress. Set against this, Robert Ross shows how the adoption of European style dress, or its rejection, has always been a political act, performed most frequently in order to claim equality with colonial masters, more often a male option, or to stress distinction from them, which women, perhaps under male duress, more frequently did. The book takes a refreshing global perspective to its subject, with all continents and many countries being discussed. It investigates not merely the symbolic and message-bearing aspects of clothing, but also practical matters of production and, equally importantly, distribution.
| Author | : Danielle C. Skeehan |
| Publisher | : Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Total Pages | : 201 |
| Release | : 2020-12-08 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1421439689 |
Bringing together methods and materials traditionally belonging to literary studies, book history, and material culture studies, The Fabric of Empire provides a new model for thinking about the different media, languages, literacies, and textualities in the early Atlantic world.
| Author | : Diana Mary Eva Thomas |
| Publisher | : Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 260 |
| Release | : 2017-03-07 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1443879428 |
This study shows how fiction that makes use of textiles as an essential element utilizes synaesthetic writing and synaesthetic metaphor to create an affective link to, and response in, the reader. These links and responses are examined using affect theory from Silvan Tomkins and Brian Massumi and work on synaesthesia by Richard Cytowic, Lawrence Marks, and V.S. Ramachandran, among others. Synaesthetic writing, including synaesthetic metaphors, has been explored in poetry since the 1920s and, more recently, in fiction, but these studies have been general in nature. By narrowing the field of investigation to those novels that specifically employ three types of hand-crafted textiles (quilt-making, knitting and embroidery), the book isolates how these textiles are used in fiction. The combination of synaesthesia, memory, metaphor and, particularly, synaesthetic metaphor in fiction with textiles in the text of the case studies selected, shows how these are used to create affect in readers, enhancing their engagement in the story. The work is framed within the context of the history of textile production and the use of textiles in fiction internationally, but concentrates on Australian authors who have used textiles in their writing. The decision to focus on Australian authors was taken in light of the quality and depth of the writing of textile fiction produced in Australia between 1980 and 2005 in the three categories of hand-crafted textiles – quilt-making, knitting and embroidery. The texts chosen for intensive study are: Kate Grenville’s The Idea of Perfection (1999, quilting); Marele Day’s Lambs of God (1997, knitting) and Anne Bartlett’s Knitting (2005, knitting); Jessica Anderson’s Tirra Lirra by the River (1978, embroidery) and Marion Halligan’s Spider Cup (1990, embroidery).
| Author | : Elizabeth Wayland Barber |
| Publisher | : W. W. Norton & Company |
| Total Pages | : 344 |
| Release | : 1995-09-17 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0393285588 |
"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.
| Author | : Jane Dunnewold |
| Publisher | : Interweave |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2010-07-27 |
| Genre | : Crafts & Hobbies |
| ISBN | : 9781596681958 |
When Jane Dunnewold's book Complex Cloth was published in 1996, it quickly became the bible of surface design for fiber artists. In the years since, the world of surface design has significantly expanded: now fiber artists, art-to-wear designers, and art quilters have a much broader range of surface design products to choose from, and there are a wealth of technique combinations that can be used to create art cloth. Art Cloth picks up where Complex Cloth left off, showing how to layer processes with the latest products to create stunning cloth for use in a variety of fiber art. Following Jane's techniques with step-by-step photography, you will learn to create art cloth using dyes, color removing agents, paints, and foils combined through processes that include silk-screen printing, stamping, stenciling, and handpainting. In addition to detailed step-by-step wet-media surface design techniques, Jane demonstrates how the use of color and design contribute to successful layering. She guides and inspires artists to take their art cloth to the next level through sidebars with design tips and exercises that support the technical information. Finally, each technique chapter concludes with project ideas for the skills learned, so anyone working through the book can literally build layers on cloth as each chapter is completed.
| Author | : Micala Sidore |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 224 |
| Release | : 2020-06-28 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9780764359927 |
A colorful guided tour from an expert, enabling weavers, textile lovers, and art lovers to notice and appreciate what tapestries can do and how they do it. This guide from expert tapestry weaver and historian Sidore gives how-to strategies enabling weavers and nonweavers to notice and appreciate the meaning of these artworks. You'll discover much to enjoy in photos of more than 300 tapestries from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Sidore enables you to think about the weavings in ways you have never before considered as she groups pieces that talk with each other--and that also converse with the viewer. Enjoy learning basic elements of weaving to help you become increasingly sophisticated in understanding what you're seeing. Then, learn six ways in which tapestries can call attention to themselves as cloth. This eye-opening guide to seeing explains the great range of materials and visual themes, the use of trompe l'oeil, the importance of the direction in which the weaver weaves, and more. After this learning experience, you'll bring smarter eyes to your museum wandering, deeper enjoyment to your collection and purchases, and surprising new skills and creativity to your weaving of fibers . . . and of life.
| Author | : Sofi Thanhauser |
| Publisher | : Vintage |
| Total Pages | : 401 |
| Release | : 2022-01-25 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1524748404 |
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A sweeping and captivatingly told history of clothing and the stuff it is made of—an unparalleled deep-dive into how everyday garments have transformed our lives, our societies, and our planet. “We learn that, if we were a bit more curious about our clothes, they would offer us rich, interesting and often surprising insights into human history...a deep and sustained inquiry into the origins of what we wear, and what we have worn for the past 500 years." —The Washington Post In this panoramic social history, Sofi Thanhauser brilliantly tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from, illuminating our world in unexpected ways. She takes us from the opulent court of Louis XIV to the labor camps in modern-day Chinese-occupied Xinjiang. We see how textiles were once dyed with lichen, shells, bark, saffron, and beetles, displaying distinctive regional weaves and knits, and how the modern Western garment industry has refashioned our attire into the homogenous and disposable uniforms popularized by fast-fashion brands. Thanhauser makes clear how the clothing industry has become one of the planet’s worst polluters and how it relies on chronically underpaid and exploited laborers. But she also shows us how micro-communities, textile companies, and clothing makers in every corner of the world are rediscovering ancestral and ethical methods for making what we wear. Drawn from years of intensive research and reporting from around the world, and brimming with fascinating stories, Worn reveals to us that our clothing comes not just from the countries listed on the tags or ready-made from our factories. It comes, as well, from deep in our histories.
