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The Textile Reader
The Textile Reader is the first anthology to address textiles as a distinctive area of cultural practice and a developing field of scholarly research. Revealing the full diversity of approaches to the study of textiles, the Reader introduces students to the theoretical frameworks essential to the exploration of the textile from both a critical and a creative perspective. Content is drawn from a wide range of genres - blogs, artists' statements and fiction, as well as critical writings - and organized in themed sections covering touch, memory, structure, politics, production and use. Each thematic section is separately introduced and concludes with a bibliography for further reading. The Textile Reader will be an invaluable resource for students of textile design, textile art, applied arts and crafts and material culture. Selected authors include Glenn Adamson, Anni Albers, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Sarat Maharaj, Rozsika Parker, Sadie Plant, Peter Stallybrass, Alice Walker and Catherine de Zegher.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2012
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January 12, 2013
"You're given just so much to work with in a life and you have to do the best you can with what you got. That's what piecing is. The materials passed on to you or is all you can afford to buy...that's just what's given to you. Your fate. But the way you put them together is your business. You can put them in any order you like. Piecing is orderly."
--quoted from Cooper and Buferd's "The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art", by Elaine Showalter in her essay "Piecing and Writing"
It's hard to easily summarize this book. The essays approach textiles from a wide variety of disciplines and agendas. Memory, history, communication, witness, process, use, network, myth, connection, repetition, creation, grid, techology, repair, masquerade, camouflage, women, production, bridge, boundary, art, craft, work, intellect, politics, touch, tradition, innovation, structure, crossing, passage....it's a bit overwhelming. Probably reading straight through, as I did, is not the best approach.
I liked the mix of scholarly, technical, artistic, and literary. Some of the essays were a bit dry for me, but most sparkled. My favorites included June Hill's "Sense and Sensibility,", Peter Stallybrass' "Worn Worlds", Rozsika Parker's "The Subversive Stitch", Sadie Plant's Zeros + Ones", and Sabrina Gschwandtner's "Knitting Is...".
Ele Carpenter's "Open Source Embroidery" contains an important and thoughtful discussion of the current copyright issues involved in the formerly communal and shared domestic world of embroidery, knitting, quilting and weaving patterns and designs. How do we balance tradition and commerce?
The fiction, including Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities", Charlotte Perkins Gillman's "The Yellow Wallpapaer", and Alice Walker's "Everyday Use", is also first rate.
An excellent collection.
--quoted from Cooper and Buferd's "The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art", by Elaine Showalter in her essay "Piecing and Writing"
It's hard to easily summarize this book. The essays approach textiles from a wide variety of disciplines and agendas. Memory, history, communication, witness, process, use, network, myth, connection, repetition, creation, grid, techology, repair, masquerade, camouflage, women, production, bridge, boundary, art, craft, work, intellect, politics, touch, tradition, innovation, structure, crossing, passage....it's a bit overwhelming. Probably reading straight through, as I did, is not the best approach.
I liked the mix of scholarly, technical, artistic, and literary. Some of the essays were a bit dry for me, but most sparkled. My favorites included June Hill's "Sense and Sensibility,", Peter Stallybrass' "Worn Worlds", Rozsika Parker's "The Subversive Stitch", Sadie Plant's Zeros + Ones", and Sabrina Gschwandtner's "Knitting Is...".
Ele Carpenter's "Open Source Embroidery" contains an important and thoughtful discussion of the current copyright issues involved in the formerly communal and shared domestic world of embroidery, knitting, quilting and weaving patterns and designs. How do we balance tradition and commerce?
The fiction, including Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities", Charlotte Perkins Gillman's "The Yellow Wallpapaer", and Alice Walker's "Everyday Use", is also first rate.
An excellent collection.
Displaying 1 of 1 review