I knew the job was risky….but I still went in. Saw this at the library, leafed through it, and knew immediately that I was going to have to order my own copy.
Branching out a bit from my usual posts with this particular book, World Textiles A Visual Guide to Traditional Techniques is a beautiful reference book about traditional textile art, ranging from weaving, dyes, embroidery, knitting, crocheting, naalbinding, traditional lace making, and much more. I knew for certain that I was doomed to order my own copy when I flipped it open and saw the full-color photographs of bobbin lace and an antique photo of a French woman with a magnificent lace headdress. Diving in further, there is so much detail on every page about the textile topic at hand, and the technique is so lovingly described. “There are many valuable volumes that concentrate either on an intensive study of one specific aspect of textile construction or decoration, such as weaving, dyeing, or embroidery, or are devoted to the textiles produced in one geographic region. In this book, by displaying the fabrics of many places side by side, we hope to provide a basis for comparison and thereby a greater understanding of the techniques involved…”
The first section is about the materials, such as leather and suede, wool, felt, cotton, silk, bark, etc. For instance, I learned that “in Central Africa a sheet of bark is removed from the tree, steamed to soften it and then placed over a log and beaten with grooved wooden mallets until the fibres become felted together. The fibres lies longitudinally and beating causes the fabric to stretch widthways, resulting in a large sheet of cloth.” The book was published in London, hence the spelling.
Next up are the non-woven textiles, like knitting (but not just plain, there are multiple sections within, such as textured stitches and multi-colored knitting), crochet (just the one section, though), macrame, and the lace that hooked me.
There is an incredible amount of information on weaving, covering topics as diverse as twill tartan weave, Korean damask, and the woven strips of kente cloth from Ghana. Printed textiles are next, describing different methods for printing directly onto cloth such as woodblock printing and stenciling. Next up is a large section on dyes, ranging from indigo dyes, “…the oldest dyestuff known to man, having been in use since 2500 BC…”, to tie-dying, which turns out to be much more complex than the huge, eye-searingly bright t-shirts from when I was a kid in Girl Scouts. Moving on from that, sewing comes next, with applique techniques and quilting styles, to embroidery, and a section on embellishment techniques to wrap up the book.
This book is fantastic. I could read it for days. It may be my desert island book.