Pulling Strings Reference Library: Susan Fohr

At the heart of the Pulling Strings project is a hunger to explore the stories that textiles tell us about our culture and how we relate to each other.  This book shared by Susan Fohr, Education Programs Coordinator at the TMC,  does exactly that.  We'll keep posting more of these mini reviews to mark the launch of our reference library throughout April - stay tuned!

The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Toronto: Random House Canada
(2001)

My favourite textile book is The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. As a museum educator, I am fascinated by the power of objects to communicate the stories of those once associated with them. Each chapter of The Age of Homespun features an object from a New England museum or historic site – including a native basket, two spinning wheels and a niddy-noddy – and outlines the role textiles played in shaping narratives related to nationhood, industrialization and gender in New England from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century. I was particularly fascinated by the ways in which textiles, and the furniture that housed them, served as a means to build relationships and lineages over time, ensuring the preservation of a female line. Having begun my museum career as an historic interpreter (in fact my “textile education” happened while working at Black Creek Pioneer Village), this book reinforced my belief that we study history to do more than remember the past; we study history to discover how we can live better today and tomorrow.

Susan Fohr

Education Programs Coordinator

Textile Museum of Canada

Pulling Strings Reference Library: Sarah Quinton

Next up in our series of mini "reviews" from the shelves of some of our textile heroes is a celebration of a book that should belong in all textile fans' collections - as reviewed by inspired curator and Curatorial Director of the TMC, Sarah Quinton.  We'll keep posting more of these reviews to mark the launch of our reference library throughout April - stay tuned!

Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor

New York: Yale University Press for The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture

Edited by Nina Stritzler-Levine, with texts by Arthur C. Danto and Joan Simon

(2006) 

This book is an object. Its white embossed, textured hard cover is soft to the touch, with 5 cm-thick, 418 rough-sawn page edges that contribute to its sculptural heft. Not particularly large, as books go: 22 cm height x 15.5 cm wide. It’s the juicy ratio of height-times-weight-times-thickness that qualifies it as a full-on object. It can function as a one-hander, but it’s better with two. 

Sheila Hicks, an American icon of contemporary textile practice since the 1950s, has for decades made small weavings and studies made of found objects including natural materials, bits of paper, rubber bands and plastic – notations in miniature of her everyday life – reflections on decades of travel, rich studio experimentation, straight-ahead loom weaving, rambling material studies and design explorations. 

This catalogue of her 2006 exhibition at New York’s Bard Graduate Center visually documents nearly 200 of her miniatures with sensitively scaled photographs and first-person anecdotes surrounding their existence. Of her 2005 Cluster of Sounds, made of fine synthetic threads, she writes “Ninety colors intermingle, fuse into a muted mass, and become a tangled tone cluster. The more colors there are, the less color is distinguishable. How many colors make gray, and how many grays are there?”

If you are in New York this spring, don’t miss Sheila Hicks’s monumental installation “Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column” (2013–14) on the 4th floor of this year’s Whitney Biennial.

Sarah Quinton

Curatorial Director

Textile Museum of Canada

Pulling Strings Reference Library: Susan Warner Keene and Joe Lewis

We hope you've been enjoying our series of mini "reviews" of textile publications from the collections of some of our favourite textile heroes, a companion to the launch of the Pulling Strings Reference Library. This post features a couple of meaty offerings from sculptural paper artist Susan Warner Keene and textile man about town, Joe Lewis.  Keep an eye on the blog or our Facebook group for more posts like this one over the next few weeks leading up to our April event!

Cut My Cote
Dorothy K. Burnham
Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum
(1973)

The title of this monograph references the English proverb, “I shall cut my cote after my cloth,” an admonition to live within one’s means. Dorothy Burnham uses it as her jumping off point into wider meaning in this important cross-cultural study of the shapes of traditional garments. In succinct commentaries that accompany photos of pieces in the ROM collection and diagrams of pattern layouts, Burnham considers: clothing with minimal sewing (or none); the development of the shirt; the influence of skin garments, and methods of shaping. Her observations about fabric widths and their relationship to loom development and garment structure are thought provoking to anyone who works with cloth – or indeed any material.

I came across this little book when I was a beginning weaver and it opened my eyes forever to the powerful connections among material, technology, economy, and cultural expression. Cut My Cote is a small but mighty example of Dorothy Burnham’s tremendous contribution to the understanding of textiles.

Susan Warner Keene
Handmade Paper Artist
Toronto, ON
http://www.susanwarnerkeene.com/

Textile History

Pasold Publications

If I had to recommend a print magazine or journal that satisfies my textile curiosity it would have to be “Textile History” from Pasold Publications. It is a peer-reviewed journal that was started in 1968 and publishes an amazing range of articles. I find it informative and it takes you in directions you might not normally go and expands your horizons almost by osmosis. It is history and deals in factual information rather then theoretical interpretations though it is as seen through contemporary eyes. This publication is an investment in time and money conveniently the Textile Museum of Canada subscribes to it and I can dip into it there. 

Joe Lewis 
Weaver, writer and publisher of fibreQUARTERLY
Toronto, ON
http://www.velvethighway.com
http://fibrequarterly.blogspot.ca