I used to travel to Chicago on business several times a year, and every time I squeezed in a couple of hours at the Chicago Art Institute. Not for the wonderful Impressionist collection, or the Picasso room, or even for Edward Hopper, but for the 14th century collection of armor and weapons. Here’s why: There […]

I’ve been checking in with Thrums Books authors to see how they are living their lives in these turbulent times. With unwavering purpose, is what I learned. Read on. HEART-FELT IN AFGHANISTAN Mary Anne Wise, in addition to being a co-founder of Multicolores rug hooking cooperative in Guatemala and co-author of Rug Money: How a […]

Walk down any street in Oaxaca City, and you’ll be dazzled by color: color so intense it seems to make your eyes vibrate. There’s such uninhibited joy! Turquoise and cerise and lime and sunshine yellow…these colors don’t necessarily come from nature, but they frame the nature of that place. Drive a few miles out of […]

When my colleagues at ClothRoads and I chose the name “Thrums” for our umbrella business, we were thinking of the old term for the loose threads that are left on the back of a loom when a new weaving is cut off. We were feeling sort of like loose threads after leaving Interweave Press in […]

Thrums’ books, as you may know by now, are heavy on photography. Our archives contain tens of thousands of photos of textiles and artisans and landscapes from all over the world. The images, the colors, the richness sometimes overwhelm one’s eyeballs. (The hours spent editing the photos, choosing the paltry few we have room to […]