It wasn’t my first time in the Andes, that trip in 2005, but it was the first time I felt a real connection to the people and the incredible textile work being done throughout the region. I was on a tour sponsored by the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco (CTTC) and its North American […]
17
May
May
This story has two parts. It starts when I was in a tourist shop in Eastern Mexico in 1997. Flung on the shelf amid the usual stuff—bright pottery, Aztec gods, naughty little clay figures, painted wooden jaguars—was this bag. “Cuanto questa?” I asked in my pathetic high school Spanish. “Not for sale,” the shop girl […]
02
May
May
When I was in Guatemala last month, I had the novel experience of a traditional Maya woman surreptitiously snapping a picture of me with her phone. It was unnerving, but it was only fair. I’d been taking snapshots of her people all week, usually but not always asking permission. I just had never thought of […]
14
Apr
Apr
Sometimes, books just happen. The very first Thrums book, published in 2007, came about it that unexpected way. I had been on a tour to Cusco to visit the weaving villages of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, director Nilda Callañaupa mentioned her interest in publishing a series of books on the textile designs […]
05
Apr
Apr
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I just witnessed the visual equivalent of about five million words being created over the course of a couple of weeks. The place: Guatemala. The picture maker: Joe Coca. The project: an upcoming book on traditional textile workers in Guatemala, by Deborah Chandler with Terésa Cordon. […]
20
Mar
Mar
Weathered skin, crow’s feet, sags and wrinkles – I look with alarm at myself in the mirror as years go by. But on someone else, some ancient crone in some faraway place, these same qualities draw me in. Time’s tracks, on someone else, imply wisdom and endurance. They tell stories. And so it is that […]
08
Mar
Mar
Chip Morris has lived in the Chiapas Highlands for most of the past forty years. The climate is cool to cold (except when it’s somewhat hot), the altitude a bit of a challenge at 8000 ft. This is his home. He has learned the Tzotzil language, he’s known in the villages as a friend and […]
07
Feb
Feb
My name is Linda Ligon, and I’ve been involved in making books for more than 35 years. Longer than that, really, if you count the college literary journal, the high school yearbooks, the crude glued-together pages with line drawings that I made to amuse my baby brother when I was five years old. Did you […]
