Old Year 2016 was a wonderful year for Thrums Books. Two of our books won Gold (Maya Threads) and Silver (Traditional Weavers of Guatemala) medals in the Multicultural category of the Benjamin Franklin Awards given by the Independent Book Publishers Association. We attended the always informative and inspiring Weave a Real Peace conference in Santa Fe in […]
28
Oct
Oct
When I was growing up in Oklahoma in the 1950s, I had a music teacher, Miss Sadlo, whose father had emigrated from Czechoslovakia early in the century. She had grown up in the nearby little town of Prague (which we Okies pronounced “Prayg”), founded and largely populated by her fellow countrymen from Bohemia. Miss Sadlo […]
21
Oct
Oct
Linda and I have been having a swell time the last couple of days at the Textile Society of America’s Biennial Symposium in Savannah, Georgia. We’re hanging out in the marketplace with our friends from ClothRoads, the wonderful folks from Ibu, Randall Darwall, Over the Blue Horizon , and many other purveyors of one-of-a-kind textile […]
30
Sep
Sep
Enjoy this guest post from Oaxaca Stories in Cloth author Eric Mindling. When I decided to commit to this project I call the Living Threads Project—this grand task of photo documenting the people of traditional dressways in Oaxaca for the book I was dreaming into being for Thrums Books—I had to consider exactly what I […]
02
Sep
Sep
This week we have a beautiful dispatch from Thrums author Eric Mindling about his newest book. In the simplest sense, my book Oaxaca Stories in Cloth: A Book about People, Belonging, Identity, and Adornment is about what people wear . . . and specifically, what people wear in the villages of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is a story told […]
12
Aug
Aug
Picture This I read about glamorous photo shoots for Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, and so forth with amazement. There’s the photographer, of course. The hair person. The makeup person. The person to schlep gear. The person to hold lights just so, one to aim a fan at the model’s hair so it blows fetchingly in […]
29
Jul
Jul
I’ve been reading Barkskins, a new novel by Annie Proulx. It’s set in 17th century French Canada and the British colonies, and it is horrifying and yet completely engaging. I’m struck, as I read, by the way travel by ship defined life in those times. If you wanted to send a message from Quebec to […]
08
Jul
Jul
Linda and I are at the 13th annual International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe this weekend. Many of you have been to this magical market sponsored by the International Folk Art Alliance. This year, 200 folk artists and cooperatives from about 60 countries have gathered for an opportunity to sell their work to an ever-growing […]
25
Mar
Mar
We’re in full production mode for our two new books due out in October. One is Eric Mindling’s book of gorgeous photographs and vignettes of the people and cloth of Oaxaca, Mexico. The book is an invitation to view the world as perhaps you never have—you will love what you see. In our second book, […]
05
Feb
Feb
Sometimes you just have to get away from work. I’ve been immersed in all things Mexico for months now. Launching Chip Morris and Carol Karasik’s splendid Maya Threads in Chiapas last spring; traveling with Eric Mindling as he photographed beautiful old women in remote villages of Oaxaca; wrangling his photos and his transfixing stories into […]
