This is Fatima El Mennouny sitting on her flatwoven picture rug. She lives in a small village at the foot of Morocco’s Anti-Atlas mountains. She’s one artisan featured in Susan Schaefer Davis’s book, Women Artisans of Morocco. A book that is being loaded on a ship in Hong Kong as I write, bound for safe […]
12
Jan
Jan
A friend recently told me the story behind a pair of stellar mittens she wears this time of year. A few winters ago, she hiked down a road blocked by snow, climbed over a six foot fence, and threw hay to her friend’s horses. In gratitude, her friend, a Sami woman from Norway, knit her […]
15
Aug
Aug
We spend a lot of time thinking about textiles in all their glorious manifestations, but we don’t spend very much time thinking about the tools we use to make them. At least, I don’t. I was reminded of this when I was looking at some of the amazing goodies the Carlos Museum at Emory University […]
07
Jul
Jul
for Linda and Deborah Old friends corresponding in two languages amusingly mistake the word morals (those particular values of right and wrong) with morrales (those lovely bags of Mesoamerica). One writes: “Would that we could create morals from strong thread and skilled hands.” But what could be more moral than thread spun in memory of ancestors, […]
16
Jun
Jun
We at Thrums Books have admired the hooked rugs from Multicolores—the Cooperative of Maya Women Rug Hookers in Guatemala— from the beginning. We’ve been in awe, frankly, at the excellent work these Maya women have been producing. Simply, the rugs are gorgeous. Colorful, playful, exquisitely rendered. Look a bit closer and you’ll see color combinations that […]
10
Jun
Jun
It’s rainy season in Guatemala where Joe Coca and I have been traveling about the last several days. It’s rained as we’ve wound our way up steep mountain roads; it’s drizzled as we’ve slipped down into lush forests where bromeliads sprout like magical creatures from dangling vines and giant pine trees stand like lookouts; we’ve […]
02
Jun
Jun
Tomorrow, Thrums Books’ photographer Joe Coca and I are flying to Guatemala where we’ll wend our way to rainy Panajachel. Yes, we’re working on another book! It’s hard to keep track, isn’t it? Morocco, China, the Navajo Nation, Guatemala. We’re covering all the textile bases. For this month’s featured textile museum it seemed fitting, given […]
21
Apr
Apr
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature–the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after winter. ” Rachel Carson In celebration of Earth Day, we wanted to share some of our favorite places on earth—and some of our favorite people in those places. People who know the infinitely healing refrains of […]
17
Mar
Mar
For this month’s featured textile museum, we travel to the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida, to visit the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts, the only textiles center in the state. I love that a first-rate textile collection lives at a technology institute. Sometimes, technology gets a bad rap, particularly in the realm of […]
10
Feb
Feb
Being land-locked here in Colorado in late winter has given me a serious case of wanderlust. Not that we’ve had a brutal winter, it’s actually been mild and sunny here of late. It probably has more to do with the fact that much of Linda’s days and mine are spent working on books about textile […]
