Teresa Cordón shares some of her experiences while working on Traditional Weavers of Guatemala: Their Stories, Their Lives: Questions and Answers When I received the invitation to be part of the project to write a book about Guatemalan artisans, several questions came to my mind. What have I to offer to the project? Knowledge of the country, […]
28
Aug
Aug
Veronica Peak, beyond the village of Chinchero, Peru. Photograph by Joe Coca from the book, Faces of Tradition. FAR AND AWAY In the process of writing a book, Thrums Books authors and photographers travel to some pretty faraway places, tucked in jungles or on the edges of giant mountains. Sometimes they just live there. Either […]
21
Aug
Aug
A special, behind-the-scenes look from author Deborah Chandler: “Making” is such an all-encompassing word, a good word for the discovery, research, and creation processes that led to the birth of Traditional Weavers of Guatemala. It truly was a privilege and an honor, and equally, an adventure at every level. Their Stories I confess that some […]
14
Aug
Aug
Creating a Thrums book requires a large cast of characters. There’s the author, or authors; a photographer; a “fixer,” or local person or persons to make introductions and set up interviews; driver; guide; translator; and so on. All these people receive some compensation—book royalties, expenses, daily fees, depending on their contribution to the project. For […]
07
Aug
Aug
Learning to Weave I first knew Deborah Chandler in about 1976 when she and her former husband were running a yarn shop in Boulder, Colorado, and I was publishing a magazine for handweavers. I had never seen a word she had written, but somehow there was that spark, and I invited her to write a […]
17
Jul
Jul
Around the World Last weekend I reminisced with a weaver of wild silk about her hometown in the highlands of Madagascar. I learned about modesty aprons from a Vietnamese embroidery artist. And I wandered amidst Mexican sculptors, Tuareg jewelry artists, Rwandan basketmakers, Uzbekistani ceramists, and weavers from Mexico, Laos, Guatemala, East Timor, Taiwan, and Paraguay. […]
05
Jun
Jun
Weave a Real Peace (W.A.R.P.) is an organization devoted to bringing together people who love indigenous textiles, are devoted to the artisans who create them, and who work in various ways to create economic opportunities to help the traditions survive. I just came back from the organization’s annual conference, “Blending Tradition and Textiles.” It was […]
12
Apr
Apr
Coincidentally, I’ve spent parts of the past three Easter seasons in either Mexico or Guatemala. Compared to the sedate Easters of my childhood or the flurries of Peeps and candy eggs I see now at every turn, what I’ve experienced in Latin America is dramatic, moving, sometimes startling. Let me share. A church in a […]
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 […]
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. […]
