Taped to my refrigerator is E.B. White’s confession, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.” I feel this way often. There’s so much that needs saving, and there is much to savor, especially on a sparkling […]
16
Oct
Oct
Much of the work of Thrums Books has been to document endangered traditions. Much of the focus has been on “last generations”—those elders whose children have gotten some education and fled to the cities. So it’s been a real pleasure these last few weeks to work with a young woman who lives and breathes her cultural […]
25
Sep
Sep
A New Vision of the World In the introduction to A Textile Guide to the Highlands of Chiapas, author Chip Morris writes that Maya women are “Creating new visions of themselves and the world, visions that are affirmations of tradition translated into something new, resilient, and hopeful.” Of course, he’s talking specifically about Maya weavers, […]
04
Sep
Sep
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, […]
31
Jul
Jul
A Gem From The Chiapas Archives 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 […]
24
Jul
Jul
Linda wrote the post below over two years ago, after she and photographer Joe Coca had returned from a photo shoot for Traditional Weavers of Guatemala: Their Stories, Their Lives by Deborah Chandler and Teresa Cordón. We thought it would be fun to have a look back at those behind-the-scenes photographs of Joe at work, but this […]
19
Jun
Jun
Handmade in Chiapas As Maya huipils go, those from Oxchuc in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico are not my personal favorites. They’re characterized by bold graphic stripes, often crimson on white, with odd embroidered points at the neckline. Chip Morris, author of Textile Guide to the Highlands of Chiapas, argued that the points should be […]
12
Jun
Jun
When Linda Ligon proposed recently that I work as the associate publisher for Thrums Books, I couldn’t believe my luck. How fabulous would it be to help make those brilliant books and introduce them to the world? What I’ve always loved about Thrums books is the view they offer into the lives of indigenous people, telling their stories, their history, […]
