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| Cover image. |
I've just finished Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World, by British writer Victoria Finlay. The book, published this year, was a gift from a dear friend, and was well-reviewed in the New York Times.
Finlay divides the book into chapters by fiber or fabric type, including wool, tweed (a type of woolen fabric), silk, etc. A chapter entitled "Imagined Fabrics" covers fibers, such as polyester, made from hydrocarbons. I love maps and the book includes several so the reader can follow the geography of fiber sources. There is also a short, informal glossary right at the front of the book, in case terms such as heddle and selvedge are unfamiliar, and eight pages of color images.
Finlay is quite adventurous and through a combination of perseverance, connections, and just plain luck manages to get to remote areas of Papua New Guinea to observe and document the making of barkcloth, a traditional material crafted from the inner bark of young Broussonetia papyrifera trees. In other chapters Finlay tries her hand at backstrap weaving in Guatemala and quilting in Gee's Bend, Alabama. Accompanying her on her travels is part of the fun.
The book interlaces cultural history, science and technology, and politics, and Finlay refers to her book as a kind of patchwork - she and her mother had planned to create a patchwork quilt together but this project was never realized due to her mother's death. So, the book is also a kind of memoir of grieving, but is never morbid. Overall, a very informative, entertaining volume on cloth in our world.
A note on the cover image - it's a detail from a painting by neo-classicist John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) entitled Penelope and the Suitors, in the Aberdeen Art Gallery. Penelope, wife of Odysseus, works at her loom, supposedly making a burial shroud for her father-in-law, while secretly picking out the work at night. The suitors, at right, try to woo her with flowers and music, but she held fast. I've always read The Odyssey as a kind of celebration of monogamy; both Penelope and Odysseus had plenty of opportunities to make new alliances but remained loyal to one another.
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| Penelope and Her Suitors, 1912. |
