Reading List 2006

I kept a running list of the books I read in 2006 and arranged them in approximate categories, beginning with Arts and Crafts. Some of these books are old friends I had occasion to visit during the year, either for reference or just because I find them so valuable and/or useful that they are worth re-reading.

M.C.Richards: Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person (Out of print and apparently unavailable.) Published in 1962. Re-reading this is pure 1960s nostalgia and yet, and yet... how much of what she says is still true, particularly about the true meaning of education.)

Jonathan Holstein: The Pieced Quilt. An American Design Tradition First published in 1973. Absolutely seminal work for anyone onterested in the history of the patchwork quilt in America.

Bets Ramsey,Merikay Waldvogel: Southern Quilts. Quilts of the Civil War

Faun Valentine: West Virginia Quilts and Quiltmakers

Carla Needleman: The Work of Craft

Suzi Gablik: The Re-Enchantment of Art

Anne Truitt: Daybook. The Journey of an Artist

Henry Glassie: The Spirit of Folk Art

Garard Degeorge and Yves Porter: The Art of the Islamic Tile

Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses

Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses, illustrated in The Patchworks of Lucy Boston, is one of the masterpieces of English patchwork. Fifty-six blocks were made using only one template, a long hexagon ( known as a 'church window'), the edges being in-filled with squares and triangles. Her skilful and imaginative use of patterned fabrics create the illusion of infinitely varied blocks. A detail only is shown here - the full coverlet is about 88" square. This patchwork has been an inspiration to many patchworkers, some of whom have emulated Lucy's painstaking English hand-piecing method. I myself have made some blocks using her templates (sides of hexagon are 1") and her tiny stitching. I only managed about 6 blocks before I succumbed to serious repetitive strain injury!

Copies of The Patchworks of Lucy Boston, and other books by and about Lucy, can be purchased from this website:

http://www.greenknowe.co.uk/shop.html

The Work of Craft

The Work of Craft An inquiry into the nature of crafts and craftsmanship, by Carla Needleman, is an extended meditation on the relationship between Craft and craftsmen. She herself is a potter, and although she doesn't directly focus on textiles as such she shows that the basic material every craftsmen works with is him or her self. Whatever is between one's hands, the clay, the wood, the wool, the fabric, responds to the quality of one's inner state. The product of one's work is not just an object but a way of being.

In reviewing this book, Frederick Franck, author of The Zen of Seeing, said that it is a book "...for anyone whose hands itch to make something - pot, piece of weaving, wooden clog, painting or book - with seriousness, so that it is undivorced from the maker's inner life."

Here are some random quotes taken from Needleman's book:

"The realisation that when I work at my craft in a way that allows each moment to fall of its own weight, without hurrying it or retaining it, such a way of working will produce in me a state of greater sensitivity, can lead me to use this method as an inner technique having as its goal the state itself, solely for the pleasure of it. (P.9)"

"What does it mean that I undertake to study myself? Perhaps it can mean that I extend myself into the Craft, willing to sacrifice any of my own opinions that experience proves false. I undertake to begin a conversation with the craft, to listen to it, to be taught by the effort of trying to understand it. (Pages 12/13)"


Carla Needleman. The Work of Craft. An inquiry into the nature of crafts and craftsmanship. Alfred Knopf. NY. 1979. isbn 0 394 49718 X

Illustration shows 'Railroad Crossing', an 1930s American block pattern attributed to Nancy Cabot.