A woven world : on fashion, fishermen, and the sardine dress / Alison Hawthorne Deming.

Author
Deming, Alison Hawthorne, 1946- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
First hardcover edition.
Published/​Created
  • Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2021.
  • ©2021
Description
240 pages ; illustrations ; 24 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks HD9940.U3 N44 2021 Browse related items Request

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    Summary note
    "A reflection and celebration of the fading crafts, cottage industries, and artisans that defined communities-like the author's-for generations Everywhere communities, habitats, and families are endangered by loss. This book is an act of resistance against such loss, a testament to the beauty and fragility of human making. This book is about the quest for continuity and belonging in a time of destabilizing change. Sensing a need to preserve the crafts and stories of communities and inspired by an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute featuring Yves St. Laurent's "Sardine Dress," I turned to the artisanal industries of my ancestors, on Grand Manan Island, a community of 2500 residents, and New York City, a metropolis of millions. It begins with a family cottage in the Canadian Maritimes, a place for two centuries the center of a thriving herring fishery, and travels back into that history and to a second strand of family history in my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother who were artisanal dressmakers. Both strands speak to micro-habitats of human making, both peaked in the late 19th century and have faded away. Both represent ways of knowing and being perfectly suited to their time and place that I lament seeing fade away. I wanted to refuse history's erasure, reweave the fabric of those lives. One way to face loss is to give a presence on the page to those people, places, and practices that we have loved, uncovering and preserving a record of the ingenuity and dignity that comes with such work. In this way the lament can become a praise song"-- Provided by publisher.
    Contents
    • The sardine dress
    • Driving the cadillac to Valhalla
    • The house built of Herring
    • Camel hair coat
    • A portrait in five portraits
    • Herring our king
    • Brook trout dress
    • Le Travail de femmes
    • The stone weirs
    • The rise and fall of crinoline
    • The Paris notebook
    • At the seining
    • Seal skin coat
    • The Lacemaker
    • Invasive beauty
    • Two-tone satin dress
    • From calvary to the subway on fifty-eighth street
    • Some of the ghosts
    • Silk
    • One thread.
    ISBN
    • 9781640094826 (hardcover)
    • 1640094822 (hardcover)
    LCCN
    2020047970
    OCLC
    1221017487
    Other standard number
    • 40030730440
    Statement on language in description
    Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
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