About the Book
Reading the Thread brings together artists, theorists and designers to explore the nature and use of cloth as a means of record and communication.
Cloth is constructed from threads and, in acknowledging its qualities of recording or communicating a story, we are reading the threads – the read thread. There is also, however, an East Asian myth that when you are born you are linked by an invisible red thread to your soul mate; no matter what you do, this red thread connects you to your fate and, although the thread may become tangled or infinitely long, it will never break.
Exploring histories of making and cultural practices, a multidisciplinary team of international scholars use the metaphorical thread to link the experiences of cloth production, lineage practices, contemporary challenges and sustainable futures, and to explore, through imagery and ideas, the agency of cloth to shape and communicate the sensations and emotions connected with human experience.
Divided into four sections on reading cloth, challenging the stories it tells, following the thread of its narrative and finally anticipating its future, The Read Thread allows a variety of viewpoints and a diversity of voices, without favouring theory or specific cultural approaches, to interrogate cloth as a record of experience within its social, historical, psychological and cultural context; the authors explore our encounters with cloth and its role in the exploration of identity and biography, representative of passage, exchange, life and death. Provocative and timely, and beautifully illustrated with over 50 color images, it is vital reading for students and scholars of textiles, fashion, material culture, art and anthropology.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Prof Lesley Millar (UCA Farnham, UK) and Prof Alice Kettle, (MSARC, Manchester School of Art Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
Part One: Reading the Record
1. Tenapi: Markers of Clan Identity of the Alurung, East Indonesia
Linda S. McIntosh (Independent Curator and Research Associate, Tracing Patterns Foundation, and Yulianti Peni, Curator, Museum 1000 Moko, Alor Regency, Indonesia)
2. The Powerful Whispers project: A re-imagined story of Mills, Menders and Archived Family Memories
Robert Burton (Associate Dean Academic, Teesside University, UK)
3. Drapery and napery: lace war memorials
Dr Carol Quarini (Independent Artist Researcher UK)
4. Cloth, Nationalism and Cultural Identity: The Symbolism of Traditional Attire in Defining Nigeria's Diverse Ethnic Indigenism
Dr Clement Emeka Akpang (Cross River University of Technology Nigeria)
Artist Maria Nepomuceno in conversation with Alice Kettle, Part 1
Part Two: Following the Thread
5. Robe a la Grand-Mere: The Reuse of 18th century Silks in Romantic-era Fashion
Ruby Hodgson (Victoria and Albert Museum, UK)
6. Layers of Comfort: Shetland taatit rugs
Carol Christiansen (Curator and Community Museums Officer, Shetland Museum and Archives, Lerwick, Shetland)
7. Making of Kediyun: A Conscious Approach to Cloth
Lokesh Ghai (Independent Artist/ Researcher India)
8. Transformations in the Making and Meaning of Barkcloth in Uganda
Venny Mary Nakazibwe (Makerere University, Margaret Trowell School of Industrial & Fine Art, College of Engineering Design Art and Technology, Kampala, Uganda)
Artist Maria Nepomuceno in conversation with Alice Kettle, Part 2
Part Three: Challenging the Reading
9. Small Acts of Refusal: Suffragette-embroidered Cloths worked in Holloway Prison
Dr Denise Jones (Independent Artist Researcher UK)
10. Stitching Justice: Textiles as a Means for Contemporary Social Justice
Alicia Decker (Iowa State University, Portland State University, Centralia College USA) and Susan T. Avila
11. Film as Fabric: Textile practice as Feminist Critique in Expanded Cinema
Dr Mary Stark (Independent Artist/Researcher, UK)
12. Cuttings 1820 – 2020
Pippa Hetherington (Independent Artist/Researcher, South Africa)
Artist Celia Pym in conversation with Lesley Millar, Part 1
Part Four: Drafting the Future
13. Portraying a Practice: Communication E-textiles
Hannah Perner-Wilson (Guest Professor of the Spiel & Objekt Masters program at the University of Performing Arts Ernst Busch in Berlin Germany), Becca Rose Glowacki (doctoral student at Goldsmiths, University of London), Irene Posch (Professor of Design & Technology at the University of Art and Design Linz, Austria),
Laura Devendorf (Assistant Professor of Information Science, ATLAS Institute Fellow, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
14. Cloth, Techné, and Traces in Digital Fashion
Katharina Sand (Kunstuniversität Linz A/ Università della Svizzera italiana CH)
15. The Coded Lab
Dr Sonja Andrew (University of Leeds, UK)
16. Piñatex®: A New Material for a New World
Dr Carmen Hijosa (InnovationRCA and founder of Piñatex®)
Artist Celia Pym in conversation with Lesley Millar, Part 2
Index
About the Author :
Lesley Millar is Emerita Professor of Textile Culture at the University for the Creative Arts, UK. She has been responsible for many international touring textile exhibitions. She has contributed to many publications most recently editing, with Alice Kettle, The Erotic Cloth (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Spaces and Places (2021). In 2008 she received the Japan Society Award for significant contribution to Anglo-Japanese relationships and in 2011 was appointed MBE for her contribution to Higher Education.
Alice Kettle is Professor of Textile Arts at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is co-author of Machine Stitch Perspectives with Jane McKeating (2010) Hand Stitch Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Collaboration Through Craft (Bloomsbury, 2013) with Dr Amanda Ravetz and Helen Felcey. She has most recently edited, with Lesley Millar, The Erotic Cloth (Bloomsbury, 2018). She is a practising artist with work in international collections including the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, The Crafts Council of Great Britain, Museums in Riga, MAIO in Turin, and the Belger Collection Kansas City USA.
Review :
In this beautifully illustrated book, the intertwining of threads encapsulates the critical capacity of cloth to act societally, historically, speculatively and psychologically. The editors have brought together some of the best textile scholars and artists to bring new readings and new agency to this ambivalent material. This is an essential contribution to textile discourses.
From the transformative power of Austrian lace in the Niger Delta to social media as a vehicle for global engagement in community textile projects, this wide ranging and fascinating collection of essays spans history, culture, craft, and technology, to weave rich and multilayered accounts of how fiber, thread and cloth record human lives.
This collection underscores the importance of the study of cloth for understanding contemporary human experiences, revealing stories of cultural preservation, resistance, and a sustainable future. The depth of scholarship presented signals a twenty-first-century renaissance in textile studies.
Reading the Thread draws together current thinking about and through cloth. Platforming the voices of contemporary artists, theorists and designers, this book presents a global story of connection, expression and intimacy. Each unfolding section examines the ubiquity and therefore power of cloth as a means of record and communication across multiple histories and geographies.
The essays are consistently excellent, engaging, and approachable, making this book essential for applying textile theory to a global discourse on the meanings of textile objects and making. Excellent for programs in textile art and design, including fashion, art history, and museum studies, and as case studies in anthropology and materials studies.
