Full Description
The needle arts are traditionally associated with the decorative, domestic, and feminine. Stitching the Self sets out to expand this narrow view, demonstrating how needlework has emerged as an art form through which both objects and identities - social, political, and often non-conformist - are crafted.
Bringing together the work of ten art and craft historians, this illustrated collection focuses on the interplay between craft and artistry, amateurism and professionalism, and re-evaluates ideas of gendered production between 1850 and the present. From quilting in settler Canada to the embroidery of suffragist banners and the needlework of the Bloomsbury Group, it reveals how needlework is a transformative process - one which is used to express political ideas, forge professional relationships, and document shifting identities.
With a range of methodological approaches, including object-based, feminist, and historical analyses, Stitching the Self examines individual and communal involvement in a range of textile practices. Exploring how stitching shapes both self and world, the book recognizes the needle as a powerful tool in the fight for self-expression.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Plates
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Stitching the self ...
Johanna Amos and Lisa Binkley
Part I: Emerging identity: Reconsidering the narratives of the needle
1 The identity of an embroidering woman: The needle arts in Brussels, Belgium, 1850-1914
Wendy Wiertz
2 "Experiments in silk and gold work afterwards to bloom": The embroidering of Jane Burden Morris
Johanna Amos
3 Becoming the boss of your knitting: Elizabeth Zimmermann and the emergence of critical knitting
M. Lilly Marsh
4 "Knitting is the saving of life; Adrian has taken it up too": Needlework, gender and the Bloomsbury group
Joseph McBrinn
Part II: Elaborating identity: Expressing ideology, crafting community
5 Whig's Defeat: Stitching settler culture, politics, and identity
Lisa Binkley
6 "From Prison to Citizenship," 1910: The making and display of a suffragist banner
Janice Helland
7 Our Lady of the Snows: Settlement, empire, and "the children of Canada" in the needlework of Mary Seton Watts (1848-1938)
Elaine Cheasley Paterson
Part III: Recovering Identity: Locating the self through needlework
8 "Je me declare Dieu-Mère, Femme Créateur": Johanna Wintsch's needlework at the Swiss psychiatric asylums Burghölzli and Rheinau, 1922-25
Sabine Wieber
9 Hybrid language: The interstitial stitches of Anna Torma's embroideries
Anne Koval
10 Suturing my soul: In pursuit of the Broderie de Bayeux
Janet Catherine Berlo
Index
