Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Point of the Needle, The: Why Sewing Matters
Author: BURMAN BARBARA
Format: HARDCOVER
Publication date: 01/01/2024
Imprint: REAKTION
Price: $35.00
Publishing status: Active
Tens of millions of people sew for necessity or pleasure every day, yet the craft is surprisingly under-appreciated. The Point of the Needle redresses the balance: this is a book that argues for sewing’s place in our lives. It celebrates not only sewing’s recent resurgence but sewists’ creativity, well-being and community. Barbara Burman chronicles new voices of people who sew today, by hand or machine, to explore what they sew, what motivates them, what they value and why they mend things, revealing insights into sewing’s more intimate stories. In our age of superfast fashion with its environmental and social injustices, this eloquent book makes a passionate case for identity, diversity, resilience and memory – what people create for themselves as they stitch and make.
Review: \”[Burman] pulls off turning a lifetime’s research, including her own Our Sewing Stories, into a book by having a strong, thematic narrative, fluent style and empathy with the more personal aspects of needlecraft. . . . The book charts the social history of what is still perceived as a ‘gendered practice.’ It also explores needlework’s moral and religious associations and the benefits it offers to well-being. . . . At a more sensory level, evocative descriptions of scissors crunching through cloth, ‘earthy and seductive’ Harris tweed, silk pleated ‘into rills like the delicate underside of a field mushroom, ‘ ‘swishy, flowy’ synthetic jerseys and old-fashioned lutestring, fustian and dimity will resonate with lovers of haberdasheries.\”– \”Country Life\”
\”A timely, well-researched book coming at a point when sewing has been reclaimed by a population free from the limiting gendered experience of school domestic science. The Point of the Needle sets the scene for sewing’s renaissance.\”–Polly Leonard, founder and editor, \”Selvedge\” magazine
Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Hands, Hearts and Needles Chapter 2: Learning to Sew Chapter 3: A Material World Chapter 4: In the Gently Closed Box Chapter 5: Fruits of Our Work Chapter 6: The Business of the Needle Chapter 7: The Alternative Stitch Chapter 8: Into the Fray References Select Bibliography Associations and Websites Acknowledgements Photo Acknowledgements Index
Author Biography: Barbara Burman is a writer and former academic at the University of Southampton and the University of the Arts, London. She is co-author of The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660-1900 (2019) and editor of The Culture of Sewing (1999). She is Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives near Cambridge.
ISBN: 9781789147193
Dimension: 216mm X 140mm
Edition: 01