Review: 1000 Artisan Textiles

When we were down in Canberra last week I bought a wonderful book from the bookshop at the Portrait Gallery. It is called “1000 Artisan Textiles” by Sandra Salamony and Gina M Brown.

My husband handed me the book and said “You might like this one,” and I was expecting another interesting book (the cover is a bit ho-hum), but not to the extent that I found! I was immediately drawn in, sucked in by the lovely colourful images, and the gorgeous felting pieces that were in the first chapter, and soon I was hooked.

There are five chapters in the book:

• Wearable art and couture
• Fashion accessories
• Soft furnishings & vessels
• Tapestries & display art
• Art quilts

Each page features between one (full page) and six images of textile works by artisans from around the world. In the back of the book there are notes on each image, giving the name of the piece, its size, and a summary of techniques used. There is a good representation from Australian artisans, including two quilts by Brenda Gael Smith, who has been known to drop in here!

My favourite chapter would have to be the wearable art and couture chapter, as it features many gloriously colourful felted pieces. In another life I’d love to learn nuno felting, and this book is just so inspiring in this regard!

So how is it inspiring? I regularly contribute to Embellish magazine, which is a magazine focusing on clothing featuring embellishment. For my contribution that means embroidered clothing. This book, with its many wearable art pieces will be invaluable in moving me into a wearable art/embellished clothing headspace. The colours are inspiring. The motifs are inspiring. But by that I don’t mean that I would rip off custom motifs from other designers.

To give you an example, I’ve come away with an idea from the book. Circles. Yep, that’s it! I potentially could have gotten that from anywhere (as I have always loved circles) but I didn’t – I got it from this book. So maybe you can expect to see some circles in an upcoming project in Embellish, and maybe you won’t because maybe that will be just a starting point that I move on from. Either way, you have to start somewhere!

I highly recommend the book “1000 Artisan Textiles”. For me it will continue to inspire.