Unravelling Women's Art

by P.L. Henderson, Cheryl Denise Robson (Editor)

Creators, Rebels, & Innovators in Textile Arts

The author unpicks the threads that link female textile artists and the arts they produce, revealing a global and historic patchwork of assorted roles, identities and representations. Entertaining as well as informative, this book offers a unique overview of female-centric textile art production including embroidery, weaving, soft sculpture and more. Includes over 20 interviews with contemporary textile artists, providing fascinating insights into their practices, themes and personal motivation. Tells us: How knitting became a spying device in wartime Why dress design was so important for the Suffragettes Why spiders were emblems in ancient times and now How women’s arts and crafts moved from the backroom to the gallery showroom

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Feminism, History

279 pages, Paperback

First published March 22, 2022

Reviews

[Margery Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful book. the author runs my absolute favorite twitter feed #WOMENSART which, for the last few years, has been one of the things that keeps me going. If I were still teaching (I used to teach courses on feminist theory as well as a course comparing art and science) I would be totally adopting this book as a text. each chapter develops the relationship between artist, her chosen medium, and the politics of creating art as a woman. best part (for me) are the interviews with artists that end every chapter. Loved this book. Bought a copy for my daughter, who is a felter. I do beading and water color.

[Alicia Farmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to this from the author's wonderful social media accounts highlighting women's art. This read like a textbook rather than an overview for laypeople like me. No criticism of the book--I'm tickled for Henderson that she wrote it--but I am not the right reader for it.

[ClareT · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book solely, probably like many others, on the basis of the Twitter feed, one of my favourites.
This is a collection of essays on different themes relating to textile art and women's lives, with some interesting interviews with artists in each chapter.
Topics covered include connection with nature, the historical role of women in textiles, and nonconformist art. There are some great choices in here, and I learned a lot about how much women had been pushed into the background when it came to art (and still are in many cases), but this is not just a feminist book, the range of art covered is pretty big and illuminating.
Lots of pictures are scattered through the pages, bringing more meaning to the text, and it was probably a hard job to narrow down the inclusions.
Definitely worth a read if you have any interest at all in textile art.

[ML Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive look at women artists using fiber and cloth to make art, it's more of a reference book, or perhaps a text for an art history or design class.

Different types of art, a variety of artists from cultures and countries, and good photographs of many of the artworks distinguish this book. There are also interviews with some artists, with similar questions asked - that part's a little too rigid for my taste, but it's good information nonetheless.

Technically, this is a DNF, although I have a separate category on the spreadsheet I use to track my reading: "Will return to," which is more accurate in this case.

[janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll admit I thought it was a coffee table book when I bought it, so I was delighted and surprised to find well-researched history and interviews with artists in amongst the pictures.

I enjoyed the book and the history of textile art and I sort of wished it was written when I was a history student, because my degree might have gone in a different direction. However, there were a lot of techniques and pieces of art described in the book that didn't have pictures or diagrams to go with them, and I wanted that.

[Liz Moffat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book on textiles and textile artists. It also gives some history of women and textiles. I particularly loved the interviews with the textile artists. It is a book I will keep and refer back to often. I only gave it three stars because it is very wordy and I would have preferred larger images of the works and all in colour.

[izad]

REF: Visto en Twitter.

[Kate Fleitz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved everything I read, but how can you have a visual arts book with so few images?

[Fern Dixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A textbook really, and I’d say rather comprehensive.

I enjoyed reading it! Would recommend

[Miriam Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too bad author is a terf. Great collection!