The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine

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As well as providing an interesting and well-researched history of embroidery, this book made me question my own relationship to embroidery. I loved embroidery when I was younger, and "wasted" very many hours making quite "useless", but beautiful items. Was it because I saw embroidery as a "ladylike, romantic ideal"? Yes, indeed. Did it stop me from developing a richer intellect? No, because unlike earlier generations, I was taught more than needlework at school. I think that the questions raised by this book about embroidery as art or foolish hobby remain highly relevant and worth continuing to question. There remains in popular culture a thread of the old-fashioned Victorian era image of someone to "sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam", that embroidery struggles to overcome. I will be thinking about this for a long time yet. Rambles a bit but this is an interesting (if currently dated) look at Embroidery and how in many ways it has come to define a certain level of femininity. How it went from being a career to being an acceptable way for women to pass their time and how it has been diminished by both men and women. Masculinity and “the politics of cloth”: from the “bad boys” of postmodern art to the “the boys that sew club” of the new millennium I had read this many years ago, but had decided it would be timely to reread this since I have been reading books like Craftivism, Bibliocraft, Strange material and the Bayeaux Tapestry. This one really did come first, and those other titles follow very worthily. It is a bit dated, but still a very strong book to read, and much of the anger over historical depictions is still very valid. It is still necessary reading (well, at least very strongly suggested reading) after reading some of the titles listed earlier in the review.

The Subversive Stitch - The Open College of the Arts

Garland is a partner of World Crafts Council – Australia, a national entity of the World Crafts Council – Asia Pacific. Quién iba a pensar que el bordado pudiera dar tanto de sí. A lo largo de este libro (que mejora a partir del segundo capítulo, cuando la autora se mete propiamente en materia) se nos habla de cómo la costura, sobre todo la decorativa, es reflejo y escenario de las concepciones imperantes sobre género y clase. También de la distinción, igualmente preñada de ideología, entre el Arte al que le ponen la mayúscula y la artesanía con letras pequeñitas. Fue publicado a mediados de los ochenta, pero Rozsika Parker lo actualizó con un prólogo para su reedición en 2010, de modo que no ha quedado demasiado desfasado. No obstante, sí hay algo que me toca un poco la moral: esa tendencia de los anglosajones a describir cualquier materia en términos exclusivamente anglosajones (Rozsika Parker hace alguna referencia a la Rusia posrevolucionaria, poco más). Es decir, te escriben, por ejemplo, una historia sobre la jardinería para zurdos en Estados Unidos e Inglaterra, pero la titulan Historia de la jardinería para zurdos, punto. Que ya se sabe que los EE. UU. y el United Kingdom son el puto mundo entero. Algo semejante pasa desde el punto de vista racial. Hablando de subversión, ¿obligaban a las esclavas negras a bordar, quedaba esa labor reservada a las mujeres blancas? De la misma manera en que el bordado tiene su papel en el movimiento sufragista, ¿lo hizo en la lucha por los derechos civiles de los afroamericanos? El libro se me acaba antojando demasiado blanco, y me da rabia que esas preguntas no fueran ni someramente respondidas. I really, really enjoyed this look at embroidery and the making of the feminine throughout (mostly English) history. I give it 4 stars only because it would have really been improved by colour photos at a higher resolution...but this re-issue is very fine otherwise.The role of embroidery in the construction of femininity has undoubtedly constricted the development of the art. What women depicted in thread became determined by notions of femininity, and the resulting femininity of embroidery defined and constructed its practitioners in its own image. However, the vicious circle has never been complete. Limited to practising art with needle and thread, women have nevertheless sewn a subversive stitch - managed to make meanings of their own in the very medium intended to inculcate self-effacement. This book traces the use of embroidery, especially by Victorian England, to define and enforce barriers on femininity and the effects this has had both on embroidery and women. A] thoughtfully fluid theorization of masculinity, homosexuality and subcultures, as well as class and race, into a nuanced analysis grounded in fascinating textual and visual primary sources.

THE SUBVERSIVE STITCH REVISITED: THE POLITICS OF CLOTH THE SUBVERSIVE STITCH REVISITED: THE POLITICS OF CLOTH

As a women and a textile artist I am intensely interested in the group I belong to and its history. Parker describes the activity of Lady Julia Calverley who in the early first half of the 18 th century embroidered for 50 years literally covering everything from slippers to wall hangings with stitch. To me this signals what little else she had to do but also the addictive nature of sewing. I am sure I’m not the only one who has felt that one more row or patch or line led to yet another late into the night. In the introduction to the latest edition the author discusses the work and impact of Louise Bourgeois. Like me Parker feels the work of Louise Bourgeois has done a lot to bring textiles to within high art and suggests that her work has also led to a deeper understanding of women’s expression through textiles. Reading this book has enabled me to look at embroidery from the past and present in a more informed way. This book tells the history of embroidery. It shows how useful embroidery is to get to know the history of women or how similar it remains to other art forms such as painting. Post-Victorian era, the book seems to fizzle a little bit. There's some discussion of the Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain, but I felt like the use of embroidery in protest could have been explored in more depth. The book also glosses over embroidery for the whole mid-20th century, leaping from Suffrage to the 1970s and it just felt a little off when compared to the level of detail given in the earlier chapters. The main focus is on embroidery in the UK, although from time to time references are made to other countries. The information that is part of the descriptions of the images comes up again in the main text and that I didn't like. I skipped most of the long quotes in the book, as I think they were not always necessarily significant. This book gives an historical perspective on the way embroidery changed from being a profitable business for women to a method of oppressing and exploiting women and their emotions. Only in the final two chapters do we begin to hear about how women have reclaimed embroidery to use it in subversive ways, such as the use of embroidery by suffragettes in their banners, and by more recent feminist artists.

McBrinn's book marks an urgent intervention in the field of craft studies and it will be an essential text for those interested in the history of needlework and masculinity ... it will also become an important starting point for scholars looking to explore much wider, more diverse and inclusive approaches to investigations of queerness and craft in the future.

Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of

urn:oclc:857527588 Republisher_date 20121011184348 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20121008231034 Scanner scribe23.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL3130521M Openlibrary_editionThe Subversive Stitch: embroidery and the making of the feminine by Rozsika Parker published by I. B. Tauris it is important to establish how far the choice of subject matter was determined by the general social, political and artistic developments of the time and how far women's specific experience and the history of embroidery dictated the needlewoman's choice. The suffering of humanity was a central subject of all the arts" (Parker: 160) Also, this books made me feel much more respect towards the history of embroidery and the work of modern women in it and how they work towards a new conception of the art.