Author: Liz Trenow
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1760551937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
Anna Buttterfield moves from her Suffolk country home to her uncle's house in London, to be introduced to society. A chance encounter with a local silk weaver, French immigrant Henri, throws her from her privileged upbringing to the darker, dangerous world of London's silk trade. Henri is working on his 'master piece' to make his name as a master silk weaver; Anna meanwhile is struggling against the constraints of her family and longing to become an artist. Henri realizes that Anna's designs could lift his work above the ordinary, and give them both an opportunity for freedom . . . This is a charming story of illicit romance, set against the world of the burgeoning silk trade in 18th century Spitalfields - a time of religious persecution, mass migration, racial tension and wage riots, and ideas of what was considered 'proper' for women.
Author: Gabrielle Warnock
Publisher: Trident Press Ltd
ISBN: 9781900724197
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Dublin in 1798, Anton Paradis is a silk weaver whose only desire is to create beautiful patterns on the finest of silk. He finds his life in turmoil when he is forced to betray his employer and friend and is caught in a spiralling nightmare of events.
Author: Sonia Velton
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN: 1538507749
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Set in eighteenth-century Spitalfields, London, Blackberry and Wild Rose is the rich and atmospheric tale of a household of Huguenot silk weavers as the pursuit of the perfect silk design leads them all into ambition, love, and betrayal. When Esther Thorel, wife of a master silk weaver, rescues Sara Kemp from a brothel, she thinks she is doing God’s will, but her good deed is not returned. Sara quickly realizes that the Thorel household is built on hypocrisy and lies and soon tires of the drudgery of life as Esther’s new lady’s maid. As the two women’s relationship becomes increasingly fractious, Sara resolves to find out what it is that so preoccupies her mistress ... Esther has long yearned to be a silk designer. When her early watercolors are dismissed by her husband, Elias, as the daubs of a foolish girl, she continues her attempts in secret. It may have been that none of them would ever have become actual silks, were it not for the presence of the extraordinarily talented Bisby Lambert in the Thorel household. Brought in by Elias to weave his master piece on the Thorel’s loom in the attic of their house in Spitalfields, the strange cadence of the loom as Bisby works is like a siren call to Esther. The minute she first sets foot in the garret and sees Bisby Lambert at his loom marks the beginning of Blackberry and Wild Rose, the most exquisite silk design Spitalfields has ever seen, and the end of the Thorel household’s veneer of perfection. As unrest among the journeyman silk weavers boils over into riot and rebellion, it leads to a devastating day of reckoning between Esther and Sara.
Author: Joshua Hirschstein
Publisher: Schiffer + ORM
ISBN: 1507302495
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 782
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Book Description
Winner, Gold Medal in the Travel Category, 2018 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards Part travelogue, part silk-weaving primer, this is a tender portrait of an American family's travels in Laos's Houaphon Province. As they learn about the ancient silk weaving traditions in the hilltribe community of Xam Tai, they gain an appreciation for the strong sense of well-being in Lao culture. Over the past decade, Hirschstein and Beck have developed deep connections with the villagers of Xam Tai who raise their own fiber from silkworms, dye it using local natural dyes, and weave the patterns of their ancestors into healing cloths, ceremonial textiles, and daily wear.
Author: Tamara Hareven
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520935764
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
The makers of obi, the elegant and costly sash worn over kimono in Japan, belong to an endangered species. These families of manufacturers, weavers, and other craftspeople centered in the Nishijin weaving district of Kyoto have practiced their demanding craft for generations. In recent decades, however, as a result of declining markets for kimono, they find their livelihood and pride harder to sustain. This book is a poignant exploration of a vanishing world. Tamara Hareven integrates historical research with intensive life history interviews to reveal the relationships among family, work, and community in this highly specialized occupation. Hareven uses her knowledge of textile workers' lives in the United States and Western Europe to show how striking similarities in weavers' experiences transcend cultural differences. These very rich personal testimonies, taken over a decade and a half, provide insight into how these men and women have juggled family and work roles and coped with insecurities. Readers can learn firsthand how weavers perceive their craft and how they interpret their lives and view the world around them. With rare immediacy, The Silk Weavers of Kyoto captures a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Author: Miranda Kaufmann
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786071851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
A new, transformative history – in Tudor times there were Black people living and working in Britain, and they were free ‘This is history on the cutting edge of archival research, but accessibly written and alive with human details and warmth.’ David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History A black porter publicly whips a white Englishman in the hall of a Gloucestershire manor house. A Moroccan woman is baptised in a London church. Henry VIII dispatches a Mauritanian diver to salvage lost treasures from the Mary Rose. From long-forgotten records emerge the remarkable stories of Africans who lived free in Tudor England… They were present at some of the defining moments of the age. They were christened, married and buried by the Church. They were paid wages like any other Tudors. The untold stories of the Black Tudors, dazzlingly brought to life by Kaufmann, will transform how we see this most intriguing period of history. *** Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 A Book of the Year for the Evening Standard and the Observer ‘That rare thing: a book about the 16th century that said something new.’ Evening Standard, Books of the Year ‘Splendid… a cracking contribution to the field.’ Dan Jones, Sunday Times ‘Consistently fascinating, historically invaluable… the narrative is pacy... Anyone reading it will never look at Tudor England in the same light again.’ Daily Mail
Author: Liz Trenow
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007510497
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
A captivating story of two young women, bound together by the tragedy of two very different wars. Perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Maureen Lee.
Author: Liz Trenow
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402282494
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
"An intriguing patchwork of past and present, upstairs and downstairs, hope and despair."—Daisy Goodwin, New York Times bestselling author of The American Heiress A moving story of two women tied together by an heirloom despite the decades that separate their times in England, The Forgotten Seamstress quilts layers of history into one astonishing mystery. In the early 20th century, Maria knows that, as a shy girl with no family, she's lucky to have landed in the sewing room of the royal household. Before World War I casts its shadow, she catches the eye of the glamorous and intense Prince of Wales. But her life takes a far darker turn, and soon all she has left is a fantastical story about her time at Buckingham Palace. Decades later, Caroline Meadows discovers a beautiful quilt in her mother's attic. When she can't figure out the meaning of the message embroidered into its lining, she embarks on a quest to reveal its mystery, a puzzle that only seems to grow more important to her own heart. As Caroline pieces together the secret history of the quilt, she comes closer and closer to the truth about Maria. Page-turning and heartbreaking, The Forgotten Seamstress stitches together past and present in an unforgettable quilt of English historical fiction perfect for fans of Jennifer Chiaverini and Pam Jenoff.
Author: Zara Anishanslin
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300220553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Through the story of a portrait of a woman in a silk dress, historian Zara Anishanslin embarks on a fascinating journey, exploring and refining debates about the cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. While most scholarship on commodities focuses either on labor and production or on consumption and use, Anishanslin unifies both, examining the worlds of four identifiable people who produced, wore, and represented this object: a London weaver, one of early modern Britain’s few women silk designers, a Philadelphia merchant’s wife, and a New England painter. Blending macro and micro history with nuanced gender analysis, Anishanslin shows how making, buying, and using goods in the British Atlantic created an object-based community that tied its inhabitants together, while also allowing for different views of the Empire. Investigating a range of subjects including self-fashioning, identity, natural history, politics, and trade, Anishanslin makes major contributions both to the study of material culture and to our ongoing conversation about how to write history.
