Name/Title
With her own hands : women weaving their storiesEntry/Object ID
TS1318.N44 2025Description
"A rich and intimate exploration of how women have used textile work to create meaningful lives, from ancient mythology to our current moment." Knitting, sewing, embroidery, quilting throughout history, these and other forms of textile work have often been dismissed as merely 'women's work' and attached to ideas of domesticity and obedience. Yet, as psychologist and avid knitter Nicole Nehrig wonderfully explores in this captivating book, textile work has often been a way for women to exercise power. When their voices were silenced and other avenues were closed off to them, women used the tools they had often a needle and thread to seek freedom within the restrictive societies they lived in. Spanning continents and centuries, With Her Own Hands brings together remarkable stories of women who have used textiles as a means of liberation, from an eighteenth-century Quaker boarding school that used embroidered samplers to teach girls math and geography to the Quechua weavers working to preserve and revive Incan traditions today, and from the Miao women of southern China who, in the absence of a written language, pass down their histories in elaborate 'story cloths' to a midcentury British women's postal art exchange. Textiles have been a way for women to explore their intellectual capacities, seek economic independence, create community, process traumas, and convey powerful messages of self-expression and political protest."Lexicon
Search Terms
art therapy--history, feminism and the arts--history, textile crafts--history, textile crafts--psychological aspects, textile crafts--social aspects, women--history--social conditions, women--political activityBook Details
Author
Nicole NehrigPublisher
W.W. Norton and CompanyDate Published
2025ISBN
9781324074854Notes
Length: 278 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates