Book Review - Fabric by Victoria Finlay

 

I first saw mention of this book on line, but it wasn't available in North America yet.  However, I found a UK bookseller who was quite happy to send a copy of the book, which arrived just before Christmas.

I wasn't feeling very well and had library books that needed to get back to the library, but I couldn't resist opening it and beginning to read a little bit.

Since I had read a previous book by Finlay, I knew her writing style and had enjoyed it and this one is much the same:  part travelogue, part memoir, part homage to her parents, part an examination of various fabrics through the centuries and how they have informed and affected human culture and history.

It is a fairly close look at how certain fabrics have been made, how individuals work the thread and their looms.  It is a lay person's look at the craft, and while at times the explanations are not what a weaver would emphasize or use, it is - so far as I can tell - a fairly accurate depiction.

But it is what could be called the 'trivia' that enchants me.  The little asides, by-ways, and observations that have consistently captivated me.  It is a book that I have enjoyed even during recovery from shingles when reading was difficult (one eye is still constantly dilated) so that the little chunks I can manage have provided insights into cultures not my own, but rooted in a craft that I know fairly well.

This morning's little nugget was this paragraph:

(the author quite by happenstance finds a weaver at the loom, weaving muga silk)  "...Minu forgets me and gets into the rhythm of her work - right hand flicking a yellow string to make the shuttle fly, left hand battening (English term for beating) *the new line (weft) into the body of it, pausing as she adjusts the weft to make a subtle pattern, right hand flicking again.  I feel happy here, watching this calm woman work in the space between the made and the unmade.  I reflect how the part of a woven cloth that's the most important is the part we can only see during the weaving process while the cloth is raw and open.  Usually when you contemplate a piece of fabric it appears to consist of basically two dimensions.   Width and length, not much depth.  But if you look with imagination as well as eyes, you can see that connecting the back and the front is a tight fencing of crossing places where the essence of a cloth is found.

I imagine how, if I were very small, I could be lost inside its complexity."

So while there are some places where the terminology used isn't the same as what I might use, I am finding some solace in how Finlay has crafted this look at how fabrics are fundamental to human beings - our culture, our society, our history, our economy, our very existence.

The book is apparently being released in North America in June.  But if you want to, there are UK booksellers happy to mail copies now.  And it wasn't even all that expensive - I paid under $40 Cdn and that included the shipping.

Recommended to sooth the soul of anyone tired of the madding crowd and our current 'interesting' times.

*my added comments intended for clarity