Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World

In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay explores the history of cloth through travel, history, memoir, and culture, uncovering the hidden histories of fabric and how it has made us.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 528 pages
Publication date: 03 November 2022
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd

Subtle, compendious, and rich, James McConnachie's The Sunday Times hailed it as "dazzling." Finlay's adventures, vividly recounted, make enthralling reading. This book is equally an inspiration and an education, as Bel Mooney of the Daily Mail noted. A gorgeous adventure through the history of cloth, Stylist praised it as "a vibrant exploration of cloth through the ages."

Bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe in a vibrant exploration of cloth through the ages. She beats the inner bark of trees into cloth in Papua New Guinea, fails to handspin cotton in Guatemala, visits tweed weavers at their homes in Harris, and has lessons in patchwork-making in Gee's Bend, Alabama. And through it all, she uncovers the hidden histories of fabric: how and why people have made it, worn it, invented it, and made symbols of it.

Interlaced with Victoria's own story of grief and recovery, Fabric is a lush patchwork of travel, history, memoir, and culture. It is an unforgettable look into how we have made fabric, and how it has made us.

Weight: 430g
Dimension: 128 x 199 x 34 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781781257074
Edition number: Main