Selvedge #131
238 x 238 mm, 96 pages
London, UK
Bimonthly
Founder and editor: Polly Leonard
‘The fabric of your life’
Selvedge celebrates textiles and cloth from historical and contemporary standpoints, with a practical and inspirational edge too.
This latest edition explores water as a ‘sacred solvent’ essential to textile production, examining its effect on cloth, and how this symbiotic relationship between textiles and water shapes the communities across the globe—from the coast of Newhaven to the backwaters of Kerala. Inside, readers can expect a brief history of the influential Burano Lace School founded in 1872 to keep the town afloat after the local fishing industry collapsed, an exploration of the water borne lotus flower as both a textiles motif and object of religious symbolism, and a deep dive into female led fishing net production in Lombardy.
Plus, Sarah Jane Downing discovers the textile towns across the country whose waterways fuelled textile production through the industrial revolution.
