Needlework serves functional purposes, such as providing warmth, but has also communicated individual and social identity, spiritual beliefs, and aesthetic ideals throughout time and geography. Needlework traditions are often associated with rituals and celebrations of life events. Often-overlooked by historians, practicing needlework and creating needlework objects provides insights to the history of everyday life. Needlework techniques traveled with merchants and explorers, creating a legacy of cross-cultural exchange. Some techniques are virtually universal and others are limited to a small geographical area. Settlers brought traditions which were sometimes re-invented as indigenous arts. This volume of approximately 75 entries is a comprehensive resource on techniques and cultural traditions for students, information professionals, and collectors.

This guide is for anyone who is interested in learning or re-learning the art of embroidery or needlepoint. Containing a history of needlecrafts, as well as an updated look at its uses for your home and wardrobe, it explains how to deal with such concepts as color, balance, scale, and texture, and how to incorporate your own personal syle. Everything you need to know about the art of embroidery, including needle and thread types, materials, stitch types, frames, techniques, enlarging or reducing designs, monogramming, and project ideas, is in this book.

An introduction to and advice on book collecting with a glossary of terms and tips on how to identify first editions and estimated values for over 20,000 collectible books published in English (including translations) over the last three centuries-about half are literary titles in the broadest sense (novels, poetry, plays, mysteries, science fiction, and children's books); and the other half are non-fiction (Americana, travel and exploration, finance, cookbooks, color plate, medicine, science, photography, Mormonism, sports, et al).

"The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques deals with all aspects of materials, techniques, conservation, and restoration in both traditional and nontraditional media, including ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, painting, works on paper, textiles, video, digital art, and more. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in The Dictionary of Art and adding new entries, this work is a comprehensive reference resource for artists, art dealers, collectors, curators, conservators, students, researchers, and scholars." "Similar in design to The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts, this one-volume reference work contains articles of various lengths in alphabetical order. The shorter, more factual articles are combined with larger, multi-section articles tracing the development of materials and techniques in various geographical locations. The Encyclopedia provides unparalleled scope and depth, and it offers fully updated articles and bibliography as well as over 150 illustrations and color plates." "The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques offers scholarly information on materials and techniques in art for anyone who studies, creates, collects, or deals in works of art. The entries are written to be accessible to a wide range of readers, and the work is designed as a reliable and convenient resource covering this essential area in the visual arts."

DigiCat presents to you the collection of carefully selected historical romance novels which will transport you to the time of Ancient Egypt, Medieval Castles, Renaissance Cities, Regency Social Circles and Parisian Belle Époque: Uarda: A Romance of Ancient Egypt (Georg Ebers) The New Abelard: Love in the Times of Cathedrals (Robert Williams Buchanan) Hildebrand: The Days of Queen Elizabeth (Anonymous) Love-at-Arms (Rafael Sabatini) The Cloister and the Hearth (Charles Reade) The Princess of Cleves (Madame de La Fayette) The Forest Lovers (Maurice Hewlett) Malcolm (George MacDonald) Scarlet Letter: Love in the Colonial Period (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Wild Irish Girl (Lady Sydney Morgan) The Dark Mile (D. K. Broster) Sophia (Stanley John Weyman) Paul and Virginia (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre) Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Mary Hays) The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (Eliza Haywood) Olinda's Adventures (Cockburn) Belinda (Maria Edgeworth) Dangerous Liaisons (De Laclos) Evelina (Fanny Burney) Pamela Trilogy Mary (Mary Wollstonecraft) Jane Austen: Pride & Prejudice Sense & Sensibility Mansfield Park Emma Persuasion Miss Marjoribanks & Phoebe, Junior (Mrs. Olifant) Vanity Fair (Thackeray) Mr. Rowl (D. K. Broster) The Battle of the Strong (Gilbert Parker) Kitty Alone (Sabine Baring-Gould) Sentimental Education (Gustave Flaubert) Lady Anna (Anthony Trollope) The Manoeuvring Mother (Lady Charlotte Bury) Ramona (Helen Hunt Jackson) Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë) The Lady of the Camellias (Alexandre Dumas) The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James) Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton) Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) Bel Ami (Guy de Maupassant) The Squatter and the Don The Four Feathers (A. E. W. Mason) The Miranda Trilogy (Grace Livingston Hill) The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Rejecting traditional notions of what constitutes art, this book brings together essays on a variety of fiber arts to recoup women's artistic practices by redefining what counts as art. Although scholars over the last twenty years have turned their attention to fiber arts, redefining the conditions, practices, and products as art, there is still much work to be done to deconstruct the stubborn patriarchal art/craft binary. With essays on a range of fiber art practices, including embroidery, knitting, crocheting, machine stitching, rug making, weaving, and quilting, this collection contributes to the ongoing scholarly redefinition of women's relationship to creative activity. Focusing on women as producers of cultural products and creators of social value, the contributors treat women as active subjects and problematize their material practices and artifacts in the complex world of textiles. Each essay also examines the ways in which needlework both performs gender and, in turn, constructs gender. Moreover, in concentrating on and theorizing material practices of textiles, these essays reorient the study of fiber arts towards a focus on process?the making of the object, including the conditions under which it was made, by whom, and for what purpose?as a way to rethink the fiber arts as social praxis.

Mary C. Beaudry mines archaeological findings of sewing and needlework to discover what these small traces of female experience reveal about the societies and cultures in which they were used. Beaudry's geographical and chronological scope is broad: she examines sites in the United States and Great Britain, as well as Australia and Canada, and she ranges from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution.The author describes the social and cultural significance of "findings": pins, needles, thimbles, scissors, and other sewing accessories and tools. Through the fascinating stories that grow out of these findings, Beaudry shows the extent to which such "small things" were deeply entrenched in the construction of gender, personal identity, and social class.

In gold-rush Australia, social identity was in flux: gold promised access to fashionable new clothes, a grand home, and the goods to furnish it, but could not buy gentility. Needlework and Women's Identity in Colonial Australia explores how the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters who migrated to the newly formed colony of Victoria used their needle skills as a powerful claim to social standing. Focusing on one of women's most common daily tasks, the book examines how needlework's practice and products were vital in the contest for social position in the turmoil of the first two decades of the Victorian rush from 1851. Placing women firmly at the center of colonial history, it explores how the needle became a tool for stitching together identity. From decorative needlework to household making and mending, women's sewing was a vehicle for establishing, asserting, and maintaining social status. Interdisciplinary in scope, Needlework and Women's Identity in Colonial Australia draws on material culture, written primary sources, and pictorial evidence, to create a rich portrait of the objects and manners that defined genteel goldfields living. Giving voice to women's experiences and positioning them as key players in the fabric of gold-rush society, this volume offers a fresh critical perspective on gender and textile history.