Category: Craft

  • Mount White Station

    New Zealand Aotearoa is known for its farming culture and Mount White is home to one of the famous high-country stations. Mount White Station is on the Canterbury side of the Southern Alps/ Kā Tiritiri o Te Moana, the huge range that runs the length of Te Waipounamu/ The South Island. With much of the…

  • Black History Month

    February is Black History Month, a celebration that is marked by the birthdays of famous abolitionist Americans: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Black History Month is recognised in the North America, Europe and Africa, and in the USA the annual event has a theme. This year it is “African Americans and Labor“ The music, fashion…

  • The Way We Wore

    An insightful and fascinating series on Netflix at the moment explores the evolution and history of fashion in Australia. Presented by Celeste Barber and made in 2023, The Way We Wore is a three-part series that takes a chronological look at how fashion has influenced history Down Under and has helped to create the modern…

  • Like the Turf

    Caroline McQuarrie’s Like the Turf has just opened at the Left Bank Art Gallery in Greymouth Māwhera. Caroline is an artist from the Coast who now lives in Wellington Pōneke. She was interviewed in 2023 as part of the Conversation and Cloth series and has returned to Māwhera to open this show, previously at the…

  • Fashion in the Louvre

    The first ever fashion exhibition at Le Louvre, the Paris museum, recently opened. Louvre Couture matches the museum’s extensive collections of decorative art with pieces from some of the world’s greatest fashion design houses and emerging talents – Chanel, Gaultier, Givenchy, Prada, Balenciaga… in a nod to not only inspiration but also an acknowledgement of…

  • The Art of Knitting – a book

    “The Art of Knitting”, published in 1977 in the UK, has just been added to the studio library. This book is filled with examples of antique knitting, mainly from Europe but also from Asia and Middle East. The third section – The patterns – is a veritable feast of contemporary-for-then versions of knitted garments inspired…

  • Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

    A recent addition to the textile collection shares a great link between textiles and music. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee are two small characters from the “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” books by Lewis Carroll. The twins were made by artist Sharon Mitchell from Oamaru as part of an exhibition in her hometown of various characters…

  • TOTA – connecting cultures

    If you like reading about the many different ways in which people live around the world then TOTA might just be the ticket… From videos to stories and articles, from photographs to recipes, this website holds a wealth of information about culture. Although attitudes have changed since many of the articles were originally written, losing…

  • The unique look of Finland

    Finland has earned a name for its fashion. The country has had a long and colourful history but has maintained an independent, creative spirit despite war and invasion, and that creativity comes though in Finnish fashion, an industry that tells the world about how society works in the Nordic country. This article from business of…

  • Vodou flags

    Haitian Vodou is a religion that merged Catholicism and traditional African practices in the diaspora of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and its adherents traditionally made use of handmade flags called drapo. Drapo are decorated with embroidery and embellished with beads. Nowdays they are collector’s items and artists create drapo to sell to an international…