Category: Travel

  • Reader contributions

    This week there are links from the United States, Australia and New Zealand. A festival of joyful celebration was held in New York: The Pinkster Stroll. Reviving an old custom that enabled enslaved people to come together in one of the country’s oldest African American holidays, The Pinkster Stroll is an uplifting occasion to dress-up…

  • Articles from elsewhere

    Most weeks, the blog receives contributions from readers to share. A new section has been introduced as part of the revamp of the week’s newsletter: Reader contributions. This section will be short summaries of those links that readers have sent in so others can explore ideas and events from elsewhere. Anyone can send in suggestions…

  • Can you help the blog change?

    In this important year for the blog, its twentieth, it is time to rethink what it is and how it works. You, dear readers, might be able to help. The original idea for the blog was to write about music and textiles from the point of view of Shetland and the textile studio in Yell.…

  • Global fashion done local

    Lagos, the most populous of Africa’s cities, has a name for fashion. Global trends combined with local aesthetics and sensibilities are producing some of the most exciting fashion in the world, as you can see in this article that explores the phenomenon of cosmopolitan African fashion. Africa has already gained the attention of the fashion…

  • The Herds

    Have you been following The Herds? This huge public art project brilliantly brings the plight and flight of animals at a time of climate change, habitat destruction and enforced movement to life.

  • The impact of tourism

    Tourism can be good but there are downsides to it. In the Maldives, tourism is having an impact on the lives of the islands’ inhabitants. In “Local Living”, a project of images and videos taken of a rapidly changing culture, Ali Assadhu from the island of Kinbidhoo works to preserve traditions before they disappear forever.…

  • New books for the library

    There are three new books in the library: Design from Peasant Art, Make Your Own Rugs and Central Otago Couture: The Eden Hore Collection. Kathleen Mann’s book about design from colloquial art was published in London by Adam and Charles Black in 1939 and this edition is the reprinted edition from 1952. It is a…

  • CTANZ symposium – Fascination

    The recent Costume and Textiles Aotearoa New Zealand symposium was held in Dunedin Ōtepoti and it was based on the theme of “Fascination”. Dunedin has a proud history and heritage of settlement and the symposium was held in Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. The event was split into two streams of presentations, one in the auditorium…

  • Woven Histories

    New York’s Museum of Modern Art is currently hosting Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction. The show, on until 13th September this year, connects the development of ideas in abstract art with textiles and clothing. (The MoMA magazine offers seven ways to experience the exhibition.) With artists and makers such as Anni Albers, Olga de…

  • A brief hiatus

    Hello, dear readers, Over the past few weeks I have had lots of good wishes and support for the studio in Māwhera Greymouth. The mountain of boxes and paper and wrapping and crates has dwindled and diminished to a much more manageable amount and the smallest of the computerised looms is now up and running…