...a thematic history of fabrics by design and culture writer Kassia St Clair who points out that the world’s earliest fabrics were made by human hand 34,000 years ago ... Probably the most disturbing chapter is the one on rayon, a synthetic fabric that has names like artificial silk, viscose, bamboo or modal. It has a sordid history of forced labour, heavy dangerous chemicals used and horrific medical hazards faced by factory workers ... The book concludes that the fabrics we choose and where we get them from still have consequences on the lives of those who produce them. Currently there are futuristic efforts to commercialise spider silk in the US, Germany and Japan, but St Clair’s account of visiting such a factory is just another one of the many vivid tales spun with such style in this utterly riveting history.
...[a] charming and informative history of textiles, which takes us on a journey from the silk roads to sportswear, from ruffs to spacesuits ... One of the themes of this absorbing book is the way that fabric has left traces on our language. I’d never realised before that 'text' and 'textile' share a common root in the Latin verb texere, to weave ... I devoured this book ... This is a quietly feminist book, that celebrates cloth-making as a form of art and craft that has not been given its due, maybe because it has almost always been done by women ... Like many before her, St Clair urges us to 'give a little more thought' to the clothes we buy. It is hard to disagree. We should buy fewer items, and we should value our clothes — and the people who make them — more. But in a free-market economy it is hard to see how to effect a radical change towards more sustainable fashion.
The history of ‘women’s work’ being devalued is very much a part of textile history ... In this book, Kassia St Clair looks at the developments of textiles through human history, and explains how our ancestors’ lives were shaped by these changes. In her journey, she touches on everything from the materials that went into Neil Armstrong’s space suit to biotech firms experimenting with spider silk ... Having read St Clair’s accounts of factory workers’ horrific injuries, I’ll certainly think again before buying anything rayon. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to look at the textiles in our world with a new understanding.
Ms. St. Clair’s chapter on [the] Norsemen is a finely balanced mixture of adventure story and technical description ... Yet ultimately this is almost entirely a book about the West. There is virtually no discussion of Indonesia or Japan, and barely anything about indigenous cultures and their relations to textiles ... The book has been poorly served by its publisher. Illustrations would have illuminated the book’s many descriptions of looms and weaving techniques, while its multiple references to paintings had me reading with my phone in my hand to google the relevant pictures. A more disturbing element, however, is Ms. St. Clair’s uncertainty on the historical record ... Once raised, this type of doubt is hard to extinguish. Kassia St. Clair has written a pleasant and enjoyable survey of moments in textile history, but a serious history of how textiles changed the world is still to be written.
... offers an eclectic take on how humans have developed fabric, from the first known flax fibers found in a cave in Georgia, spun from the insides of plants and dating at around 32,000 years ago, to the spacesuits made from synthetic materials created in the past 100 years ... sometimes jumps from one seemingly disparate topic to another ... Yet each subject offers a fascinating look at the challenges that fabrics aim to overcome, as well as the often-devastating environmental and human effects involved in their production ... Absent are discussions of the textiles of Africa and Native and Latin America, which have been dated back thousands of years and have deep cultural and historical significance as well. Nonetheless, The Golden Thread spins a rich social history of textiles that also reflects the darker side of technology and the development of capitalism.
This is a fascinating look at one of those everyday things many of us take for granted: fabric. Instead of tackling fabric’s entire history, St. Clair...skips across centuries and around the world, sharing accessible and telling stories about the development, production, and myriad uses of fabric ... Whether sharing the silk-making secrets of Chinese empresses or exposing the benefits of performance-enhancing swimsuits, this extensively documented and always entertaining overview works equally well for reading cover to cover or dipping into for snippets.
This fascinating selection of '13 very different stories' about textiles 'help illustrate the vastness of their significance,' restoring them to their rightful place as a central human technology ... Written in elegant prose, this tour of textile history will draw in readers interested in human evolution and culture
Journalist St. Clair...focuses her spirited, illuminating cultural history on essential fibers that have been spun, knitted, and woven throughout time ... In each of the chapters the author presents an engaging narrative about plant- and animal-based textiles with particular significance to place and historical period ... The most fascinating research St. Clair reports is the effort to manufacture spider silk, coveted for its incredible strength. Vibrant, entertaining, and brightly informative.
