Here’s Tricia:

This project has come together in a way none of us could have imagined. What is amazing is that if we can dream it - the way becomes clear. Well, we have some big dreams, we will outline some of them and how you can help them to come true over the next few months. One of our dreams is that this project can be used to preserve what is a rapidly disappearing art. In fact, we will call it an endangered species. What do I mean by that?Well, for an art form to survive it must be transferred from person to person and also be well documented for others to study and learn. This is obvious to us all. But we can’t only teach others the embroidery skills, but the materials used to perform the art form have to exist. One thing that I have learned well is that without the right materials, certain stitches can not be made because the stiffness/limpness of the thread prevents it from being formed. This means that the manufacturers that make these materials must have a healthy business and be able to bring on employees that can learn the art to continue the firm once they retire. When we embarked on this project I felt the time was ripe. There are a number of the essential materials which are being used on this project that are on the edge of extinction. We might be just in time to prevent it.

As a consumer culture, we have been trained to expect cheaper products and large corporations with anonymous workers in foreign countries. This is the farthest from the case in the embroidery business. Most businesses that produce materials, especially those that I will call ‘high end’, are companies of three or less people. Shockingly, many of the major brands of threads you use come from family-owned businesses with less than 15 employees. The embroidery business has not been strong for awhile and these manufacturers don’t have an obvious transition plan for when their owners decide to retire.

As I teach across the country, I have tried to explain the situation of many of these businesses. I like to call them Artisan Manufacturers, as they truly use the knowledge from the past - usually from an unbroken chain of family going back in some cases for hundreds of years. Their unique understanding of how the threads, fabrics, and needles are made is something that must be preserved for future generations.

When making our choices of materials to use on this project, we not only looked for those which most closely replicated those of the time period, but gave preference to Artisan Manufacturers. Their knowledge base has been indispensable in reproducing new threads. But we also want to create awareness of their techniques and compare them to the materials of the past. Future blog entries will examine these Artisan Manufacturers and their connections to the past. We hope that it will educate our blog readers and you will lend your support to saving our embroidery heritage.

Tricia

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Materials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.