On Weaving: New Expanded Edition

Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Decorative Arts & Design

On Weaving: New Expanded Edition Details

Review "It is over 50 years since On Weaving was first published in 1965, but in this new edition it is as fresh and inspiring as ever. Indeed, the colour plates alone . . . could furnish hours of contemplation."---Cally Brooker, Journal of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers"This new edition of On Weaving [is] achingly timely. In an age in which millennials are desperately searching for 'mindfulness' to counter the relentless, bleak news cycle, downloading breathing apps to their phones, and seeking peace in coloring books and knitting, Albers’s celebration of weaving, which forces the weaver to practice a patient and rhythmic meditation, sings to a new generation. . . . The transcultural modernist values and designs of both Anni and Josef Albers still seem fresh and vibrant. . . . By bringing their works to new audiences, making explicit their wide-ranging inspirations, and highlighting the historicity of their seemingly abstract forms [recent exhibitions] and the republication of On Weaving ensure that the Alberses’ legacies will continue to resonate."---Sophie Pitman, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design, History, and Material Culture"The chief argument of the book―that the hand-made and mechanically reproduced can happily co-exist―is told visually as well as verbally. . . . [Anni Albers] emerges from the new On Weaving as both a historical figure and a living one."---Charles Darwent, Burlington Magazine"[On Weaving] has luminous simplicity and clarity. . . . [B]y illustrating images that most weavers would regard as quotidian in On Weaving, such as the chequer-board graphics of weave notations, she gave the art world space to make links with other forms of abstraction. By writing with no assumption of a craft audience, Albers was able to announce that weaving was ‘the event of a thread’ and ‘a method of forming a pliable plane of threads by interlacing them rectangularly’, thus allowing all of us to look at the discipline anew."---Tanya Harrod, Apollo"[A] pioneering compendium."---Leslie Camhi, T Magazine Read more Review "With enviable clarity, Albers reviews the basics of weaving materials and techniques while threading the history of weaving from Peru and Persia to China, Europe, and beyond. Her emphasis on tactility seems especially urgent today, as she offers the next generation a profound corrective to an increasingly digital monoculture."―Jenny Anger, author of Paul Klee and the Decorative in Modern Art"On Weaving is a book that one reads again and again for the insightful logic about the meaning of art, and the reasons and methods governing the creation of good design. Anni Albers is perhaps more relevant today than she was during her lifetime."―Virginia Gardner Troy, author of Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain Read more See all Editorial Reviews

Reviews

Annie Albers writes this book from a viewpoint of an anthropologist or archaeologist more than the viewpoint of a weaver. I admire her for what she did, but I would be more interested in her weaving practice than in the history of weaving. That's just me. Maybe other readers are more interested in the history of weaving.

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