Why We Stitch, and Why I Read . . .

Does it seem like I'm always linking to the New York Times? I actually have a story that explains my irrational loyalty to that paper (or skip down a few paragraphs to the stitching part). My father, a physicist who then became an advocate for experimental education and especially early reading, started my reading lessons when I was an infant. The promise was that the reading lessons would end on the day that I could read a paragraph from the front page of the New York Times. This was a big deal; in those days, you actually had to go to New York to get a New York paper.

When I was four years old, I passed the test, as my father brought home the revered paper and I solemnly executed the Reading of the Paragraph. I didn't have to understand all the words, but I did have to read them. And then I would have to go sit on a stage and read whenever he spoke to groups about education. So it's completely programmed into my brain, I guess, to read the NYT. 

I'll spare you the downside of my father's novel-yet-controlling and perhaps damaging approach, except to say that I never had a book read to me just for the pleasure of it -- it was always a lesson. I don't advise that, moms and dads. Read to your kids just for the joy of sharing the story and the closeness and the time. Don't make it a performance test. It backfires. That said, I'm very pro-newspaper.

(As a grown-up, I fell hard for a man who read to me from the Arabian Nights. Who cares if it was a time-tested seduction move -- someone was reading to me! Sweetest thing ever.)

Back at the ranch, what's in today's New York Times, available now at the click of a mouse (and isn't that magical)? "Seeing History in the Eye of a Needle," a review of 'Twixt Art and Nature, an exhibition of 17th century embroidery at Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts. The review comes with a slideshow full of beautiful images, and also offers eloquent justification for why we stitch:

One of embroidery’s great attractions is its self-evident structure. Many of its stitches are challenging beyond belief. That much is confirmed by a video in the galleries and a catalog essay by Cristina Balloffet Carr, a conservator at the Met. The essay’s close-up photographs of stitches are magnified 30 times, making it all the easier to appreciate the nearly superhuman evenness of technique that abounds in this show. Metallic threads, glass beads, appliqué, relieflike passages called raised-work and fluttering bits of stripped ribbon (good for tents and flowing skirts) are added options.

But the basic concept of embroidery is like rudimentary geometry. It centers on the merging of two very different dimensions: a flat grid of fabric, and thread, which is an extended line of many colors. This is achieved by the hands, eyes and brain of one person, who attends by one stitch or another to every centimeter of a work’s surface. The simplicity and concentration are always felt, no matter how complicated the actual motifs become . . . 

Embroidery is a glorious byproduct of sewing, one of the world’s most essential crafts. Sewing began sometime in prehistory, probably when pieces of animal hide were lashed together into a crude garment. But humans never cease. The marvels of this exhibition testify to the human need to improve, refine and perfect, turning a means of survival into a sublime vehicle of expression. 

Beadwork Basket
English, unknown designer and maker
1662-7. Glass beads, wire, silk thread.

Back to reading for a moment, since it's a good season for it as the longest night approaches. . . Fascinated by the story of the face transplant surgery, and intent on adding voluptuary to my life job description, I've started re-reading Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses. It's one of my favorite books ever, and probably easy to find at the library. Highly recommended.

Oh, and apparently women used to be made to do stitching because it was thought to make them docile. Ha!

Comments

[Heather Cameron]

Thanks so much for the link. Wonderful juicy embroidery, some people might think it odd how excited I get over it.

[Paula Hewitt]

docile, eh?
I feel for you being the subject of your dads reading experiement. im curious though - did you grow up to enjoy reading more or less because of it? we read a lot to our kids before they could read - they didn't start to read until they started school but the groundwork was there - and they both (the third one is still being read to) love books. i wonder though if we made it a lesson would they have been turned off.

[Heather]

I read that very article and thought of you (and I too, am addicted to the NY Times - every day online, a must-do). I liked the gloves the best, although the jacket was also nice. Then again, I like more simplistic things. But the work! The work! I've done quite a bit of embroidery in my life and it is sooooo time consuming. Glad you shared with everyone.