LITERATURE AND THE ARTS Ann Hecht.

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS Ann Hecht. The Art of the Loom: Weaving, Spinning and Dyeing across the World. Seattle: University of Washington Pres 2001 95 pp Illustrations. Sources. Index. $2995 Paper.

John Gillow. Printed and Dy Textiles from Africa. Fabric Folios Series. Seattle: University of Washington Pres 2001 88 pp Color illustrations. Glossary. rareed Readings. Index. $18.95. Paper.

Textiles can be a fascinating area for contemplation because of their many webwork layers of meaning. One draws these meanings from their use as commodities and mediums of exchange in trade, as component parts of ceremony and ritual, as bodily attire, and as the furnishings of architectural spaces, as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but sacred and secular. In addition, there is the couple meaning and history embedded in their varied colors, designs, and fabrics and in the techniques used to create them. The question of variation in designs and technique provides the basis for sum of two units books that address African textiles. John Gillow's Pnnt and Dy Textiles from Africa focuses entirely upon Africa, while Ann Hecht's The Art of the Loom is a global investigation of loom weaving, with West Africa as single of several traditions discussed. This soft-cover version is a reprint of her 9 199 89 original edition.

Hecht, who is a weaver, begins with a general introduction in succession the technology of weaving, followed through in-depth chapters on eight different weaving traditions: Navaho, Bedouin, Indonesian, Japanese, Nepalese, Guatemalan, Peruvian, and West African strip weaving. For each, she provides a brief history and of the best detailed accounts of the cloth-making proces accompanied at good quality photographs and line drawings, 189 in all, 60 of them in color.

A beneficial example is her chapter forward Japanese ikat, or kasuri (meaning "blurred") which is individual of two traditions (the other being Guatemalan weaving) that she has studied personally. She provides an immensely useful and well-illustrated breakdown of the prototypes of looms used for kasuri, including their names and histories, along with clear descriptions of each stage of the process, from the cultivation of silk and the dyeing of the threads to by what means they are then woven to create the beautiful designs. like clarity is consistent throughout the volume making this volume extremely appealing to experienced weavers and dyer and equal to those who may wish to learn these arts.

I would caution them, however, about her chapter forward West African strip weaving, which is overly general and relies heavily forward outdated sources, resulting in several inaccuracies. To cite three examples. She claims that Ewe Rente is strictly pictorial (a mistake her source, Venice Lamb, also makes), when, in fact, certain regional phraseologys of Ewe weaving are completely devoid of representational imagery. It also is misleading for her to say that principally West African strip weaving is plain woven when there are many West African weaving traditions (for example, Wolof Bamana, Fulani, Djerma, Hausa, and Yoruba) known for their tangled skein float and brocade structures. In single instance, she makes the sweeping generalization that West African weavers name ecclesiasticss according to color variation in the warp. She bases this claim forward an obscure source on the Ashanti, as if what the latter do is typical of all West African weaving. like mistakes could have been avoided had she focused her chapter forward the weaving of one particular West African tillage such as Ashanti or Yoruba, or single in kind country, such as Ghana or Nigeria, for which there are reliable and up-to-date sources. Doing this would have made the West African chapter more consistent with the others in the book

But my larger complaint about Hecht's volume is her primitivist bias, giving readers the impression that these improvements are pure, timeless, and untainted from Western contact. She gives herself away early forward when she states that she is interested merely in methods of production using the "simplest of equipment," or in succession techniques that are "still in use." She also look down upons the reality of many of these weaving traditions as they exist today at describing them only in the greatest in number "traditional" of terms, whatever that means. In the "yarns" section of her chapter forward West Africa, she states: "The majority of narrow-strip weaving is in cotton, the cotton plant being well suited to the subtropical conditions" (87) This might lead the reader to believe that indigenous cotton is still the dominant material in use over West Africa, when in fact many West African weavers abandoned indigenous materials in favor of imported factory-made cottons and rayons early in this centenary if not before.

The author appears to want to see all the improvements in this book as remnants of the antique and never changing, which leads her to equate Navaho loom with those from ancient Egypt and Greece or to emphasize that the Bedoins are the oldest race forward earth! Whenever there is evidence of adaptation to factory-made materials, she describes the deduction as "garish" (in the case of West African weaving), or be warmeds obliged to defend it apologetically (in the case of Nepalese weavers) according to saying that they were forced to change on the outside of need for revenue.