The dangers of bookshops

One of the benefits of living in a city is the proximity to bookshops. It is also a hazard.

Over the past couple of weeks the textile library has grown a little. A visit to Pallant House bookshop resulted in the addition of Alan Powers' "Enid Marx - the Pleasures of Pattern" and Harry Lyons' "Christopher Dresser Textiles", each of which is about the people who were hugely influential in shaping the world of British design of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Judd Books in Bloomsbury came up trumps with "The Concise Dictionary of Dress" by Judith Clark and Adam Phillips, "African Apparel - threaded transformations across the 20th Century" by Mackenzie Moon Ryan, and "Twentieth Century Textiles Part 2 Neo-classicism to Pop" by Sue Kerry (pictured). The latter two offer image-rich pages and texts about textile design while the first was a site-specific art project, in 2010 at Blythe House where the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection of textiles is stored, by a costume curator and a psychoanalyst. Of course, as these books have all been bought on trips into town, they have to be carried home in backpacks. LEt's just say that sometimes we return with aching shoulders but that is a small price to pay for the joy a good bookshop brings!

Although the studio is closed at present it will be open next week from Thursday for two weeks. If you would like to visit and use the library and to see the collection please get in touch and we will be happy to book you in.