Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In the catalogue for the 1998 Ruthin Craft Centre exhibition Jula Griffiths Jones- Unwinding the Thread there was a transcript of a speech made by Dr Ein Jones on the occasion of its opering at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea She described a lunch where she and Julia discussed textiles and women’s traditional crafts – We talked about their fragility and impermanence and the way they are made with such care and love only to be consumed Jula and I went on to discuss how men’s crafts all seem to be in durable materials – wood stone metal-and they also seem (though I wouldn’t wish to be gender-specific on this or any other point) to have a higher status than that accorded to women’s crafts although similar levels of skill are required. Then this was a long lunch-we talked about the possibility of marrying… the impermanent the delicate and the transient to the permanent the hard and the durable and by doing so conveying something of the nature of women’s traditional domestic tasks the daily routines which are so often ignored only noticed or commented upon when not done. I think we might have called them the invisible skills of daily living and loving.” Elin then coined the phrase that now seems the natural way to describe Julia’s work to anyone who has not seen it themselves – embroideries in the air. She described “In the Celtic laws there were three great crafts whose practitioners were always privileged people. These were the crafts of the smith the poet and the priest-the shapers-prydyddion yn newid pryd a gwedd y defnyddiau cral-who shaped raw materials into something else-metals into jewellery and weapons words into poetry natural things into sacred elements. This exhibition shows us that we have a woman ‘shaper-shaping metal with love and care into delicate and lasting embroideries in the air. (LL)