Textiles

The city of Jaipur—which sits near the center of India’s northern half, in the middle of the country’s chest, so to speak—is known for its pink and white buildings. In 1876, when the Prince of Wales was scheduled to visit, Maharaja Ram Singh ordered the buildings to be painted in these shades, which were symbolic…

For 15 years, the world’s folk art makers and enthusiasts have gathered, en masse, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to celebrate the possible when it comes to indigenous craftsmanship. This summer, in just three days, some 21,000 people spent $3.3 million to show that traditional artisans still matter.

Jill Giordano makes women’s clothing in what might be called sustainable designs: coats, pants, and dresses made with fine fabrics in timeless styles, and in combinations that can be mixed and matched any number of ways. Welcome to the art of “system” dressing—with quality. The goal: Improve your look, save the planet, and save money.

The emotional and aesthetic power of lace seems to keep turning up in all sorts of secondary forms (including patterns on acrylic fingernails). Therefore, in addition to some standard literature resources, you might glance at some of the creative ways in which lace’s elegance is being repurposed, but also added to very unrelated items. The…

Women started making lace as a fancy substitute for embroidery because it could be transferred easily from one garment to another as fashions changed. Before long, it was an industry. Here is a timeline of what came to be famously called Burano lace, as it evolved from aristocratic pastime to international commodity: 1546:  The first…

In the 1500s, a Spanish bishop turned a collection of pueblos around the Mexican town of Patzcuaro into a center for craftsmanship. The people here are still making and marketing their wares in much the same way they did hundreds of years ago. Now they have to overcome tourists’ fears about drug traffickers, real or not.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to find the indigenous artists outside of Pátzcuaro without a guide. We went with Jaime Hernández Balderas, from animecha tours, animechatours@yahoo.com. He is a native of Pátzcuaro, knowledgeable about the history and crafts, and speaks excellent English. Expect to pay about 2000 pesos a day for a guide ($120). Local…

Michael Montenegro is driven to put the products of his imagination into tangible, active forms. After he builds them—often in life-size form, with a rag-tag collage of materials—he becomes them, lives inside them, then delivers them to us with a zany vigor.