“Tracing a Stitch in Time” https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-woven-world-review-tracing-a-stitch-in-time-11629411875On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress
Counterpoint Press, August 2021
Part memoir, part elegy, part cultural history, A Woven World celebrates the fading crafts, cottage industries, and artisans that have defined communities for generations.
Sensing a need to preserve the crafts and stories of our founding communities, and inspired by an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute featuring Yves St. Laurent’s “Sardine Dress,” Deming turned to the industries of her ancestors, on Grand Manan Island, a community of 2500 residents, and New York City, a metropolis of millions. Both offer stories of old ways of knowing and being perfectly suited to their time and place that are currently in danger of fading away. Resisting history’s erasure, Deming reweaves the fabric of those lives. A Woven World is a quest for continuity and belonging in a time of destabilizing change. One way to face loss is to give a presence on the page to beloved people, places, and practices, uncovering and preserving a record of the ingenuity and dignity that comes with such work. In this way the lament can become a praise song, a testament to the beauty and fragility of human making.
The book unearths wonders in its journey through family and environmental history to find: the unmarked grave of a grandmother, a fisherman lost at sea afloat for a week in his dory, a seal skin coat, flowers placed in bullet holes in glass after terrorist attacks in Paris, the humble herring underpinning civilization for centuries, Vermeer’s portrait of The Lacemaker, a seal rising up through the floor of an Icelandic cottager, the historic silk weavers of Lyon, prom dresses and crinolines, a Manhattan Subway sandwich shop where once a dressmaking business thrived, the bounty and beauty of a herring harvest, the silences of women lost to history, and so much more.
The author is grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for a fellowship that supported the research and writing on this project. The book will be published by Counterpoint Press August 2021.
REVIEWS
Wall Street Journal:
“A sobering look at how small-scale artisans have been made obsolete by mass production . . . A moving testament to what we’ll lose if we don’t pay attention.” —Moira Hodgson, The Wall Street Journal
Kirkus Reviews writes:
“Using poetic language, childhood experiences, and knowledge of cultural history, Deming captivatingly weaves together these communities. . . . A charming, heartfelt homage to the makers, past and present, who have defined lives and communities across the world.” —Kirkus
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alison-hawthorne-deming/a-woven-world/
“With the skill and care of an artisan poet, Alison Hawthorne Deming’s “A Woven World” brings us the textures of nearly lost words and the craft that required them. Her tactile exploration of makers from fisherfolk to dressmakers makes me long for the embrace of a handsewn garment, stitched of relationships to land and history, embroidered with story.” –Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
“Only a daring poet, who happens also to be a superb essayist, would try stitching together two endeavors seemingly so disparate as high-fashion dressmaking and ocean-edge fishing. But Alison Deming succeeds brilliantly. To these twin themes of fish and fashion, she adds threads of family and cultural history stretching from Paris to New York to a Canadian island in the Bay of Fundy, from the mid-nineteenth century to our own day. What binds the book together is her admiration for ‘the maker class,’ people skilled in the use of hand and eye to produce the essentials of life. Deming reminds us that literature is one of those essentials—a truth captured by the word ‘poet,’ whose Greek root means ‘one who makes.’” ––Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination
“A Woven World juxtaposes stories– fishing weirs and high fashion—in surprising ways, but the weaving is magical and wise. Deming’s focus is on the labor of hands and the materials they work with, from saplings and brush to sequins and silk. This is, in other words, a deep inquiry into the nature of character and craft. Throughout it all, Deming’s fierce urge to re-ravel the world shows us what we risk losing if we disentangle ourselves from the stories that help shape who we are. This is a celebratory book, full of scrutiny and longing.” –Barbara Hurd, author of The Epilogues
“It is a joy to read Alison Hawthorne Deming’s latest book, with its gorgeous sentences and graceful, interweaving structure. As usual, her humanity comes across beautifully.” –Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait Inside My Head