"A reflection and celebration of the fading crafts, cottage industries, and artisans that defined communities-like the author's-for generations Everywhere communities, habitats, and families are endangered by loss. This book is an act of resistance against such loss, a testament to the beauty and fragility of human making. This book is about the quest for continuity and belonging in a time of destabilizing change. Sensing a need to preserve the crafts and stories of communities and inspired by an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute featuring Yves St. Laurent's "Sardine Dress," I turned to the artisanal industries of my ancestors, on Grand Manan Island, a community of 2500 residents, and New York City, a metropolis of millions. It begins with a family cottage in the Canadian Maritimes, a place for two centuries the center of a thriving herring fishery, and travels back into that history and to a second strand of family history in my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother who were artisanal dressmakers. Both strands speak to micro-habitats of human making, both peaked in the late 19th century and have faded away. Both represent ways of knowing and being perfectly suited to their time and place that I lament seeing fade away. I wanted to refuse history's erasure, reweave the fabric of those lives. One way to face loss is to give a presence on the page to those people, places, and practices that we have loved, 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"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.