Spinning and Weaving

Spinning and Weaving is a new nonfiction historical survey of spinning and weaving in the British Isles by Lynn Huggins-Cooper. Due out 19th Dec 2019 from Pen & Sword, it's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format. The first chapters (~45% of the content) cover textile history from the prehistoric to the modern day. With such a massive timeline, the coverage is brief for each time period, but provides a lot of tantalizing glimpses to follow up later.

The following chapter (~42% of the content) has interviews with several different individual artisans and collectives. The format provides the same questions to each interviewee and it's interesting to see how they came to their craft from often disparate origins but their enthusiasm and respect is shared by them all.

The photography is black and white, but is clear and illustrative. There are no tutorials, but there are a wealth of links provided (slanted toward readers in the UK).  There is also a solid bibliography and links section to stockists and teachers. This would make a superlative library selection for a guild or shop, as well as for the fibre-artist's home library.

This is a good, accessible, clearly written introduction to spinning and weaving.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.