This book explores the neglected history of textile crafts in projects of social and moral reform and considers how historical processes have become materialised in contemporary humanitarian craft-work.
This book uncovers the overlooked history of artisanal textiles in projects aimed at social uplift and moral reform. The contributors ask what the implications of this form of gendered craft production are for our understanding of the humanitarian imagination, relations of humanitarian production and the generation of meaning and social and artistic value. It also opens a dialogue with contemporary socially-engaged textile artists to engender critical reflection on the socially-situated meaning of textile craft in past and present humanitarian contexts.
Introduction: the meanings and making of humanitarian handicraft
Claire Barber, Helen Dampier, Rebecca Gill and Bertrand Taithe
1 Literary visions of craft and cooperation in the European handmade lace
revival, c. 18401914 David Hopkin
2 Work of hands: humanitarian craft and fair trade in Britain and Ireland,
18851914 Janice Helland
3 Thinking Anglo-American industrial relief through Armenian needlework in
the late 1890s: humanitarian marketing ethics, agency and identity
Stéphanie Prévost
4 Emily Hobhouse and the Koppies Lace School, 190826 Helen Dampier and
Rebecca Gill
5 Beyond gratitude. Belgian women, humanitarian organisations and lace-aid
programmes in the First World War Wendy Wiertz
6 Threads of friendship: Quaker women, peasant handicrafts and educational
reconstruction in Russia and Poland, 191639 Siān Roberts
7 Politics woven as missionary craft: the carpets of the White Fathers and
Sisters from the 1920s Bertrand Taithe
8 Caught in the net: cooperation of lacemakers in the Vologda region,
1880s1930s Elizaveta Berezina
9 Crafting Communist Paternalism: the voices of lacemakers in Koniaków,
Poland, 194762 Nicolette Makovicky
10 Humanitarian handicrafts as (dis)empowerment of women left behind. A
Swedish help to self-help project in the Northern Greek village Vlasti,
196388 Maria Småberg
11 Humanitarian handicrafts: in conversation Catherine Bertola, Claire
Barber, Helen Dampier, Rebecca Gill and June Hill
Afterword Jessica Hemmings -- .
Claire Barber is Senior Lecturer in Textiles at the University of Huddersfield Helen Dampier is Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural History at Leeds Beckett University Rebecca Gill is Reader in Modern History at the University of Huddersfield Bertrand Taithe is Professor of History at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester -- .
