Some really cool books for fiber folks

The other day I raided the college library at Auraria Campus (where I teach at Community College of Denver) to check out a couple of books by one of my absolutely favorite authors, Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

I already have her book, Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years, but she also has written a number of others. Basically, I'll read anything she's written, ever. I love her writing and there's so much material in what she writes, it'd take years to absorb it all. I"ve read Women's Work maybe 5 or 6 times and I'm still getting more out of it each time I pick it up.

Anyway, I'd checked out her first book, Prehistoric Textiles, before when I was writing an article for The Ostracon (the journal of The Egyptian Study Society, based here in Denver), but I'd never actually sat down and read the whole thing. It's a hardcover that's 2 inches thick and has 387 pages not counting the index and bibliography, so it's a good thing that faculty have a 6-month checkout period! My understanding is that Prehistoric Textiles was originally Dr. Barber's doctoral dissertation that got out of hand and acquired a life of its own.

The other book I checked out was Dr. Barber's The Mummies of Ürümchi. I'd seen a documentary on television about this, but I've never managed to see the whole thing as I'm just not all that keen on mummies. Well, as one might expect from Elizabeth Barber, the book is much less about the mummies per se than about their clothes, which is totally fascinating. I'm learning a whole lot of things about weaving and plaiting that I never knew about before.

Another really fascinating book of hers is When They Severed Earth from Sky by Elizabeth and Paul Barber. It's not about fiber work, but about the truth that is encapsulated in many regions' folklore. Awesome book.