Description
The Straw Shop recommends this spectacular reference book, whether you are a collector, costumer, milliner, history buff, fiber artist, or someone interested in a specific field of straw art.
For more than 40 years author Veronica Main,MBE rigorously researched the industries of the UK.
Veronica Main,MBE, the world’s expert on the subject of straw plaiting, documented a history of straw plaiting for the first time in 2023, brimming with helpful step-by-step diagrams!
Straw plaiting has been used to make accessories from hats and baskets to handbags, trimmings and home-wares around the world for centuries. Once employing tens of thousands of people in the UK alone, the craft is now listed as Critically Endangered on Heritage Crafts’ Red List in the UK.
This book aims to change that, drawing on more than 50 previously unpublished patterns and techniques from around the world that will help you to unlock the history and preserve the skills of straw plaiting.
For each pattern, follow the step-by-step diagrams and instructions and discover how they were developed while learning about materials, tools and preparation. Once familiar with the plaiting techniques – using straw as well as other materials – you will be able to develop your own skills, possibly blending in recycled materials, which are increasingly being used to produce beautiful and unique pieces. If you are familiar with Veronica’s book documenting the Swiss Straw industry; Swiss Straw Work: Techniques Of A Fashion Industry by Veronica Main regarding that area of straw fashion, then the invaluable instructional format of this book may be familiar.
The Straw Shop highly recommends this book for your library. This is THE reference book on the subject of straw plaits.
Published by Herbert Press (2023), 336 pages, book size is 11.28″ l x 8.78″ w x 1.15″ h, ISBN: 9781789940756
