Reading the Thread: Cloth and Communication

Exploring cloth as a record of experience and its role in communicating our identities, this book presents cloth within its social, historical, psychological and cultural context.

Lesley Millar is Professor of Textile Culture and Director of The International Textile Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts, UK. She has been responsible for many international touring textile exhibitions. She has contributed to many publications most recently editing, with Alice Kettle, The Erotic Cloth (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Spaces and Places (2021). In 2008 she received the Japan Society Award for significant contribution to Anglo-Japanese relationships and in 2011 was appointed MBE for her contribution to Higher Education.

Alice Kettle is Professor of Textile Art at Manchester Metropolitan University and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Real World Learning University of Winchester, UK. She is co-author of Machine Stitch Perspectives with Jane McKeating (2010) Hand Stitch Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Collaboration Through Craft (Bloomsbury, 2013) with Dr Amanda Ravetz and Helen Felcey. She has most recently edited, with Lesley Millar, The Erotic Cloth (Bloomsbury, 2018). She is a practising artist with work in international collections including the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, The Crafts Council of Great Britain, Museums in Riga, MAIO in Turin, and the Belger Collection Kansas City USA.