June 2011
44 posts
Dyeing Blues
Analogous to birth and regeneration, Kodi textile dyeing is also vulnerable to the cycle of death and decay. It is recorded that practitioners associate the unpleasant smell of the dyebath with the putrefaction of rotting flesh, and consider the bath polluting to gestation. Pregnant women should not look at the dye pots, lest the sight of the dark and churning liquid dissolve the contents of...
Funeral Cloth
The changing funeral ceremonies of the seventeenth-century English aristocracy might be seen as heralding a related transformation. As they became increasingly expressive of private loss, these funerals no longer allowed kin groups, through spectacular cloth presentations, to channel death into regeneration and political gain. In earlier times, the mourners had received black drapes from the kin...
“Cloth is a repository for prized fibers and dyes, dedicated human labor, and the...”
Under Capitalism
Under Capitalism, the domain of cloth manufacture seems incapable of generating or sustaining ideas of benevolent spiritual or ancestral involvement in the production process, or analogies between this process and the reproduction of offspring. Even when manufacturing is organized through home industries and involves considerable handwork- even when factory production has yet to emerge- market...
Buying American-Made is Luxurious and Rewarding
The U.S.’s reputation for quality is benefiting upscale labels as more Americans question where their goods come from, and how their buying affects the economy, said Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing Inc.
“Made in America feeds into the values proposition,” she said. “They are voting with their money not just for U.S. jobs, but for a way of life. In 2007, they...
