Blog Archives
American Fabrics and Fashion
American Fabrics and Fashion (also called American Fabrics) was a commercial textile magazine created as a guide for manufacturers in the fabrics industry. In every issue there are dozens of physical fabric samples glued in, so in case you were wondering, “What did the 50’s feel like?”, here is the most literal answer to your question. Accompanying the samples are textile advertisements and sometimes the samples are even incorporated into the ads themselves. For anyone interested in fashion, textiles or all that is tactile, American Fabrics is a publication of great cultural and historical value.
We have 105 Issues of American Fabrics, 1946-1975.
FABRICS & SEWING — FABRIC SAMPLES
Not Ideas About Things But The Thing Itself
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow…
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier-mache…
The sun was coming from the outside.
That scrawny cry–It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
–Wallace Stevens
A subcategory of FABRICS & SEWING, FABRIC SAMPLES is unique to its 909 other cousin subjects in this Picture Collection family. Why? Because these are not visual representations of fabric samples, they are fabric samples. Now, that doesn’t mean that through photocopying, scanning, or rendering their likeness with your hand that you cannot transform these textured colors and colored patterns into pictures, or otherwise appropriate their likeness for your own creative ends. In fact, this is all just an invitation to do just that. Examples and examples follow:
Incidentally, you can find the above, and many other Wallace Stevens poems, in your library:
Location: | Main Stacks |
---|---|
Call Number: | PS3537.T4753 A6 1997 |