A Story of the Origins of the book Isn't it funny how an innocent phonecall or a seemingly innocuous letter can balloon into an enormous project. It has happened to me on a few occasions but I can only think of one situation when I, in perfect good faith, was the perpetrator of such a communication. It all began in 1993, I was president of the Textile Society of America and we had decided that the summer issue of the organization's newsletter should be dedicated to the development and dissemination of an annual textile bibliography. Although the organizational responsibility for this project fell to the TSA publications chair, the entire board pitched in to help. As some of you know my initial historic textile love focused on Indian textiles. A fellow enthusiast of the subject is Don Johnson, a former Textile Council Board member and Curator of the Ames Library of South Asia at the University of Minnesota. If you were in my position, wouldn't Don be the first person you would ask to become involved in a short bibliography project? For him it should only take a few hours to cite a hundred or so entries. My call to him to participate in such a noble project, was made with a totally guilt-free conscience! Little did I know, this call proved to be one of those instances which led to more and more work and over the next few years my conscience began to absolutely drip with guilt! I think Don, who willingly agreed to participate in the project, was a bit innocent, too. Being Don, the project had to be done well and of course that meant he had to make sure that all citations would be really accurate. Maintaining standards requires checking and checking and rechecking! The files turned out to be tremendously rich and it was soon realized that even a few hundred citations couldn't do justice to the subject. This story has a happy ending and I no longer feel at all guilty, only extremely gratified that the textile field now has an excellent new tool available for the study of South Asian textiles. Don's herculean efforts have manifested themselves in the form of a book which is about 300 pages and deals with the subjects of history, techniques, and materials, but also includes detailed references to religious associations, ethnic groups, and noted specialists of the field. I was particularly pleased to see a section dealing with special publication formats such as the Indian Census publications and Gazetteers as well as museum and gallery catalogues, all of which contain such excellent information but often are a very time consuming challenge to access for specific information. I'm sure you all worked hard during the holiday season and now deserve some self indulgence. Follow my example. Buy the book. Curl up in a comfortable chair and discover how truly multifaced South Asian textiles really are. Truly, Don's effort excites the textile lover's imagination and I'm encouraging indulgence. If you have a serious need to know something specific about textiles from this part of the world, this book is a dream come true. (By permission ) From: Winter 2001 Newsletter, Textile Council, Minneapolis Institute of Arts Back to the top Author Donald Johnson's Post-script Alan and Phil asked if I would try and give a few more personal remarks about the experience of working on Agile hands and creative minds in addition to Lotus Stack's delightful review. Like all special projects undertaken by librarians with South Asia interests, using our collections in depth was a great learning experience. In this case searching for information on textiles and clothing in the multitude of census of India publications and gazetteers proved to be most educational. Using Frank Campbell's 1899 Index catalogue of Indian official publications in the Library, British Museum and the 1930 Royal Empire Society Subject catalogue of the library amply demonstrated how much we have evolved in providing access to information. Identifying research and writings on textiles which appeared in the last two hundred and fifty years provided insights into the trends, issues and concerns of scholars. The helpfulness of fellow librarians concerned with South Asia in providing assistance and verifying seemingly impossible bibliographic citations regarding library holdings yet again demonstrated how collegial we are. In this regard I would especially like to thank Irene Joshi whose interest in South Asian textiles and costumes was a great support and encouragement to me particularly during those down times when one contemplates the usefulness of the project. Her e-mails drawing my attention to titles, exhibitions, or authors made certain work continued. Irene's interest also resulted in discussions of the ever-evolving work whenever we met at the Madison South Asia conferences or AAS. Searching for works in the libraries of the universities of Chicago, Hawaii, and Michigan as well as the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Calico Museum Library in Ahmedabad, India, allowed me to get a researcher's perception of them. Thus although much time and effort went into Agile hands and creative minds I was much enriched in the process. Now for the next project . . . Back to the top Last update -
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