Book Review: Record, Map & Capture

The Travelling Bookbinder: Book review: Record, Map & Capture in Textile Art: Data Visualization in Cloth and Stitch: Jordan Cunliffe

In the MapLove e-course we record, map & capture personal thoughts and journeys on paper, binding them into handmade books.

Jordan Cunliffe’s book meticulously explores how to distill experience into textile art, using cloth and stitch. Her approach shows how to transform data into beautiful stories.

“Spending time on something is how I honour it,” she says.

Using and incorporating fabrics such as pillowcases or her grandfather’s jumper imbue the work with memory before even one stitch has been made.

In the same way, including ephemera from our life travels – the tickets, photos and itineraries, shopping lists and letters – are souvenirs that prompt recollection of specific times and places.

It’s interesting to realise how much data we collect data daily. The information on phones or cameras, in diaries and journals, recorded on a pedometer, stored in the cloud…all this can be visualised and presented in uniquely personal ways.

Stitch by stitch, Jordan makes sense of the world, quietly and privately, sharing a vision of possibility with us.

I recommend the elegant simplicity of Mapping the Sky.

Record, Map & Capture in Textile Art by Jordan Cunliffe is published by Batsford.

Bespoke 24 hour embroidery anyone? I’ve just ordered one…

Our friends at Golden Hare Books are offering you 10% off Record, Map & Capture until 17th March. Use the code bookbinderbookreview22

Each of the projects in MapLove guides you to represent moments worth remembering – we begin on 3rd March.

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