'A must-have for anyone interested in working with straw and an astonishing contribution to the preservation of this endangered craft.' Jay Blades MBE, Co-Chair of Heritage Crafts An engaging makers' guide to the history and craft of straw plaiting, brimming with helpful step-by-step diagrams. Straw plaiting has been used to make accessories from hats and baskets to handbags, trimmings and homewares around the world for centuries. Once employing tens of thousands of people in the UK alone, the craft is now listed as Critically Endangered on Heritage Crafts' Red List. This book aims to change that, drawing on more than 50 previously unpublished patterns and techniques from around the world that will help you to unlock the history and preserve the skills of straw plaiting. For each pattern, follow the step-by-step diagrams and instructions and discover how they were developed whilst learning about materials, tools and preparation. Once familiar with the plaiting techniques – using straw as well as other materials – you will be able to develop your own skills, possibly blending in recycled materials, which are increasingly being used to produce beautiful and unique pieces.

Explores the techniques of straw marquetry & embroidery, and reviews the lost craft of Swiss straw work - the use of straw to make decorative trimmings and braids. Detailed step-by-step photographs illustrate all the techniques.

This first-of-its-kind collection presents photographer Karlheinz Weinberger’s influential portraits of rebel youth of the sixties. While Karlheinz Weinberger is known as a pioneer of male erotic imagery, the Swiss amateur photographer also left an indelible mark on the fashion world with his decades-long documenting of vibrant rebel youth culture. These working-class teenagers created looks that fused iconic American pop culture imagery—biker jackets, denim jeans, bouffant hairdos, James Dean insouciance—with their own idiosyncratic sensibilities. From the late 1950s through the ’60s, Weinberger captured the defiant glamour of these youths with a keen eye for their provocative handmade designs. Inspired by the rebel youth’s pop playfulness and fierce individuality, a legion of contemporary fashion-industry leaders have been profoundly influenced by the photographs collected in this stunning volume.

A harrowing memoir revealing the horrors that occurred within a little-known prison camp in Switzerland, by a POW who survived it. During WWII, 1,517 members of US aircrews were forced to seek asylum in Switzerland. Most neutral countries found reason to release US airmen from internment, but Switzerland took its obligations under the Hague Convention more seriously than most. The airmen were often incarcerated in local jails, then transferred to prison camps. The worst of these camps was Wauwilermoos, where at least 161 US airmen were sent for the honorable offense of escaping. To this hellhole came Dan Culler, the author of this incredible account of suffering and survival. Prisoners slept on lice-infested straw, were malnourished, and had virtually no hygiene facilities or access to medical care. But worse, the commandant of Wauwilermoos was a diehard Swiss Nazi. He allowed the mainly criminal occupants of the camp to torture and rape Dan Culler with impunity. After many months of such treatment, starving and ravaged by disease, he was finally aided by a British officer. Betrayal dominated his cruel fate—by the American authorities, by the Swiss, and, in a last twist, in a second planned escape that turned out to be a trap. But Dan Culler’s courage and determination kept him alive. Finally making it back home, he found he had been abandoned again. Political expediency meant there was no such place as Wauwilermoos. He had never been there, so he had never been a POW and didn‘t qualify for any POW benefits or medical or mental treatment for his many physical and emotional wounds. His struggle to make his peace with his past forms the final part of the story. An introduction and notes from military historian Rob Morris provide historical background and context, including recent efforts to recognize the suffering of those incarcerated in Switzerland and afford them full POW status.

No1 NEW RELEASE, AMAZON Oct 2019. The Willcox & Gibbs chain-stitch sewing machines are one of the most collected sewing machines of all time. Some say the machine represents the finest piece of 19th Century precision engineering in the world. Certainly the company thought so, advertising their machines as 'Beyond Comparison'. Today most enthusiasts try to have at least one W&G in their collection. World renowned author Alex Askaroff brings to life this amazing machine and the even more amazing men who built it.

Complete illustrated introduction to the age-old craft of plaiting harvest, or good luck figures from straw. 150 illustrations.