Throughout its long history, homedressmaking has been a formative experience in the lives of millions of women. This volume is an account of the significance of homedressmaking as a form of American and European material culture.

Rejecting traditional notions of what constitutes art, this book brings together essays on a variety of fiber arts to recoup women's artistic practices by redefining what counts as art. Although scholars over the last twenty years have turned their attention to fiber arts, redefining the conditions, practices, and products as art, there is still much work to be done to deconstruct the stubborn patriarchal art/craft binary. With essays on a range of fiber art practices, including embroidery, knitting, crocheting, machine stitching, rug making, weaving, and quilting, this collection contributes to the ongoing scholarly redefinition of women's relationship to creative activity. Focusing on women as producers of cultural products and creators of social value, the contributors treat women as active subjects and problematize their material practices and artifacts in the complex world of textiles. Each essay also examines the ways in which needlework both performs gender and, in turn, constructs gender. Moreover, in concentrating on and theorizing material practices of textiles, these essays reorient the study of fiber arts towards a focus on process?the making of the object, including the conditions under which it was made, by whom, and for what purpose?as a way to rethink the fiber arts as social praxis.

Fashion design is increasingly gaining attention as an important form of cultural expression. However, scholarship has largely focused on specific designers and their finished products. This collection reveals the crucial foundational art and craft of patternmaking design, with essays that explore the practice in specific historical and cultural contexts. Probing the theoretical underpinnings that inform patternmaking, Patternmaking History and Theory interrogates topics that span cultures and time periods, ranging from high fashion to home sewing. Taking the reader from women's making and mending for victory during World War Two, to Jamaican dress history and today's complex 3D pattern cutting software, the book examines the creative aspect of a culturally rich skill. Beautifully illustrated and rooted in original research, Patternmaking History and Theory brings together a group of leading international scholars to provide a range of perspectives on a key but often overlooked aspect of design.

This volume explores the cultural and social values attached to retail selling in various historical contexts and locations. The articles shed light on different aspects of an activity that is both 'mundane' and almost universal: that of selling commodities for a profit. This is a field of study that is of growing interest to scholars from a variety of disciplines, but on which relatively little has yet been published.

This book describes twelve inventions that transformed the United States from a rural and small-town community to an industrial country of unprecedented power. These inventions demonstrate that no one person is ever responsible for technological advances and that the culture produces a number of people who work together to create each new invention. The book also shows the influences of technology on society and examines the beliefs and attitudes of those who partake in technological advances. The book is both a sociological analysis and a history of technology in the United States in the past two hundred years.

This book explores the rise of consumerism and the expanding variety of goods available in Japan. Japan is placed within the comparative context of the 'consumer revolution' in Europe and North America, contributing to the analysis of the ways in which consumption and everyday life change in the course of economic development.