Caressing cloth: The warp and weft as site of exchange
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Dormor2
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- The erotic cloth: Seduction & fetishism in textiles
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury
- ISBN
- 9781474281751
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This 7000 word essay builds upon a body of research which considers the interplay between writing about textile and textile practices. Both the style and content of the texts produce are necessarily initiated by being embedded in textile practice and the production of textile artefacts.
The essay challenges the concept of woven cloth as a substrate or baseline, instead suggesting it as a means for expression. Whilst existing scholarship surrounding textile and textile practices establish cloth as a material witness, psycho-social and/or sociological mode of expression, this research establishes the structural qualities and behaviours of cloth as an initiating mode of meaning that these other concepts depend upon.
This book is the first critical examination of the erotically charged relationship between the surface of the skin and the touch of cloth, exploring the ways in which textiles can seduce, conceal and reveal through their interactions with the body. Initially published in English, it is currently being translated into Chinese with Chongqing University Press.
The book has received international endorsements and reviews, which attest to its importance across the fields of fashion and textiles. Reviewed in Craft Research (vol 9:2), this essay was commended for its ‘capacity to convey eroticism in the caress of cloth and its essentiality to the artist…’ The reviewer further commented upon the effectiveness of the style of the text, noting that ‘references to warp and weft go beyond construction and present a consciousness of the point where cloth finds skin … this association with interlacing mutual exchange and erotic charge effectively increases the readers’ awareness of the erotic connections between mind and body, cloth and skin …’ Reviewed in Textile History (vol 50:2) as excelling ‘in analysis of the bodily effect of making’, this essay contributes to the book’s acclaim within the field.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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