Threads of Light: Chinese Embroidery from Suzhou and the Photography of Robert Glenn Ketchum (UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Textile Series)

I don't know why all the reviews here have at least 1 unhelpful vote (well, except the misguided negative review) because the praise is all well-deserved. Just in gorgeous illustration, this book is worth it. But with the accompanying text...man...this is a stunner. Editor Patrick Dowdey interrupted his work on his doctorate to research this marriage between photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum's glorious paintings and the embroideries copying same by the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute (SERI). Dr. Dowdey edits the book whose Table of Contents is as follows:Forewords, Acknowledgments, Notes to the Reader"Introduction" by Zhang Meifang (the head of SERI)"But Will It Still Be Beautiful?" by Patrick Dowdey"In Pursuit of Texture" by Robert Glenn Ketchum (the photographer)"Technical Aspects of Suzhou Embroidery" by Jo Q. Hill (the museum's director of conservation)CatalogNotes to the Text, Glossary, References Cited.This book is not the ordinary museum catalog. The first thing you read in Doran H. Ross's Foreword is the bizarre way in which this collection was created. Ross is the Director of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History which houses the embroideries--truly "threads of light." Ross points out that we all know the great works of art in the world mostly from photography: who gets to visit the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan, France's Louvre, Greece, Russia's Hermitage, the Vatican, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum...and every other great museum in the world? No, I know what the Mona Lisa looks like from photos of it. So photography is often the exclusive vehicle to view art. Certainly, photography is art in its own right. But Ketchum turned art on its head when he directed that his masterful nature photos be reproduced in Chinese embroidery!! Beginning in 1985, Ketchum embarked on this enormous project literally to make his legacy. His body of photography was already highly regarded in the art world...but to recreate so much of it in glorious embroidery puts it over the top.After reading a detailed history of early Chinese embroidery by expert Meifang, Dowdey takes over with more recent embroidery and the importance of SERI. Suzhou is an ancient Chinese city renowned for its beautiful traditions in art. It's charming to read of how the Random Stitch Embroidery Research Studio in SERI was developed to teach the embroiderers about Western art, photography and how to design the embroideries based on the photographs. Photos of Suzhou, of SERI, of the studio, of the embroiderers and of the process let you feel you really understand the works themselves.On page 84, you see Ketchum's photo, "The Coat of Many Colors" which is a beautiful landscape, a steep hillside with lovely foliage and dramatic color and shadows. On page 85, you're treated with the exact image done in embroidery. Truly remarkable. As you pore through the Catalog beginning on page 106, you have to pay careful attention to which illustrations are photos and which are embroideries. And--how weird: there is a beautiful drawing of an emperor's progress made in 1689. In 1990, SERI reproduced it with "Suzhou fine embroidery. Human hair and paint on silk." The 5 embroiderers are listed.In the catalog, 7 of the right-hand pages are foldouts: usually a detailed close-up of the embroidery is on the page and then you unfold it to see the entire work over two pages. Just marvelous.I hope I have given you some extra detail as to what this book is all about and why you want to buy it...you really want to buy it. I have some of the References cited and they might interest you as well:The Art of Oriental Embroidery: History, Aesthetics, and TechniquesEmbroidery of Imperial China: [exhibition] March 17-May 28, 1978, China House Gallery, China Institute in AmericaThe Bantam Step-By-Step Needle CraftENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEEDLEWORK (amazing mistake of name: "Theodore" instead of "Thérèse" de Dillmont...although her name is often abbreviated: "Th.")The Encyclopedia of Embroidery Techniques: A Comprehensive Visual Guide to Traditional and Contemporary TechniquesEmbroidered Textiles: A World Guide to Traditional PatternsArt of the EmbroidererChinese EmbroideryChinese Dress (Far Eastern Series)

I'm not all that interested in embroidery, but I enjoy visual excitement. One day while gallery hopping, we came upon a small portion of the work depicted in this book. We were both blown away by the work! Absolutely amazing. I would really like some posters of this work.For those interested in the embroidery details, it is done with fine silk threads, hand dyed, on various fine fabrics, some of which are so fine you can see through them. Much of the interesting texture and effect is from what they call random stitch embroidery, in which the scenes are depicted by various colored stitches .5 cm (1/4 inch) long running in various random directions, yet they all come together to make the image. Other parts of the images are done by carefully controlled stitch direction to give crisp images. They pick up the light and are quite luminous, some are displayed as screens with light coming from behind. Only the enlargements in the book give a sense of the beauty and amazing technique of the actual pieces.Oh, and the book is good too. Definitely a 5 star quality coverage of the work, with background information, as described in other reviews. But the work itself is beyond 5 stars. (In the gallery they were priced around the $10,000-$150,000 range, some took several years to complete.)

I bought this book, sight unseen purely from the rave reviews listed. To be honest I was a bit disappointed with the book. Firstly, Robert Glenn Ketchum's photographs are very average. In fact any 15 year old with a good camera and decent eye could take photo's of this quality. The thing that redeems them is the skill of the needleworkers. Secondly, I just think the book is overated. There's several western needlework books that cover this type of embroidery and have better images in my opinion so I just don't understand the rave. An interesting read, but..........yeah. I wouldn't have paid this much if I'd been able to flick through it first.

The book itself is beautifully presented and the writing is up to par. For me, the book focused on whether the Suzhou embroiderers were capable to replicate exactly one of Robert Glenn Ketchum’s photographs. The goal was not to create art, but to see recreate something that already existed in another form. The Chinese embroideries in the book are astonishing. And, yes, all of the embroideries were copied from paintings. Yet, the Chinese embroideries were ethereal, while the embroideries based on Ketchum's photos were visually noisy. It seems that Ketchum could just as easily have programmed his computer to machine-create an embroidery. Some of these embroiderers spent as much as five years on a piece that could have been spent on creating actual embroideries. If you're looking for a high quality, well-written table book, this would be well worth the money. But, if you're looking for the magic of Suzhou embroidery, you won't find it.

Large book with absolutely stunning works, love the format (some pages unfold to reveal an enlarged fragment of embroidery with visible stitches), multiple photographs of Chinese embroiderers at work and Suzhou, interesting read. I wish there were more photographs of completed masterpieces and those in progress and more enlarged fragments. I would love to go to Suzhou some day but it is not going to happen any time soon, so I am glad I found the book that gave me a peek.

A beautifully photographed book full of information and amazing skill in this art. The artwork is just beautiful and the photographer has brought it to life in a breath-taking manner. Delightful!

This is a beautiful book about an astonishing and vanishing craftsmanship of exquisite beauty. I had the privilege of seeing examples of these silk embroidery "paintings" in a gallery in Carmel, CA. If you can't go there, this is the next best experience!

This was a gift, She loved it!!

Loved this book for inspiration