Crabby again. Yesterday's New York Times had a big story in the business section about Etsy, which is undergoing culture shock after new management took over. The story was interesting and extensive, but I fixated on the photos they chose to illustrate it. The online version sticks to photos of the people mentioned in the article, but the print version includes pretty shots of thread, scissors and cones of yarn, meant to put us in the mood of handcrafted stuff.
Well, that's fine, except for the thread. Take a look at this photogenic display -- seven spools in a cute stack. Except that four of them are wood!
When's the last time anybody making crafts to sell online used thread off a wooden spool? Answer: never, because wooden spools went out of circulation before the internet was invented.
And the other three spools also look suspiciously old. The gray thread appears to be on a styrofoam-like spool, which I seem to remember from the 1990s; the pink and yellow look like Coats & Clark plastic spools from a decade ago, before they switched to a tall, skinny format.
I wonder where the photographer came up with these antiques? And I wonder why he (yes, it was a he) thought that would be a better way to illustrate modern commerce than the actual products that people use today? I guess it's part of that stereotype that links sewing with pioneer days, grandma stitching on the treadle machine by the light of the oil lamp. Yuk.
These definitely have the appearance of family heirlooms. I inherited a large collection of 1950s wooden cotton reels from my mother in law in the 1990s, together with an impressive collection of press-studs and knicker elastic(who uses that these days?). The colours of the threads, however, were strangely old-fashioned and I hardly used any of them. They languished in an old square biscuit tin till my oldest granddaughter caught the sewing bug. Her eyes lit up at the sight of them and she's used several in recent projects. It just shows, you should never throw anything away!
ReplyDeleteI also inherited dozens of wooden spools of thread from my grandmother in a wide assortment of colors. It's handy because I almost always have matching thread on hand for quilting in a pinch. I bet I use thread from a wooden spool on half of my projects.
ReplyDeleteThere are some very old fabric/thread/notion stores in Toronto, and I did see some wooden spools there a few weeks ago.. if you are interested, there is a movie called The Town that Thread Built. Really interesting, especially for me since my son went to Paisley Scotland to study years ago and I went for a visit. That town is also famous as the home of the Paisley shawl -patterns "borrowed" from Russia, India and Europe- each scarf might take 2 weeks to make.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this info, boomerRose. I found out that my Scottish ancestors wove paisley shawls in their home near Paisley. Hope to go there one day. Also intend to create a series of small art quilts using paisley fabric. I will have to see that movie!
DeleteI still sometimes use thread from wooden 'reels', some of which I would have bought myself and some were inherited.
ReplyDeleteIn Europe you can still buy yarn on wooden spools, it´s Yli Quilting Yarn for handquilting. Also it is very popular for quilters and women who like sewing to decorate their sewingroom with wooden spools so you can find them in many stores.
ReplyDeleteMany greetings from Germany, Beate
TOO TRUE - you totally hit the nail on the head. I have been laughed at for years by men because knitting/quilting equates (In their minds) to my having less smarts than they do!!
ReplyDeleteIn some ways, that stack of thread is symbolic of exactly what Etsy has come to be. Some guy who doesn't know jack about handcrafts trying to exploit the "Warm fuzzy handmade" image to make a quick buck, while allowing mass produced crap to overshadow the handmade, and turning a blind eye to the theft of copyrighted material. They say that going public is the best thing for the company, but what they really mean is that going public was the best thing for the c-suite's own resumes, portfolios, and checkbooks.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad what has happened to Etsy. In the beginning, everything was supposed to be handmade. What a shame.
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