Not all inspiration for textile arts comes from existing textiles. Art books can be a great source. Not only for the representations of textiles in art, but also for themes and motifs.
One of the most common, the acanthus leaf vine, for instance, can be found in paintings, illuminations, stone work, metal work, and on and on.
We don't all have huge local libraries with shelves and shelves of art books. Interlibrary loan is great, but so are some of the on line resources. One of these that I have used as recently as this week is the vast catalog of Met Museum publications available on line, here -- many have free download of the PDF and full text on line. Often even if full text is not on line, there is a "preview" option -- so you can get an idea of whether the book might be useful to pursue further.
Yes, for many things I like old fashioned "dead tree" books, but there is one advantage the PDFs have -- photos can be made bigger. They do lose some some clarity, but it's a great help -- even if just to gather information to decide if you want to research a given item more deeply.
This leads up to the opening of a new page on this blog -- resources. Over the next weeks I will populate the page with resources such as on line books, museum collection search pages and even some of my favorite on line purchasing sites. Watch for the new page to open soon.
Now, off to more fiber work!
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