Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Glorafilia: The Venice Collection


Some months ago, I read somewhere about the book, Glorafilia: The Venice Collection by Carole Lazarus & Jennifer Berman. It supposedly had information about marbleing on canvas. Well, that wasn't true. However, this is a lovely book but it is first and foremost a travelogue. These two ladies spent time in Venice and the text and photos are beautiful. Lot's of inspiration here.

There are needlepoint designs as well, some charted, some with traceable drawings, but the instructions are not as complete as we expect nowadays. This book was published in the early 90s and I imagine they were working on it for several years. The materials available then, and in England, would not have been what they are now. The designs do not all appeal to me, but there are a couple that are pretty cool. The colors tend to be very muted and I would have liked them to be brighter. There are some nice designs and with the techniques and threads available today they could be vastly improved.

This book is available used, and at very reasonable prices, through several online vendors.

1 comment:

Possibilities, Etc. said...

I had that book when it came out - I didn't care for it either, but they were considered at the time very very good. It's just not "me." I agree that brightening colors and "modernizing" a bit would help.