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ON THE BUTTON, the significance of an everyday item.
I B Tauris, November 2011
What do you use every day that is small and large, worthless and beyond price? It's easily found in the gutter, yet you may never be able to replace it. You are always losing it but it faithfully protects you. Sexy and uptight, it is knitted into your affections or it may give you nightmares. It has led to conflict, fostered and repressed political and religious change and epitomises the great aesthetic movements. It's Eurocentric and is found all over the world.
This serious, surprising and entertaining exploration of the cultural history of the button, with all its metaphorical and lexical suggestiveness, tells tales of a huge variety of the button's form and function, its serious sometimes uncompromising glamour, its stronghold in fashion and literature, its association with crime and death and its tender call to nostalgia and the sentimental. There have been works addressed to the button collector and general cultural histories. Illustrated in black & white and colour, On the Button links the two, revealing why we are so attracted to buttons, and how they punch way above their weight.
Alison Lurie: 'Nina Edwards knows everything you might want to know about buttons, and much more that you have never imagined. Her book is a tour de force, and full of interesting stories.'
William Dennis Simmons, aged 2, E O Hoppé, 1922
youtu.be/cYopo3vwyF8
Button scene in 'Modern Times', Charlie Chaplin, 1936
The Jewish Chronicle, 15 July 2011:
Click here to download this file
In production:
OFFAL
A Global History
Reaktion Books, 2012
Offal excites extreme reactions. People tend to say they love it or hate it. This book in Reaktion's Edible Series unpacks the reasons for this response and provides a history of offal eating and recipes past and present.
Vietnamese Pho stall
Current:
DRESSED FOR WAR, I B Tauris, 2014
The First World War is seared into our consciousness. Dressed for War examines the period through the prism of what people were wearing, and through its detail and nuance looks at class, gender, art and literature and their relation to fashion.
Dorothy.Lawrence, soldier 1914
I B Tauris, November 2011
What do you use every day that is small and large, worthless and beyond price? It's easily found in the gutter, yet you may never be able to replace it. You are always losing it but it faithfully protects you. Sexy and uptight, it is knitted into your affections or it may give you nightmares. It has led to conflict, fostered and repressed political and religious change and epitomises the great aesthetic movements. It's Eurocentric and is found all over the world.
This serious, surprising and entertaining exploration of the cultural history of the button, with all its metaphorical and lexical suggestiveness, tells tales of a huge variety of the button's form and function, its serious sometimes uncompromising glamour, its stronghold in fashion and literature, its association with crime and death and its tender call to nostalgia and the sentimental. There have been works addressed to the button collector and general cultural histories. Illustrated in black & white and colour, On the Button links the two, revealing why we are so attracted to buttons, and how they punch way above their weight.
Alison Lurie: 'Nina Edwards knows everything you might want to know about buttons, and much more that you have never imagined. Her book is a tour de force, and full of interesting stories.'
William Dennis Simmons, aged 2, E O Hoppé, 1922
youtu.be/cYopo3vwyF8
Button scene in 'Modern Times', Charlie Chaplin, 1936
The Jewish Chronicle, 15 July 2011:
Click here to download this file
In production:
OFFAL
A Global History
Reaktion Books, 2012
Offal excites extreme reactions. People tend to say they love it or hate it. This book in Reaktion's Edible Series unpacks the reasons for this response and provides a history of offal eating and recipes past and present.
Vietnamese Pho stall
Current:
DRESSED FOR WAR, I B Tauris, 2014
The First World War is seared into our consciousness. Dressed for War examines the period through the prism of what people were wearing, and through its detail and nuance looks at class, gender, art and literature and their relation to fashion.
Dorothy.Lawrence, soldier 1914