Textile Fiestas of Mexico – A Travelers Guide

This is for you lovely followers who have subscribed to Living Textile of Mexico and haven’t heard from me for over a year! I guess the question is…Why has my blog been deeply unattended?

The answer is…  you are conjuring up and writing a BOOK !

So I’m happy to announce, available October 2016, Textile Fiestas of Mexico – A Traveler’s Guide to Celebrations, Markets and good shopping by Sheri Brautigam. Published by THRUMS

This is something I’ve been working  unconsciously since I moved to Mexico in 2007 and starting documenting my adventures visiting fiestas and markets in the State of Mexico, Michoacan, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. Particularly these places, as they have the largest indigenous communities in Mexico and therefore have the widest variety of traditional textiles. Of course, I was collecting and developing relationships with artisans in these places as I returned to some many times.

Then came the incubation period, beginning in 2011, when I returned to the states after four years in Mexico. I started thinking about how I could be helpful and promote these traditional artisans and the complex and amazing labor that they went through for each beautiful item I was seeing and sometimes buying. I started talking to museum curators and other photographers and authors in Santa Fe, NM, who I knew had undergone the process of publishing.

Honestly, for such a niche market subject, it looked unlikely I would find a publisher and publishing this information myself seemed rather a daunting task, but I hung in there. I made a pretty iBook sample with my best photos, illustrating the concept I was trying to develop and showed it around for a couple of years. I even sold some of these expensive little copies to a few friends.

At the Convergence Conference (2011) in Long Beach, CA, where I was presenting  a couple lectures on Mexican textiles, I bought a copy of “A Textile Guide to the Highlands of Chiapas” by Walter F. Morris, Jr.  I went into WOW-mode realizing there WAS a niche publisher out there. Who was THRUMS?  It took a couple more years before I actually connected with publisher Linda Ligon and she saw my iBook sample. Then another WOW moment and YES let’s do it! But in six months!!! My motto…just say YES!  Luckily I had already done most of the work, gotten most of the images and ONLY had to write it! (more or less)

Here’s my lively guide to where and when to go Mexico and what to buy ! It should be very useful to you textile junkies out there, who want to explore Mexico, and remember these places are safe to visit and also have great food and lodgings. Carry on, go there… and collect some wonderful textiles! Thanks for your patience.

You can pre-order on Amazon, NOW (so you won’t forget) or it could be in your favorite book store if you ask them to order some from THRUMS.