Spiabooks

This is a one of kind book consisting of five folded sheets left unbound that are housed in a clamshell box. Each of the five sheets describes a moment in the history of our relationship with cloth and/or the idea of garment. Every civilization on the planet has invented weaving independently of each other. It is a very human endeavor and special garments still mark our cultural milestones today, from a baptism gown, graduation attire, a wedding dress and wearing black to a funeral. The first illustration is a veil; cloth too expensive to cut draped without need of a personal size with varying degrees of transparency depending on the need to cover or reveal. The second is the Coat, describing the change from draping to tailoring. Cloth was now cut and fastened together in a shape closer to revealing the shape of one's body. The third is the idea of one's body as an actual garment. This idea came up with the huge growth in tattooing that has arisen in the last decade. Did tattooing the body evolve into embellishing cloth? How are these two decorative elements related? The forth is the suit of armor and the coat of feathers, symbolically equal. The fifth illustration describes an illusion and asks the question of how illusion came about. The earliest cultures imitated sacred animals with specially made cloth that was worn when executing specific gestures. The marionette and the Catalan "gegant" change the scale of the figure and remove the human almost entirely, so that the illusion is the result of a piece of cloth and a well rehearsed more mechanical gesture.