August 14, 2024 · Alabama ChaninCRAFT AS CITIZENSHIP
I came of age at a time when the United States functioned as a country of makers. We made steel, and textiles, and cars and appliances, and did it so well. American makers designed and produced an array of products that in turn enriched lives, families, and communities. From the rural South and our maker-farms to regional factories, and beyond, American-made most often meant well-designed, well-made goods that could last a lifetime—and in some cases, many lifetimes, through the generations of families.
In my own community of Muscle Shoals, friends and family members grew cotton, which was transformed into knit jersey, and eventually became T-shirts that were shipped around the globe. While Muscle Shoals was becoming “The Hit Recording Capital of the World,” the two-square-mile radius of the Florence-Lauderdale Industrial Park, just across the Tennessee River, was working three shifts around the clock to become the “T-Shirt Capital of the World.” This story was, and is, both local and global.
It took me several years to realize that most of the cotton T-shirts I collected as raw materials for the project that brought me back to northwest Alabama were most likely made in this community. It is a full-circle story.
In The Craftsman, Richard Sennett writes, “Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake. Craftsmanship cuts a far wider swath than skilled manual labor; it serves the computer programmer, the doctor, and the artist; parenting improves when it is practiced as a skilled craft, as does citizenship.”
I can see the straight line that connects the craft of my professional community of farmers, spinners, knitters, dyers, sewers, designers, and the wearers. This notion of interconnectedness forms the basis of Project Threadways’ work. In belonging to a community of makers, we have the opportunity to learn and practice craft as well as to become better citizens.
xo Natalie and all of us @ Project Threadways
Adapted from Embroidery: Threads and Stories from Alabama Chanin and the School of Making, by Natalie Chanin.
