Small Woven Tapestries

Small Woven Tapestries (1973) by Mary Rhodes (BT Batsford Ltd). ISBN: 9780713423105.

Ah, the seventies—an era when macramé hung in every respectable hallway and people earnestly believed they could remake the world with a loom, some wool, and the better part of a rainy weekend. Mary Rhodes, one of the grande dames of craft publishing, here provides what can only be described as a cheerfully serious introduction to the ancient art of making small woven tapestries. Not great big Bayeux-style battle panoramas, mind you. Small ones. For walls, for gift-giving, for impressing houseguests who secretly wish they could knit but never got past scarves.

This volume is crammed with diagrams, colour plates, and instructions written in that unmistakably Batsford tone—half schoolteacher, half kindly aunt, with a faint air of “don’t argue with me, I know what I’m talking about.” Rhodes takes you through warp and weft, looms you can make out of a picture frame, and designs that range from “quaintly geometric” to “did someone drop acid in the dye bath?” It’s all very seventies and all rather wonderful.

Condition: Good. Which means the pages are clean, the binding is firm, and you can actually follow the instructions without them disintegrating in your hands. The spine is slightly faded—as if the book itself has stood proudly on a craft shelf for decades, absorbing sunlight while watching generations of yarn stash build up and never be used. Dust jacket may show a nick or two, but nothing that interferes with its ability to announce itself boldly as Small Woven Tapestries.

Perfect for the crafty, the nostalgically inclined, or anyone who just enjoys books that come with their own faint smell of wool and wood polish. Also makes an excellent conversation starter: “Oh that? Yes, it’s my 1973 Mary Rhodes tapestry manual. Would you like to see my weft?”

Another gloriously unnecessary yet entirely essential title from the ever-dubious vaults of Crappy Old Books, where even faded spines still weave a good yarn.

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