‘Making Matters celebrates the joy of the handmade in all of its wonderful variety. In a fast paced world, it is a timely and beautiful exploration of making traditions. I loved it!’
Kate Strasdin, author of The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes

As children, we made things: snowmen, paper boats, eccentrically costumed plays. That making fired our minds and imaginations – it altered our small worlds and shaped who we became. But as adults, it is hard to find to find the space for creativity and to remember its power.

Exploring craft traditions and forms of making from across centuries and cultures, Clare Hunter encourages to engage with the world afresh. To use our hands again, to see beauty in unexpected places, to play and protest and embrace imaginative possibilities. From paper crafts to wonders made from light and snow, she searches for creative delight – making lanterns, puppets and pinhole cameras.

Inspiring and fascinating, Making Matters celebrates individual and collective creativity. It blends history, culture and politics with rich storytelling, wonderful characters and tales of remarkable objects. Read this, and then make something.

PRAISE FOR THREADS OF LIFE:
“An astonishing feat . . . Her highly impressive debut is a richly textured and moving record of a history that has largely being lost” Sunday Times

“Enthralling…beautiful… An inspiring and moving sideways look at history” Sunday Express

“A beautifully considered book . . . Clare Hunter has managed to mix the personal with the political with moving results” Tracy Chevalier

In sixteenth-century Europe women’s voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency. From her lavishly embroidered gowns as the prospective wife of the French Dauphin to the fashion dolls she used to encourage a Marian style at the Scottish court and the subversive messages she embroidered in captivity for her supporters, Mary used textiles to advance her political agenda, affirm her royal lineage and tell her own story.

In this eloquent cultural biography, Clare Hunter exquisitely blends history, politics and memoir to tell the story of a queen in her own voice.

At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom.

In sixteenth-century Europe women’s voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency. From her lavishly embroidered gowns as the prospective wife of the French Dauphin to the fashion dolls she used to encourage a Marian style at the Scottish court and the subversive messages she embroidered in captivity for her supporters, Mary used textiles to advance her political agenda, affirm her royal lineage and tell her own story.

In this eloquent cultural biography, Clare Hunter exquisitely blends history, politics and memoir to tell the story of a queen in her own voice.