Susan Falls (Author) SUSAN FALLS is a professor of anthropology at the Savannah College of Art & Design and the author of White Gold: Stories of Breast Milk Sharing and Clarity, Cut, and Culture: The Many Meanings of Diamonds.Jessica R. Smith (Author) JESSICA R. SMITH is a professor of fibers at the Savannah College of Art & Design whose work has been exhibited at Design Miami, Cooper Hewitt, and the Walker Art Center. She is the author of “Textiles of the Lowcountry: Charleston and Savannah—Collecting, Preserving, and Narrating.”

A startling and compelling example showing that even the most seemingly simple everyday objects are enmeshed in complicated social, cultural, and historical politics. Combining detailed craft knowledge with anthropological breadth, the authors explore the ways in which race is subtly woven into stagings of slave and owner spaces in historical sites, the culture and politics of yeoman low-country ‘plain folk,’ and the use of craft to reinvigorate Appalachian tradition in new ways. A rare achievement in working across black and white, aesthetics, materials, and culture, this book is an important contribution to new materialisms, discussions of craft, and work on the larger contexts in which material things take on meaning.

Susan Falls (Author) SUSAN FALLS is a professor of anthropology at the Savannah College of Art & Design and the author of White Gold: Stories of Breast Milk Sharing and Clarity, Cut, and Culture: The Many Meanings of Diamonds.Jessica R. Smith (Author) JESSICA R. SMITH is a professor of fibers at the Savannah College of Art & Design whose work has been exhibited at Design Miami, Cooper Hewitt, and the Walker Art Center. She is the author of “Textiles of the Lowcountry: Charleston and Savannah—Collecting, Preserving, and Narrating.”

A startling and compelling example showing that even the most seemingly simple everyday objects are enmeshed in complicated social, cultural, and historical politics. Combining detailed craft knowledge with anthropological breadth, the authors explore the ways in which race is subtly woven into stagings of slave and owner spaces in historical sites, the culture and politics of yeoman low-country ‘plain folk,’ and the use of craft to reinvigorate Appalachian tradition in new ways. A rare achievement in working across black and white, aesthetics, materials, and culture, this book is an important contribution to new materialisms, discussions of craft, and work on the larger contexts in which material things take on meaning.

Susan Falls (Author) SUSAN FALLS is a professor of anthropology at the Savannah College of Art & Design and the author of White Gold: Stories of Breast Milk Sharing and Clarity, Cut, and Culture: The Many Meanings of Diamonds.Jessica R. Smith (Author) JESSICA R. SMITH is a professor of fibers at the Savannah College of Art & Design whose work has been exhibited at Design Miami, Cooper Hewitt, and the Walker Art Center. She is the author of “Textiles of the Lowcountry: Charleston and Savannah—Collecting, Preserving, and Narrating.”

A startling and compelling example showing that even the most seemingly simple everyday objects are enmeshed in complicated social, cultural, and historical politics. Combining detailed craft knowledge with anthropological breadth, the authors explore the ways in which race is subtly woven into stagings of slave and owner spaces in historical sites, the culture and politics of yeoman low-country ‘plain folk,’ and the use of craft to reinvigorate Appalachian tradition in new ways. A rare achievement in working across black and white, aesthetics, materials, and culture, this book is an important contribution to new materialisms, discussions of craft, and work on the larger contexts in which material things take on meaning.