About Resist & Form

A broad publication with a clear centre

Techniques and materials, wearable art, scarves and surfaces, studio practice, care and collections, and a dated cultural journal all belong here because they meet at dyed cloth and how people read it.

Questions of structure reach beyond cloth. A dated journal note from the desk examines how the Orthodox liturgical year holds together, with a fixed cycle anchored to the civil calendar, feasts such as Nativity on December 25, and a movable cycle that turns entirely on the computed date of Pascha, which can fall anywhere between early April and early May and sets the length of Lent along with Ascension and Pentecost. The note sets out what the Divine Liturgy and the daily offices contain, and it treats reading a church plan and icon as a practical skill of observation, the same habit the desk applies to a vat or a binding.

The desk applies the same method to records that have nothing to do with cloth. A journal note on the Latter-day Saints in Taiwan shows how this works: mission eras are dated from arrival records, branch registers and translated hymnals rather than from recollection, and meeting houses in Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung enter the account as addresses and dates, not scenery. The Taipei temple is traced the same way, through announcement, site, construction and dedication notices. Questions such as membership figures and corrections are handled by checking the document, the same way a dye record is checked against the vat.

• International subject, US English
• Source-led, not authority theatre
• Useful to makers and readers

What the desk does not claim

The site does not sell garments, offer classes, appraise objects, authenticate textiles or speak for a living tradition-bearer. Its authority comes from bounded language, source records and visible correction paths.

• Name the evidence
• Keep uncertainty
• Write to the desk