History and Information
This page will offer you some sources to learn more about the history of amigurumi dolls, as well as information that tells you what Amigurumi dolls are. The first 2 links below will take you to web pages that detail a brief history of amigurumi. The next link provides a more recent historical example of amigurumi in protests. The last item is a book that contains the history of textile works across many cultures.
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Amigurumi: All You Need to Know About Japanese CrochetThis article written by Jessica Esa, also details the history of amigurumi, but it also shifts its focus to explain the appeal of amigurumi. This is a good place to understand why someone would be interested in amigurumi, to begin with. It also gives in-depth explanations of all of the crocheting techniques and details all of the materials and tools that go into crafting amigurumi. This article is hosted on Japan Objects, a website made by various experts in Japanese art and culture to display articles and objects.
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What is Amigurumi?This website details many basic elements about amigurumi, including the history, cultural impact, how they are constructed, and the etiology of the name. It gives many examples of the types of items that crafters tend to make. This serves as a good introductory source if you just want to learn generally what amigurumi are and where they came from. This comes from Domestika, which is a platform for sharing arts and crafts instructional sessions from professionals, but has grown to be a community of people from around the world. This article is written by the company itself.
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The Woolen Blitzkrieg. Yarn Bombing for a Cozy City.This is an article written by Ma Isabel Carrasco Castro about the increase of arts and crafts-based activism that started in the 1990s as a response to a growing discontent with modern developments. Various knitting and crochet guilds have gotten together to knit cozies on top of everyday city objects to make urban areas feel more alive. Amigurumi has also been knitted to hang off of objects like door handles, showing how a variety of knitting and crocheting art forms take on a political meaning. This article was sourced from the User Experience and Urban Creativity journal, which is a journal that looks at how art can be used to think about urban spaces. This article is more advanced than other items on this list, with a reading level above high school.
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Threads Around the World : from Arabian Weaving to Batik in Zimbabwe
by
ISBN: 9780764356506Publication Date: 2018This book details the history and importance of weaving, crocheting, and other textile crafts in countries around the world. This is a broad view of textile arts around the world, and it does include a section on amigurumi. Readers who are interested in seeing how textile history fits together both between and within cultures might appreciate the extra information.
Search Tips
This is a general search through Gale's databases, allowing you to search through a combination of any of the individual Gale databases. This is useful for finding published news articles, magazines, and academic journals. Gale Power Search is especially useful when there might not be too many materials on your topic, or if you want to survey a variety of materials. You can use the Boolean terms AND and OR to create a search and use "" for specific phrases. The "Advanced Search" menu to structure these terms and even apply certain filters.
Words/phrases: Words and phrases that I found to be useful include: amigurumi, japan, crochet dolls, textiles, and dolls.
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