As part of The School of Making’s Year of Color, we are looking at some of the mechanics behind exploration and creativity and how inspiration emerges. One recent standout is Brooklyn’s BLUE: The TATTER Textile Library. As its name explains, the space is a soothing collage of blue, with fabrics draped across shelves and cabinets. The interactive and ongoing art installation and research library carefully selects colors and textures intended to call out the relationship between human and cloth and the connections between color, culture, and economics.

Its deep blue shelves are lined with over 6,000 books, journals, and catalogs that are perfectly catalogued and span the subjects of the global history, tradition, making, and beauty of textiles. The library contains the personal collections of Edith Robinson Wyle, founder of Los Angeles’ Craft and Folk Art Museum (now Craft Contemporary), her granddaughter Jordana Munk Martin, creator of the TATTER Library, and Carol Westfall, renowned fiber artist and professor. The collected items identify and celebrate what different generations and cultures of makers can teach us and how they can inspire us. Martin compares immersing yourself into the library to the alchemical process of a dye bath, which can transform fabric forever.

BLUE: The TATTER Textile Library is open by appointment only. Visit their website for a more detailed dive into color, textile, and material color. View their catalog here. Find them on Instagram @tatterbluelibrary.

Images courtesy of tatter.org