Guatemalan Woven Wealth - Preserving a Rich Textile Tradition, by Deborah Chandler and Raymond E. Senuk.

Guatemalan Woven Wealth started life as a simple picture catalog for a trunk show to benefit Friendship Bridge, a micro-lending organization that supports Guatemalan women. Mary Anne Wise and a group of friends went on a blitz textile-buying trip to the Mayan highlands for their fourth annual sale. Along the way, Deborah Chandler (author of Learning to Weave and director of Mayan Hands) agreed to write about the lives and customs of Guatemalan weavers for inclusion in the catalog. Raymond Senuk, who has studied Guatemalan textiles for more than thirty years, offered to write carefully-considered descriptions of the seventy-plus textiles presented in full-color photographs. Joe Coca, Judy Sidonie Tillinger, Jon Vachon, and James Rodriguez donated photographs of Guatemalan women and their textiles.

This is not the usual life history of a book, but this is not a usual book either, it’s a community unto itself. It presents a contemporary snapshot of handweaving and weavers in a country with one of the world’s richest and best-preserved but always-evolving textile traditions. Proceeds go to Friendship Bridge (www.friendshipbridge.org) and Mayan Hands to continue and expand their work in Guatemala.