My review of Crochet coral reef

Crochet Coral Reef by Margaret Wertheim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really like this book. I had come across the idea of the crocheted reef when I was discovering hyperbolic crochet. I like the maths of it and that a crocheted shape is best way to demonstrate hyperbolic shapes. This book brings together conservation, craft, art, maths, feminism and much more as well as demonstrating a large scale and distributed craftivism project. There are lovely photographs of the different reefs, combined with stories of the different contributors and creators. They are all named in the book, and so a chunk of it is taken up with acknowledgements. This is brilliant as is highlights that these are not anonymous contributors (although some choose to be anonymous), but people with names and diverse geographies. This long acknowledgment added to the value of this publication.

To quote from this book (p131)
'In The tempest, Shakespeare proposes the sea as the site of transformation and renewal:

Full fathom five they father lies
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange"

Pulling in different directions, the Crochet Coral Reef points us towards mathematics, towards a consideration of collaboration, towards eco-consciousness and action. Most of all, the work draws us into the space of looking carefully, with a sense of wonder, at the infinitely varied forms and their combinations."

It is a wonderful, challenging book to read, with many photographs illustrating the reefs.


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