Works in Progress: Material World

​Join Works in Progress magazine to hear from authors Virginia Postrel and Ed Conway about the history of textiles, sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium - how these materials shaped civilisation for millennia, and still do.

​Doors open at 6.30pm, for a 7pm start. Come along to see our mini pop-up exhibition of materials, buy copies of the authors' books, and pick up a print copy of the new issue of Works in Progress. We'll provide some drinks. 

​The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, by Virginia Postrel

​The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code.

​Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization by Ed Conway

​Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future