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Empire of Style

Silk and Fashion in Tang China

By BuYun Chen

Tang dynasty (618–907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends. Its capital at Chang’an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of...

Making Kantha, Making Home

Women at Work in Colonial Bengal

By Pika Ghosh

In Bengal, mothers swaddle their infants and cover their beds in colorful textiles that are passed down through generations. They create these kantha from layers of soft, recycled fabric strengthened with running stitches and use...

Symmetry Comes of Age

The Role of Pattern in Culture

By Dorothy K. Washburn, Donald W. Crowe

This is the companion volume to the authors' groundbreaking Symmetries of Culture, the classic reference for symmetry analysis of pattern for anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, mathematicians, and designers. Central to symmetry analysis is the use...

Flowers from Universe

Textiles of Java

By Alit Djajasoebrata

Java's original textile art is the perfect medium for telling stories of ancient Javanese culture.

Flowers from Universe: Textiles of Java is based, first and foremost, on the memories and associations of Alit Djajasoebrata. Ajajasoebrata grew...

Indonesian Textiles at the Tropenmuseum

By I. C. van Hout

The Tropenmuseum Amsterdam houses about 12,000 textile objects that were collected over a period of 160 years. The majority of the objects were amassed during the time that Indonesia was a Dutch colony, the former...

African-Print Fashion Now!

A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style

By Suzanne Gott, Kristyne S. Loughran, Betsy D. Quick, Leslie W. Rabine

African-Print Fashion Now! introduces visitors to a dynamic and diverse African dress tradition and the increasingly interconnected fashion worlds that it inhabits: “popular” African-print styles created by local seamstresses and tailors across the continent; international...

Textiles of Timor, Island in the Woven Sea

By Roy W. Hamilton, Joanna Barrkman

Timor has been a divided island at least since the seventeenth century when Dutch and Portuguese colonial empires competed for its control. Despite this fragmentation, the weaving of cloth has remained intimately linked to the...

The Peruvian Four-Selvaged Cloth

Ancient Threads / New Directions

By Elena Phipps

In this beautifully illustrated book, textile expert Elena Phipps examines the ancient Peruvian process of weaving textiles with four finished selvages, or edges. Without cutting a thread, master Peruvian weavers wove each textile to the...