5000 Years of Textitles
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5,000 Years of Textilesis an authoritative reference and a visual delight, with examples from the Far East to the Americas, from Africa to Scandinavia, and from Egyptian artifacts dating from 3000 BC to the most up-to-date modern craftwork and furnishings. The book includes an expert guide to nine fundamental textile techniques, from rug weaving and tapestry to felt and bark cloth. Each is clearly explained, using line drawings and close-up color details from actual textiles, to show how people from many different traditions have made and decorated cloth through the centuries. The breathtaking wealth of illustrations drawn from major collections all over the world includes costumes, period interiors, archival photographs, and a vast range of fabrics, from the simplest handwoven cloths to sumptuous brocades and exquisite embroidery.
The Cambridge History of Western Textiles
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Textiles have been essential to the everyday lives of all societies. Besides helping provide protection and warmth, they have fulfilled social, cultural, military, legal and symbolic functions, and have been an essential part of the economic activity of societies from ancient times. The Cambridge History of Western Textiles brings together and extends current knowledge on the production and uses of textiles, through the eyes of archaeologists, economic and social historians, historians of fashion and the history of dress, and museum curators familiar with surviving artefacts. The history of all the major textile industries, including wool, linen, silk, cotton and artificial fibres is explored. Processes and technical terms are explained carefully, while the role and impact of textiles in western economies and societies are examined. In sum, the book offers an authoritative account of three thousand years of the production and consumption of textiles in the western world.
The Fabric of Civilization
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From Neanderthal string to 3D knitting, an "expansive" global history that highlights "how textiles truly changed the world" (Wall Street Journal) 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. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. 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. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity. "We are taken on a journey as epic, and varying, as the Silk Road itself.... [The Fabric of Civilization is] like a swatch of a Florentine Renaissance brocade: carefully woven, the technique precise, the colors a mix of shade and shine and an accurate representation of the whole cloth." --New York Times "Textile-making hasn't gotten enough credit for its own sophistication, and for all the ways it undergirds human technological innovation--an error Virginia Postrel's erudite and complete book goes a long way toward correcting at last." --Wired
Textiles
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This major new work comprises more than 1,000 images that highlight the beauty, subtlety, simplicity or complexity of textiles created around the world. The juxtaposition of historical and contemporary examples highlights the skill and imagination of textile designers throughout history, as well as the remarkable range of achievements. Thematic illustrated sections present in-depth knowledge and sweeping insights into the role textiles have played throughout all human civilization, and illuminate the ways in which structure or surface decoration or embellishment enhance this most tactile of arts. With a definitive text by Mary Schoeser, drawing together knowledge gathered over a liftime of immersion in the textile arts, no other book in the vast literature on the subject has so comprehensively celebrated the spectacular and enduring appeal of textiles.