This book fills a void in Western texts by presenting the largest selection of Caucasian flat-woven carpets and textiles ever included in a single book. They originate in the region south of the Caucasus Mountains and west of the Caspian Sea, bounded by Russian, Turkey, and Iran, and comprising parts of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The book, with 436 beautiful color photographs, includes an extensive selection of old kilims, zilis, khorjins, and one of the most extensive collections of Caucasian mafrash bedding bags ever assembled. They date generally from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Weaving styles of the nomadic, indigenous peoples produce the rich mixture of geometric and figurative forms recognized as uniquely Caucasian. A fascinating description of the author's field visits to villages in the Caucasus accompanies illustrations of the textiles and peoples found there. The origins of these pieces are discussed through comparisons with artifacts in the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg. A unique feature is weaving examples by two Georgian ethnic sub-groups, the Tushetians and the Khevsuretis. The result is invaluable information regarding the weaving origins of Caucasian flat-woven textiles for collectors and curators, and richly colored pictorials that will inspire designers and artists.

In the ancient city of Kyoto, contemporary artisans and designers are using heritage techniques and traditional clothing aesthetics to reinvent wafuku (Japanese clothing, including kimono) for modern life. Japan Beyond the Kimono explores these shifts, highlighting developments in the Kyoto fashion industry such as its integration of digital weaving and printing techniques and the influence of social media on fashion distribution systems. Through case studies of designers, artisans, and retailers, Jenny Hall provides a comprehensive picture of the reasons behind the production and consumption of these rejuvenated fashion goods. She argues that conceptualisations of Japanese tradition include innovation and change, which is vital to understanding how Japanese cultural heritage is both sustained and evolving. Essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, anthropology, and Japanese studies, Jenny Hall's sensory ethnography is the first of its kind, describing the lived experiences of people in the Kyoto textiles industry, explaining the renewal of traditional techniques and styles, and placing them both within contexts such as transnational 'craftscapes' and fast or slow fashion systems.

Published on the occasion of an important international loan exhibition at The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum in Baku, this multi-author book is much more than a mere catalogue. Written by a team of international museum professionals and independent scholars, it is the first co-ordinated and detailed study of the West Caspian region's characteristic silk embroideries. The book traces the history of embroidery in the Caucasus, the multi-cultural sources of domestic embroidery iconography and designs in which the textile traditions of the Iranian and Turkic worlds meet, materials and needlework techniques, as well as the relationship between embroidery and the pile carpet weaving tradition in the region.

Intended for fashion students and fashion designers, this fabric book is indispensable for sourcing and selecting textiles for fashion. It will guide you to the perfect fabric for every design, helping you find the ideal material to achieve the desired effect and recommending different ways to use it. With a revised and updated selection of photographs from fashion shows that exemplify current fashion trends in which the collections of such renowned designers as Givenchy, Stella McCartney, Vuitton, Vivian Westwood, van Herpen, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein appeared, the book shows you how some of the most emblematic names in fashion today use fabrics to achieve the highest expression of their creativity. This updated and enlarged edition also includes a detailed technical and historical introduction on the types of fabrics and their classification, the relationship between fabric and the fashion industry and the aesthetic, emotional, commercial and social aspects involved. This fabric bible is sure to become essential reading for all aspiring and experienced dressmakers and fashion designers.

Huichol Indian yarn paintings are one of the world's great indigenous arts, sold around the world and advertised as authentic records of dreams and visions of the shamans. Using glowing colored yarns, the Huichol Indians of Mexico paint the mystical symbols of their culture—the hallucinogenic peyote cactus, the blue deer-spirit who appears to the shamans as they croon their songs around the fire in all-night ceremonies deep in the Sierra Madre mountains, and the pilgrimages to sacred sites, high in the central Mexican desert of Wirikuta. Hope MacLean provides the first comprehensive study of Huichol yarn paintings, from their origins as sacred offerings to their transformation into commercial art. Drawing on twenty years of ethnographic fieldwork, she interviews Huichol artists who have innovated important themes and styles. She compares the artists' views with those of art dealers and government officials to show how yarn painters respond to market influences while still keeping their religious beliefs. Most innovative is her exploration of what it means to say a tourist art is based on dreams and visions of the shamans. She explains what visionary experience means in Huichol culture and discusses the influence of the hallucinogenic peyote cactus on the Huichol's remarkable use of color. She uncovers a deep structure of visionary experience, rooted in Huichol concepts of soul-energy, and shows how this remarkable conception may be linked to visionary experiences as described by other Uto-Aztecan and Meso-American cultures.

Featuring detailed scenes of court pageantry and life-size portraits of members of the French Valois dynasty woven in wool, silk, and precious metal-wrapped threads, the Valois Tapestries are one of the most extravagant sets of hangings produced in the 16th century. The precise circumstances surrounding the tapestries' commission and their arrival at the Medici court in Florence, as well as the significance of the specific scenes depicted, however, have eluded scholars for years. Presenting new research into the political maneuvering of the Valois and Medici courts and providing extensive physical analysis gathered during a recent cleaning of the tapestries, this volume offers brand new insight into why these magnificent works were made and what they represent. Distributed for the Cleveland Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Cleveland Museum of Art (11/18/18-01/21/19)

Essential in the everyday lives of all societies for providing protection and warmth, textiles also fulfill social, cultural, military, legal, and symbolic functions and have played a key role in the economic activity of societies from ancient times. This magnificent two-volume study brings together the leading experts on textiles from eight countries, ensuring authoritative coverage of the production and uses of textiles in western societies from the earliest times to the present day. With contributions from archaeologists, economic and social historians, historians of fashion and the history of dress, and museum curators, no other book offers the breadth of coverage of this one, in terms of time period, subject matter, or approach. The book's range and accessibility will ensure that it is a key reference for specialists and non-specialists alike. David Jenkins is Senior Lecturer in Economic History in the Department of Economics and Related Studies at the University of York. He is also Governor and Company Secretary of the Pasold Research Fund, which promotes research and publication in the history of textiles in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jenkins has a special interest in the wool textile industry, where his major contribution is (with the late K.G. Ponting) The British Wool Textile Industry, 1880-1914 (Ashgate Publishing Company, 1982). For several years Jenkins was a member of Council and Honorary Secretary of the Economic History Society and is a member of the Editorial Board of Textile History.

This fantastic book showcases the prestigious Embroiderers' Guild's huge collection of embroidered birds through the ages. Featuring photographs taken especially for the book, items are shown in full along with detailed images that show off the stunning birds at their best.

uring the 1920s and 1930s, Phyllis Barron (1890-1964) and Dorothy Larcher (1882-1952) were at the forefront of a revival in hand block-printing in Britain. As designer-makers they formed a unique partnership, producing innovative textiles and seeing the entire process through from beginning to end. Using whatever materials they could muster - fabric ranging from balloon cotton to prison sheets and velvet, and everyday items such as combs and car mats for printing - and pushing the boundaries of what could be achieved with predominantly natural dyes, these two remarkable women ran a successful business that lasted from 1923 until the outbreak of World War II. Nearly one hundred years on, another special collaboration between the Craft Studies Centre in Farnham, Christopher Farr Cloth and Ivo Prints, has brought a selection of Barron and Larcher's work back into production. The warm welcome they have received across the globe is a testament to the timeless quality of great design.

Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum delves into the history and the changing material culture in Europe through the stories of a basket, a carpet, a waistcoat, a uniform, and a dress. The focus on the objects from the collection of the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin offers an innovative and challenging way of understanding textile culture and museums. The book shows that textiles can be simultaneously used as the material object of research, and as a lens through which we can view museums. In doing so, the book fills a major gap by placing textile knowledge back into the museum. Each chapter focuses on one object story and can be read individually. Swooping from 19th-century wax figure cabinets, Nazi-era collections, Cold War exhibitions in East and West Berlin, and institutional reshuffling after German unification, it reveals the dramatically changing story of the museum and its collection. Based on research with museum curators, makers and users of the textiles in Italy and Germany, Poland and Romania, the book provides intimate insights into how objects are mobilised to very different social and political effects. It sheds new light on movements across borders, political uses of textiles by fascist and communist regimes, the objects’ fall into oblivion, as well as their heritage and tourist afterlives. Addressing this complex museum legacy, the book suggests new pathways to prefigure the future. Featuring new archival and ethnographic research, evocative examples and images, it is an essential read for students of textile and material culture, museum and curatorial studies as well as anyone interested in history, heritage and craft.

Tearing, cutting, shredding in order to reassemble the elements and create something new: strip by strip the Austrian artist Monika Fioreschy applies lengths of torn paper to her canvases, thereby creating large-format abstract works filled with a harmonious formal language and offering an unexpected wealth of detail when observed more closely. Paper is the main medium used in the new cycles of works by Monika Fioreschy, whereby the strength of her works lies in the reduction of materials and forms. Line by line our eyes follow the course of the collages; the observer is seduced into reading her art. The strict regularity of the works is interrupted by changes in colour, the arrangement of the folds, gaps and overpasting, whereby the real wealth of detail only becomes evident through intensive study. In his essay accompanying the full-page reproductions of the works, art theorist Bazon Brock explains how Fioreschy's training in classic weaving skills can be rediscovered in these works and the role they play in the artist's oeuvre as a whole.

Rozsika Parker's re-evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between women and embroidery has brought stitchery out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts, created a major breakthrough in art history and criticism, and fostered the emergence of today's dynamic and expanding crafts movements. The Subversive Stitch is now available again with a new Introduction that brings the book up to date with exploration of the stitched art of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, as well as the work of new young female and male embroiderers. Rozsika Parker uses household accounts, women's magazines, letters, novels and the works of art themselves to trace through history how the separation of the craft of embroidery from the fine arts came to be a major force in the marginalisation of women's work. Beautifully illustrated, her book also discusses the contradictory nature of women's experience of embroidery: how it has inculcated female subservience while providing an immensely pleasurable source of creativity, forging links between women.

Textiles and clothing are interwoven with Islamic culture. In Islamicate Textiles, readers are taken on a journey from Central Asia to Tanzania to uncover the central roles that textiles play within Muslim-majority communities. This thematically arranged book sheds light on the traditions, rituals and religious practices of these regions, and the ways in which each one incorporates materials and clothing. Drawing on examples including Iranian lion carpets and Arabic keffiyeh, Faegheh Shirazi frames these textiles and totemic items as important cultural signifiers that, together, form a dynamic and fascinating material culture. Like a developing language, this culture expands, bends and develops to suit the needs of new generations and groups across the world. The political significance of Islamicate textiles is also explored: Faegheh Shirazi's writing reveals the fraught relationship between the East - with its sought-after materials and much-valued textiles - and the European countries that purchased and repurposed these goods, and lays bare the historical and contemporary connections between textiles, colonialism, immigration and economics. Dr Shirazi also discusses gender and how textiles and clothing are intimately linked with sexuality and gender identity.

Carpets made in the "Rug Belt"-an area that includes Morocco, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and northern India-have been a source of fascination and collecting since the 13th century. This engaging and accessible book explores the history, design techniques, materials, craftsmanship, and socioeconomic contexts of these works, promoting a better understanding and appreciation of these frequently misunderstood pieces. Fifty-five examples of Islamic carpets are illustrated with new photographs and revealing details. The lively texts guide readers, teaching them "how to read" clues present in the carpets. Walter B. Denny situates these carpets within the cultural and social realm of their production, be it a nomadic encampment, a rural village, or an urban workshop. This is an essential guide for students, collectors, and professionals who want to understand the art of the Islamic carpet. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

In the ancient city of Kyoto, contemporary artisans and designers are using heritage techniques and traditional clothing aesthetics to reinvent wafuku (Japanese clothing, including kimono) for modern life. Japan beyond the Kimono explores these shifts, highlighting developments in the Kyoto fashion industry such as its integration of digital weaving and printing techniques and the influence of social media on fashion distribution systems. Through case studies of designers, artisans, and retailers, Jenny Hall provides a comprehensive picture of the reasons behind the production and consumption of these rejuvenated fashion goods. She argues that conceptualisations of Japanese tradition include innovation and change, which is vital to understanding how Japanese cultural heritage is both sustained and evolving. Essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, anthropology, and Japanese studies, Jenny Hall's sensory ethnography is the first of its kind, describing the lived experiences of people in the Kyoto textiles industry, explaining the renewal of traditional techniques and styles, and placing them both within contexts such as transnational 'craftscapes' and fast or slow fashion systems.

Stumpwork embroidery, also called raised embroidery, takes hand embroidery to another dimension and lifts it off the surface of the fabric with strikingly realistic results. This technique uses all the usual embroidery stitches you would expect and includes padding, wiring and slips to achieve its raised effect. Stumpwork Inspirations highlights the very best stumpwork has to offer in both design and technique. Featuring talented embroidery designers Susan O'Connor, Wendy Innes, Susan Casson, Anna Scott, Lesley Turpin-Delport and Jane Nicholas, this special collection, including lovely framed pictures and a pot lid, have been curated into one publication. With 8 stunning stumpwork projects to make, there are clear step-by-step instructions, pullout patterns, a stitch guide and all the information you need to stitch them. Discover the origins, stitches, techniques and designs that are uniquely stumpwork, and learn how to make your own beautiful works of art.

Addressing textiles as a distinctive area of cultural practice and field of scholarly research, The Textile Reader introduces students to the key issues essential to the exploration of the textile from both a critical and a creative perspective. The second edition brings together lectures, catalogue essays, academic articles, fiction and poetry, as well as several articles available in English translation for the first time, to capture the diversity of voices informing textile studies today. Content is organized around the themes of touch, memory, structure, politics, and production plus a new section exploring the role of community. With 22 new contributors, this revised edition includes selected work from Maria Fusco, Ursula le Guin, Elaine Igoe, Faith Ringgold, and T'ai Smith. Extended introductions and annotated suggestions for further reading by the editor Jessica Hemmings make the second edition an invaluable resource to students of textiles, craft and material culture.

A spectacular visual journey through 40 years of haute couture from one of the best-known and most trend-setting brands in fashion Founded in 1962 by Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre Berge, the fashion house Yves Saint Laurent has for more than half a century been synonymous with excellence in modern and iconic style. From Yves Saint Laurent's revolutionary and enduringly popular tuxedo suit for women, le smoking, to iconic art-inspired creations, from Mondrian dresses to precious Van Gogh embroidery and the famous Ballets Russes collection, the house's haute couture line has been hugely influential in changing the way modern women dress. This definitive publication opens with a concise history of the house before exploring the collections themselves, organized chronologically and ending in 2002, the year that Yves Saint Laurent retired from the company he started. Each collection is introduced by a short text elucidating its influences and highlights and is illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images, each season styled as the designer intended and worn by the world's top models. The book showcases hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks, and set designs.

Praise for the Build a Bag series: "These books are ideal for those new to bag making and will help readers grow their bag-making skills and confidence as they work through the projects. The plastic templates are a brilliant idea and a great bonus." - The Sewing Directory New to the highly acclaimed Build a Bag series, this fantastic new book by Debbie Shore brings you a selection of 15 sensational satchels! The 15 designs are created using the full-size rigid template contained within the book. It is easy-to-use, durable, reusable, wipe-clean and perfect for fussy cutting, plus it is simple to position and use - there is no need to pin it. The satchels are made using different techniques, pockets, straps and fastenings to create 15 very different results. But why stop there? The template can also be used for your own design variations. As you mix and match the techniques covered within the book, Debbie gives advice on how to adapt and create your own unique designs. Each project in the book is explained using Debbie's friendly style and easy-to-follow step-by-step photography, and there is also a comprehensive techniques section and a guide to using the template.

After training as a graphic designer in Hungary, the plastic artist Vera Székely (1919-1994), a member of the Székely-Borderie ceramicist collective, tackled work in clay, metal, wood and glass to reach her artistic fulfillment in textiles. From this point on, Vera Székely acknowledged “swimming and dancing in space to leave a trace in it� with her ephemeral installations of bent felt, her stretched canvas structures and “braced sails� that would be exhibited throughout the world, notably at the Biennale internationale de la tapisserie, Lausanne (1981) the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (1982), the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris (1985), the Lunds Konsthall, Sweden (1988). Text in English and French.

A collection of traditional eighteenth and nineteenth century weaving drafts, written sequences of the threading order on the loom used to create specific patterns. They are presented here in their original form as gathered by Frances L. Goodrich and illustrated in over 160 color photos. This volume also contains over 200 valuable modern translations of the same drafts for use by today's weavers. In 1890, Frances L. Goodrich came to the southern mountains in North Carolina from a life of culture to live and work among people who had little opportunity for education or social enrichment. Through her work for the Presbyterian Home Mission Board, she grew to love and respect these neighbors who worked so hard and had so little. She established schools, a small hospital, and the Allanstand Cottage Industries. As she traveled the mountain roads and trails on horseback, Miss Goodrich collected these precious weaving drafts from the women who wove for Allanstand Cottage Industries. In your hands is the heart of that collection.

Textile design has a very exciting future. New fibres, fabrics and applications are constantly appearing and designers now have a wealth of avenues to explore. This book offers students a basic grounding in the three main pathways of textile design - printed, woven and mixed media textile design. Using a wealth of imagery and case studies from designers and studios at work today, the book looks at the basic principles of design and production, and the stages of creating a textile collection, giving students all the tools they need to develop their own work. Finally, the role of the textile designer is explored in several market sectors giving students an insight into the industry and possible career paths they may wish to follow. Designed for students both at degree and foundation level, the book will also appeal to those wishing to enter a career in textile design.