Global Textile Encounters

The point of departure here is three significant textiles and clothing cultures: China, India and Europe, and the common thread is how fashions and traditions have travelled through space and time. In this richly illustrated anthology, with its 242 images, written both by textile researchers and practitioners as well as scholars from other fields across the globe, we hear of various types of encounters that bring to life a world of interactions and consequences as colourful as the textiles themselves. Among the 33 contributions we learn of an historian of ancient Roman textiles who has an intellectual epiphany in the streets of modern Iran; of 17th-century European Jesuits spreading the Gospel in Asia who attire themselves in the clothing suitable to their host countries; a visiting Siamese delegation that unwittingly creates fashion in 18th-century France;; how Chinese textile technology changed as a result of encountering textile patterns along the silk road; how political messages are conveyed in the sari; how Maharajahs inspired global pop culture; and the value we ascribe to old clothing. Recurrent themes include how religious praxis is informed by textile encounters; how travelling textiles enable patterns and symbols to be copied onto stone and metals; and textile motifs that acquire other symbolic meanings in their travels and encounters with different societies. This sensibly priced, highly readable, paperback, edited by three eminent textile scholars from Europe, China and India, is aimed at the interested general public and students. A Chinese version will be published by Donghua University Press in China.