Braid embroidery is just one of the many wonderful textile traditions found in China. This book is intended as a snapshot of the technique, providing insights into its history and development. It considers materials and equipment, ranging from the made-for-purpose to household alternatives.

Needlework serves functional purposes, such as providing warmth, but has also communicated individual and social identity, spiritual beliefs, and aesthetic ideals throughout time and geography. Needlework traditions are often associated with rituals and celebrations of life events. Often-overlooked by historians, practicing needlework and creating needlework objects provides insights to the history of everyday life. Needlework techniques traveled with merchants and explorers, creating a legacy of cross-cultural exchange. Some techniques are virtually universal and others are limited to a small geographical area. Settlers brought traditions which were sometimes re-invented as indigenous arts. This volume of approximately 75 entries is a comprehensive resource on techniques and cultural traditions for students, information professionals, and collectors.

Also part of the Cultural China Series, this volume introduces the history and development of the traditional arts and crafts, and how these apply to many fields such as utensil, apparel, furnishings, adornment, entertainment, and commerce. Vivid color illustrations and photographs throughout.

RE-ISSUE This book will introduce you to the basics of Japanese braiding. There are full step-by-step instructions for each move, followed by pictures of lovely examples to inspire you. 'I strongly recommend this book for the timid beginner and others already addicted.' Jennie Parry, World of Embroidery.

A practical guide to the technique of kumihimo (Japanese braid making).

The complete visual guide to hand embroidery & embellishing. This richly illustrated reference guide from embroidery expert Christen Brown covers everything you need to make beautiful magic with needle and thread. Learn to sew traditional and silk ribbon embroidery, make raised stitches, and embellish with beads, charms, buttons, and mirrors. Christen shows you how to combine and place stitches to enhance a finished piece and how to work with embroidery threads, ribbons, fabrics, laces, beads, buttons, and other embellishments. • Step-by-step photo instructions show exactly how to sew 85 different stitches • Includes eight complete embroidery projects to stitch and embellish • The essential embroidery reference for everyone from beginners to experts “A cornucopia of fancy stitches. . . . Even experienced stitchers are likely to learn something new . . . . As a catalogue of possibility for stitching, this is a wonderful addition to a crafting library.” —Publishers Weekly “This book surpassed my expectations, which rarely happens. Kudos to C&T and the author for putting together an excellent, comprehensive book on this topic. I have been doing embroidery of all kinds for several years and was delighted to see new (to me) stitches and combinations. The projects are beautiful and inspiring.” —Cindy Gorder, editor, Decorating Digest Craft & Home Projects “A wonderful visual guide to 85 stitches that use thread, floss, ribbon, beads and more. . . . If you are new to embroidery, Christen offers a good discussion on the materials to use. I thought her Embroidering With Confidence chapter offered lots of good tips for the novice as well as a refresher for those who have not picked up an embroidery needle for a while.”—The Professional Quilter Magazine

"This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of cartography in China. Its chief players are three maps found in tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and together constitute the entire known corpus of ancient Chinese maps (ditu). A millennium separates them from the next available map from 1136 CE. Most scholars study them through the lens of modern, empirical definitions of maps and their use. This book offers an alternative view by drawing on methods not just from cartography but from art history, archaeology, and religion. It argues that, as tomb objects, the maps were designed to be simultaneously functional for the living and the dead-that each map was drawn to serve navigational purposes of guiding the living from one town to another as well as to diagram ritual order, thereby taming the unknown territory of the dead. In contrast with traditional scholarship, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China proposes that ditu can "speak" through their forms. Departing from dominant theories of representation that forge a narrow path from form to meaning, the book braids together two main strands of argumentation to explore the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China"--