Early modern India was an economic core region producing manifold textiles for export. During the sixteenth century a new customer entered the stage and expanded its influence from the city of Goa — Portugal. From early times, the Portuguese had bought and commissioned textiles, among them large embroideries from Bengal and Gujarat, which are the focus of this study. By providing European prints as models for the professional local embroiderers they created a novel product that was successful in Portugal and beyond throughout the seventeenth century. The textiles were deemed valuable and rare enough to be included in different travel accounts, letters and inventories, enabling us to trace their place of production, their transportation to Europe and their reception. Their intricate iconographies reflect political problematics of the time and shed light onto the intercultural circumstances of Portuguese colonial life. Barbara Karl is Curator of Textiles and Carpets at the MAK — Museum für Angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst in Vienna.

For Italian immigrants and their descendants, needlework represents a marker of identity, a cultural touchstone as powerful as pasta and Neapolitan music. Out of the artifacts of their memory and imagination, Italian immigrants and their descendants used embroidering, sewing, knitting, and crocheting to help define who they were and who they have become. This book is an interdisciplinary collection of creative work by authors of Italian origin and academic essays. The creative works from thirty-seven contributors include memoir, poetry, and visual arts while the collection as a whole explores a multitude of experiences about and approaches to needlework and immigration from a transnational perspective, spanning the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. At the center of the book, over thirty illustrations represent Italian immigrant women's needlework. The text reveals the many processes by which a simple object, or even the memory of that object, becomes something else through literary, visual, performance, ethnographic, or critical reimagining. While primarily concerned with interpretations of needlework rather than the needlework itself, the editors and contributors to Embroidered Stories remain mindful of its history and its associated cultural values, which Italian immigrants brought with them to the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina and passed on to their descendants.

*Shortlisted for the Aurora Award for Best Novel* ‘Spellbinding’ JJA Harwood ‘An entertaining and dark read’ Stylist ‘An absorbing novel’ Guardian ‘Beautifully written’ Elizabeth Chadwick

This fantastic book showcases the Embroiderers' Guild's huge collection of embroidered flowers dating back to the 17th cenury. Featuring photographs commissioned for the book, items are shown in full and also with detail images to show off the flowers at their best. Hailing from all parts of the globe, this is an opportunity to see fabulous works that are very rarely seen in public. The Embroiderers' Guild, founded in 1906, has at the heart of its collection numerous beautiful donated textiles in all forms, given by members and enthusiasts over many years. The collection now contains thousands of embroidery examples from many countries and cultures. This book showcases the best of the collection's flower embroideries, dating from the 17th century to the present day. Whether they are abstract or naturalistic, the variety of flowers shown is quite extraordinary. They all exhibit a wonderful level of skill and imagination, and their beauty and detail will be inspirational to embroiderers of all ages and levels of expertise. Featuring photographs taken especially for the book, items are shown in full and also with detail images to show off the flowers at their best. These wonderful embroidered treasures are as varied as wall hangings, children's dresses, bridal bags and samplers. The images are shown with extended captions giving the country of origin, age, size and technique used to make them. Hailing from all parts of the globe, this is an opportunity to see fabulous works that are very rarely seen in public.

This glorious book is filled to the brim with a wide ranging history of textiles and 350 superb illustrations drawn from many countries and sources vestments and costume, samplers and pictures, great beds and furniture. The story of embroidery and needlework is discussed within the fascinating context of the history of fabrics, of decorative costume, of interior decoration, of church and state ceremonial, of girl's education, of furniture and pastimes. Silk, cotton, linen, and the significance of colours and dyes are also considered. Two interesting chapters reveal the world-wide fascination in an influence of Chinese embroidery and Indian textiles. With a broad account of the artistic achievements of every facet of decorative needlework the book is rich with the art-historical background encompassing the most magnificent of all embroidery, the mediaeval English vestments so coveted by Popes and Bishops across Europe, to the domestic treasures created in more recent centuries. Baroque, Rococo, neo-classical and other period characteristics are each discussed with reference to works created by children, young girls, and ladies who made furniture coverings destined for posterity. The nineteenth century saw extremes of art and fashion ranging from Berlin woolwork to Art Needlework and the eclectic inspiration represented by William Morris, all leading to simpler modernist styles which evolved over the twentieth century. The author sets in political and social context the whole panoply of textiles distinguishing between the magnificent products of professional workshops and the uniquely individual and especially charming amateur embroideries that survive today amongst the most beautiful treasures of the decorative arts. Mr Synge's text is authoritative but examines with infectious enthusiasm this field which has never been sufficiently understood but now interests more people than ever before. It will appeal to all who admire beautiful things, fine workmanship, good design and lovely fabrics. 320 colour & 30 b/w illustrations

Samplers were embroidered pictures made by girls, and occasionally boys, as part of their education. Scottish samplers are unique with regard to the amount of information that can be gathered from them. They often include the initials of extended family members as well as details of buildings, places and events, leading to the identification of almost all of these young embroiderers. Leslie Durst, an American with a passion for Scotland, has a collection of over 500 samplers dating from the early 18th to the late 19th century; a small section of them will be exhibited at the National Museum of Scotland. This book showcases these and reveals the stories behind many of them - embroidered records of two centuries of Scottish social history. Exhibition: National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK (26.10.2018 - 21.4.2019). --

This publication aims to provide a richly illustrated and authoritative historical overview of embroidery in China, Korea, and Vietnam.

This study of clothing during British colonial America examines items worn by the well-to-do as well as the working poor, the enslaved, and Native Americans, reconstructing their wardrobes across social, economic, racial, and geographic boundaries. Clothing through American History: The British Colonial Era presents, in six chapters, a description of all aspects of dress in British colonial America, including the social and historical background of British America, and covering men's, women's, and children's garments. The book shows how dress reflected and evolved with life in British colonial America as primitive settlements gave way to the growth of towns, cities, and manufacturing of the pre-Industrial Revolution. Readers will discover that just as in the present day, what people wore in colonial times represented an immediate, visual form of communication that often conveyed information about the real or intended social, economic, legal, ethnic, and religious status of the wearer. The authors have gleaned invaluable information from a wide breadth of primary source materials for all of the colonies: court documents and colonial legislation; diaries, personal journals, and business ledgers; wills and probate inventories; newspaper advertisements; paintings, prints, and drawings; and surviving authentic clothing worn in the colonies.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives. WINNER: Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Harriet Tubman Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Lawrence W. Levine Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award, Cundill History Prize, Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Book Award ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Vulture, Publishers Weekly “A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language. Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honors the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today FINALIST: MAAH Stone Book Award, Kirkus Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize, Chatauqua Prize ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Smithsonian Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, Book Riot, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist