From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. 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.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Sept. 16, 2013-Jan. 5, 2014.

The development of digital textile printing at the end of the twentieth century has had a profound effect on the design, creation, use and understanding of textiles. This new technology - combined with advances in fabric and dye chemistry - has made it possible to produce complex images on fabric comprising millions of colours, quickly, inexpensively and in flexible quantities; a revolution that has led to a rapid increase in demand, which is predicted to rise still further. This book is the first to describe the historical and cultural context from which digital textile printing emerged, and to engage critically with the many issues that it raises: the changing role of the designer in the creation of printed textiles; the ways in which the design process is being transformed by new technology; the relationships between producers, clients and the textile industry; and the impact of digital printing on the wider creative industries. At the core of this study are two key questions: what constitutes authenticity in an age when printed textiles are created through the combined agency of the artist/designer and the computer? And how can this new technology be put to work in a sustainable way during a period of spiralling demand?

"Excellent . . . as colorful and as full of joie de vivre as a room full of Matisse paintings." --The World of Interiors

A magnificent work of original research that unravels history through textiles and cloth—how we make it, use it, and what it means to us. How is a handmade fabric helping save an ancient forest? Why is a famous fabric pattern from India best known by the name of a Scottish town? How is a Chinese dragon robe a diagram of the whole universe? What is the difference between how the Greek Fates and the Viking Norns used threads to tell our destiny? In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it, and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it. She beats the inner bark of trees into cloth in Papua New Guinea, fails to handspin cotton in Guatemala, visits tweed weavers at their homes in Harris, and has lessons in patchwork-making in Gee's Bend, Alabama - where in the 1930s, deprived of almost everything they owned, a community of women turned quilting into an art form. She began her research just after the deaths of both her parents —and entwined in the threads she found her personal story too. Fabric is not just a material history of our world, but Finlay's own journey through grief and recovery.