Traces a boy's journey across India as he searches for a sacred buffalo bell stolen from his tribe.

This book originally accompanied the first hugely successful exhibition to take a broad look at textile design throughout the various regions of Africa. This book is an exciting survey of some of the most vibrant textiles in the world. It presents examples of the most significant and striking developments in African textile art, and represents all regions and forms of design.

The Art of African Textiles traces some paths through the complex and still largely unresearched history of African textile artistry. It explores the ways cloth is used in African societies and the role of cloth traditions in contemporary dress and fashion design. Major forms and styles of the twentieth century are introduced, those which are both cherished in their local context and increasingly sought after by collectors and museums worldwide.

African Textiles Today illustrates how African history is read, told, and recorded in cloth. All artifacts or works of art hold within them stories that range far beyond the time of their creation or the lifetime of their creator, and African textiles are patterned with these hidden histories. In Africa, cloth may be used to memorialize or commemorate something - an event, a person, a political cause - which in other parts of the world might be written down in detail or recorded by a plaque or monument. History in Africa can be read, told, and recorded in cloth. Making and trading numerous types of cloth have been vital elements in African life and culture for at least two millennia, linking different parts of the continent with each other and the rest of the world. Africa's long engagement with the peoples of the Mediterranean and the islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans provides a story of change and continuity. African Textiles Today shows how ideas, techniques, materials, and markets have adapted and flourished, and how the dynamic traditions in African textiles have provided inspiration for the continent's foremost contemporary artists and photographers. With a concluding chapter discussing the impact of African designs across the world, the book offers a fascinating insight into the living history of Africa.

This exuberantly illustrated book celebrates the sophistication, vivacity, and significance of improvisational African-Aemrican quilts, both as artistic achievements and as expressions of African-American traditions. The knowledge, attitudes, and values carried across the Atlantic by enslaved Africans appear to have informed a quiltmaking tradition so powerful that, to this day, it preserves its identity in a special province of African-American quilts. Such "Afro-traditional" quilts are made by people who have no formal art training and who usually do not consider themselves artists; they learned their craft and absorbed its aesthetics by watching and helping their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers who, in turn, learned form previous generations. The resulting--often highly idiosyncratic--quilts call out to be seen as the works of art that they are. The brilliance of this work must be partially credited to a tradition which encourages individual expression and provides a context in which the talents of individual artists can flourish. Improvisation, pervasive in black African art and familiar as a basic element of many African-American musical forms, is a vital force in this tradition. The artists maintain a generous attitude toward the accidental, embracing innovations that originate beyond the conscious domain. they use approximate measurement and "flexible patterning," in which the design, conceived of as a an invitation to variation, will not repeat, but will materialize in a sequence of visual elaborations. Afro-traditional attitudes and methods are antithetical to the standard American quiltmaking tradition--practiced by both whites and blacks--in which great value is placed on precise measurement and exact pattern replication. Instead they bear a keen likeness to the improvisatory practices of the textile-makers of Kongo and West Africa, regions from which American slaves were taken. These antipathies and affinities suggest an enduring African influence on the Afro-traditional quilt.

"The richly illustrated and expertly designed publication accompanying the exhibition "Woven Beauty -- The Art of West African Textiles" at the Museum der Kulturen Basel offers an impressive overview of West African textile culture, highlighting Mali, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. Editor Bernhard Gardi was a member of the Boser-Gardi expedition that travelled across West Africa thirty-five years ago. The publication focuses on the collection assembled in the course of this journey. Well-informed contributions by renowned anthropologists provide valuable insight into an important but often neglected aspect of African art history."--Publisher's website.