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.

First published in 1984, this remains the definitive study of textiles as they were used in early American homes.

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.

“Leads readers from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century, while weaving its story from strands of craft, history and anthropology, and science and culture. . . . An outstanding achievement.” —Library Journal There are few aspects of our lives—physical, emotional, spiritual—in which thread and fabrics do not play a notable part. Beverly Gordon reminds us memorably and movingly of the powerful significance of fabric throughout human history. Her expertise is enriched by her own hands-on experience: spinning silk from silkworm cocoons, weaving cloth, and creating natural dyes. In addition, she has studied thousands of textiles in a curatorial context; her familiarity includes the processing and handling of textiles as well as the making of them. The author bridges past and present, from the Stone Age—when humans first learned to make cordage and thread—to twenty-first-century “smart fabrics,” which can regulate body temperature or measure the wearer’s pulse. Her discussion integrates craft, art, science, history, and anthropology, and she draws on examples from around the globe. A dazzling array of illustrations includes paintings and photographs of historic and contemporary textiles plus a broad collection of textiles being created, worn, and lived with today.

The colour and shade of dyed textiles were once as much an indicator of social class or position as the fabric itself and for centuries the recipes used by dyers were closely guarded secrets. The arrival of synthetic dyestuffs in the middle of the nineteenth century opened up a whole rainbow of options and within 50 years modern dyes had completely overturned the dyeing industry. From pre-history to the current day, the story of dyed textiles in Western Europe brings together the worlds of politics, money, the church, law, taxation, international trade and exploration, fashion, serendipity and science. This book is an introduction to a broad, diverse and fascinating subject of how and why people coloured textiles. A fresh review of this topic, this book brings previous scholars' work to light, alongside new discoveries and research.

A detailed study of Tudor textiles, highlighting their extravagant beauty and their impact on the royal court, fashion, and taste At the Tudor Court, textiles were ubiquitous in decor and ceremony. Tapestries, embroideries, carpets, and hangings were more highly esteemed than paintings and other forms of decorative art. Indeed, in 16th-century Europe, fine textiles were so costly that they were out of reach for average citizens, and even for many nobles. This spectacularly illustrated book tells the story of textiles during the long Tudor century, from the ascendance of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of his granddaughter Elizabeth I in 1603. It places elaborate tapestries, imported carpets, lavish embroidery, and more within the context of religious and political upheavals of the Tudor court, as well as the expanding world of global trade, including previously unstudied encounters between the New World and the Elizabethan court. Special attention is paid to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a magnificent two-week festival—and unsurpassed display of golden textiles—held in 1520. Even half a millennium later, such extraordinary works remain Tudor society’s strongest projection of wealth, taste, and ultimately power.

The Quechua people of southern Peru are both agriculturalists and herders who maintain large herds of alpacas and llamas. But they are also weavers, and it is through weaving that their cultural traditions are passed down over the generations. Owing to the region's isolation, the textile symbols, forms of clothing, and technical processes remain strongly linked to the people's environment and their ancestors. Heckman's photographs convey the warmth and vitality of the Quechua people and illustrate how the land is intricately woven into their lives and their beliefs. Quechua weavers in the mountainous regions near Cuzco, Peru, produce certain textile forms and designs not found elsewhere in the Andes. Their textiles are a legacy of their Andean ancestors. Andrea Heckman has devoted more than twenty years to documenting and analyzing the ways Andean beliefs persist over time in visual symbols embedded in textiles and portrayed in rituals. Her primary focus is the area around the sacred peak of Ausangate, in southern Peru, some eighty-five miles southeast of the former Inca capital of Cuzco. The core of this book is an ethnographic account of the textiles and their place in daily life that considers how the form and content of Quechua patterns and designs pass stories down and preserve traditions as well as how the ritual use of textiles sustain a sense of community and a connection to the past. Heckman concludes by assessing the influences of the global economy on indigenous Quechua, who maintain their own worldview within the larger fabric of twentieth-century cultural values and hence have survived everything from Latin American militarism to a tidal wave of post-modern change.

This globe-spanning history of sewing and embroidery, culture and protest, is “an astonishing feat . . . richly textured and moving” (The Sunday Times, UK). In 1970s Argentina, mothers marched in headscarves embroidered with the names of their “disappeared” children. In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the universal beauty and power of sewing.

Originally published in 1979, this volume acts as a reference for the history textiles. It asks questions on the effect of technology on textiles, how did particular historical periods and locations expand or limit the possibilities for the manufacture of fabrics and how the textile history related to politics and economics, sociology and psychology, art and engineering, anthropology and archaeology, chemistry and physics. Addressing these questions, the author surveys the development of the technical components of fabrics and discusses the textiles of selected places and times. She uses prose, drawings and more than 130 photographs to show how each era of textile production reflects its age. This book is designed to serve as a college text and as a reference work for museum researchers. With sections including illustrations and diagrams; key terminology; spinning wool; spinning and raw materials; single ply and cord and fabric construction.

This collection of essays examines the history of cotton textiles at a global level over the period 1200-1850. It provides new answers to two questions: what is it about cotton that made it the paradigmatic first global commodity? And second, why did cotton industries in different parts of the world follow different paths of development?