Pre-Islamic Carpets and Textiles from Eastern Lands

Author: Friedrich Spuhler
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500970556
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
“A crucial reference for anyone interest in the earliest surviving pile carpets. . . Primarily a resource for scholars, this volume is nonetheless full of beautiful works of exceptional historical interest. . . Highly recommended.” —Choice This volume in Thames & Hudson’s celebrated series cataloging the al-Sabah collection features a unique collection of carpets and textile fragments from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic world. The Sasanian fragments fill a substantial gap in the early history of pile carpets, dating from the second to the eighth century AD, and make a valuable contribution of the understanding of local artistic traditions. The second half of the book is devoted to post-Sasanian and Sogdian silks dating from the sixth to the tenth century. A wave of these beautiful textiles has reached the West since the turn of the 21st century, and here they are divided into variants featuring birds, mammals, and mythological creatures, which retain their glowing colors and lively charm.

Pre-islamic Carpets and Textiles From Eastern Lands

Author: Friedrich Spuhler
Publisher: Thames and Hudson
ISBN: 9780500970546
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Celebrates the earliest history of the Islamic world’s great textile traditions through fifty beautiful carpets and fragments The fourth volume in Thames & Hudson's celebrated series cataloguing the al-Sabah collection, this book features a unique collection of carpets and textile fragments from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic world. The Sasanian fragments fill a substantial gap in the early history of pile carpets, dating from the second to the eighth century AD, and make a valuable contribution of the understanding of local artistic traditions. The second half of the book is devoted to post-Sasanian and Sogdian silks dating from the sixth to the tenth century. A wave of these beautiful textiles has reached the West since the turn of the 21st century, and here they are divided into variants featuring birds, mammals and mythological creatures, which retain their glowing colors and lively charm.

Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400

Author: Patricia Blessing
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009393383
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Book Description
This study considers the textiles made, traded, and exchanged across Eurasia from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages with special attention to the socio-political and cultural aspects of this universal medium. It presents a wide range of textiles used in both domestic and religious settings, as dress and furnishings, and for elite and ordinary owners. The introduction presents historiographical background to the study of textiles and explains the conditions of their survival in archaeological contexts and museums. A section on the materials and techniques used to produce textiles if followed by those outlining textile production, industry, and trade across Eurasia. Further sections examine the uses for dress and furnishing textiles and the appearance of imported fabrics in European contexts, addressing textiles' functions and uses in medieval societies. Lastly, a concluding section on textile aesthetics connects fabrics to their broader visual and material context.

Textiles of the Islamic World

Author: John Gillow
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture

Author: Finbarr Barry Flood
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119068576
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 1442

Book Description
The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road

Author: William E. Mierse
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440858292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

Book Description
Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road explores the interconnectivity of the Eurasian continent from 4000 BCE to 1000 CE. It focuses on the role played by Central Asia through which passed the major trade routes, the Silk Roads. Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road covers life along the Silk Road over 5000 years as it can be understood by considering objects. In this first object-based study to consider all of the peoples involved on the Silk Roads, objects provide the vehicles for explorations of different aspects of life for the various peoples of the Silk Roads, including the sedentary peoples who established urban life on the Silk Roads, the steppe nomads who regularly interacted with the settled peoples, and the peoples at either end of the Silk Roads who drove certain kinds of economic exchanges. The book looks at Central Asia as an international zone during ancient times when multiple religious, political, and technological ideas found acceptance in the region and allows for a better understanding of how some ideas and forms developed in Central Asia while others passed through or were modified.

African Textiles

Author: John Gillow
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 0811841669
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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

Early Islamic Textiles from Along the Silk Road

Author: Friedrich Spuhler
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 050097084X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A remarkable collection of textiles made in Islamic lands and traded along the Silk Road, most of which are published here for the first time. The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, holds a spectacular array of ancient textiles created in Islamic lands, mostly from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, and traded along the Silk Road, the network of ancient trade routes that linked China, Central Asia, and Byzantium for more than 1,500 years. This fascinating volume presents these Islamic pieces along with a selection of predominantly Chinese textiles dating from the Han period (25–220 CE) to the Yuan period (thirteenth– fourteenth century CE). This collection, which has remained largely unpublished until now, is a rich source of information, not only for the history of textiles, but also for the history of the Silk Road itself. Together, the exceptional beauty and variety of the garments and textile fragments reflect the many strands of influence along the Silk Road. New scientific analysis has enabled a number of these textiles to be dated with precision for the first time, making them an especially valuable scholarly resource. Early Islamic Textiles from Along the Silk Road displays an astonishing range of textile motifs, patterns, and calligraphic designs. A selection of rare intact garments vividly evokes the lives of merchants, pilgrims, and travelers, as well as the inhabitants of countries linked by the Silk Road, making this a one-of-a-kind resource.

Sasanian Archaeology: Settlements, Environment and Material Culture

Author: St John Simpson
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1803274190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Book Description
This collection of essays offers an examination of the Sasanian empire based almost entirely on archaeological and scientific research, much presented here for the first time. The book is divided into three parts examining Sasanian sites, settlements and landscapes; their complex agricultural resources; and their crafts and industries.

Persian Cultures of Power and the Entanglement of the AfroEurasian World

Author: Matthew P. Canepa
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606068423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
A cutting-edge analysis of 2,500 years of Persian visual, architectural, and material cultures of power and their role in connecting the world. With the rise of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE), Persian institutions of kingship became the model for legitimacy, authority, and prestige across three continents. Despite enormous upheavals, Iranian visual and political cultures connected an ever-wider swath of Afro-Eurasia over the next two millennia, exerting influence at key historical junctures. This book provides the first critical exploration of the role Persian cultures played in articulating the myriad ways power was expressed across Afro-Eurasia between the sixth century BCE and the nineteenth century CE. Exploring topics such as royal cosmologies, fashion, banqueting, manuscript cultures, sacred landscapes, and inscriptions, the volume’s essays analyze the intellectual and political exchanges of art, architecture, ritual, and luxury material within and beyond the Persian world. They show how Perso-Iranian cultures offered neighbors and competitors raw material with which to formulate their own imperial aspirations. Unique among studies of Persia and Iran, this volume explores issues of change, renovation, and interconnectivity in these cultures over the longue durée.