Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. Very slight tan to page edges. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The dazzlingly varied cloths presented in this book are the visual record of one of the great untold stories of Asian design history: the trade in Indian textiles to Southeast and East Asia. Outstanding among them are the patterned cottons – the famous chintzes – and the tie-and-dye silk patola reserved for rulers and the nobility. The chintzes made for export to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are now well known; but for over a thousand years Indian cloths were traded for the spices and forest and mineral wealth of the East by Asian Arab and European merchants. They were a key element in the development of international commerce; indeed the hunger for spices which were chiefly acquired through exchange for these textiles led directly to European maritime exploration and the formation of colonial empires. Universally in demand the cloths were designed to suit specific markets; among their functions they served as attire for royalty and as diplomatic gifts as displays on festive occasions and as clothing for the populace at rites of passage and other ceremonies. John Guy examines the history of the cloth-for- spices trade describes the techniques of textile production and then looks in detail at the place of imported cloths in the Malay world Indonesia Thailand and Japan. The historical focus is on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the trade was at its peak. In his narrative the author draws on vivid first- hand descriptions by travellers and merchants on historic images of people and places on other arts that provide a design context for the cloths on ethnographic studies and on his own research in the field. He is especially well placed to tell the story being a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. London whose holdings of Indian trade textiles have few rivals. (MP)