Dyes from South America, designs from China, cotton from India sold to the American colonists through the British market, these are a few of the ingredients that went into creating the global textile market in the 1500s to 1800s. Global trade is not a modern phenomenon of the digital or even the industrialized age. Instead, it flourished in the personal and ubiquitous world of textiles. From clothing to bed coverings, to tapestry wall hangings to paintings, designs, textiles and colors criss-crossed the globe, informing each other and binding the world in closer contact. Art and industry combined in, perhaps, no other arena as strongly as they did in the global textile industry at this point in time.
The book is highly informative, beginning with chapters penned about the development of the global textile industry, including what styles originated where, how fabrics were printed and how trade developed between the disparate areas of the world. A full catalogue detailing each object that was in the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibition of the Interwoven Globe finishes this book. For anyone interested in textiles, art, global trade or the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, this book is highly recommended.
My best to you all,
Megan