Classical
& Late Antique
Byzantine & East Christian
Medieval Western
Early Italian
& Renaissance
European since Renaissance
Islamic
Chinese & Indian
© 2008 Pindar Press
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Command Media
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by Anna Muthesius 24 x 17 cm 456 pp. 174 illus., 154 in colour |
This volume acts as a companion to Professor Muthesius' two earlier volumes in this series, Studies in Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving and Studies in Silk in Byzantium . It brings together another seventeen important papers dating between 1995 and 2007.
These new papers emphasise silk as a ‘catalyst for communication' between cultures, and as an agent for cementing international relations. They demonstrate how far Byzantine silks influenced the Latin West and the Islamic Mediterranean, as well as the Near East . At the same time it is clear that Near Eastern silks were penetrating Western Europe by the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries.
Throughout, Professor Muthesius applies her pioneering research method. Her object-led research combines first hand practical, empirical analysis with inter-disciplinary theoretical approaches, in order to allow for a fully rounded exploration of her research themes. Taken together, this volume and its two companions in the series demonstrate that silk was a key artefact within ‘Material Culture across civilisations'. Silks acted as the mirror of a shared culture of objects, and of shared beliefs and values as held across the Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean, the Latin West and the Near Eastern world.
Contents
Studies in Byzantine, Islamic & Near Eastern Silk Weaving