World Textiles : A Visual Guide to Traditional Techniques

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Introduction to World Textiles
Review: World Textiles is an encyclopedia of textile techniques. The text is very accessible (virtually no footnotes or unexplained jargon) and punctuated with beautiful color photographs, artfully arranged on nearly every page of the book. Typically, a picture of a textile is overlaid with someone wearing the garment, which puts the textile, and its description, in context. World Textiles is organized like a book of lists, so techniques are easy to find, but a bit tedious to read from cover to cover. It also has some nontraditional categories (multi-colored knitting is in a category separate from plain knitting and textured knitting) and several categories that seem arbitrary or nonparallel (for example, the only dye that gets its own category is indigo, and indigo is listed with a range of dye techniques as if it were itself a dyeing process). However, each category includes a description of the technique, it uses, and often, some factual tidbits and sketch drawings to show how the textile was made. The book seems to be aimed at the amateur collector or professional textile-maker who wants to know how a particular technique compares and contrasts with other ways to create or embellish cloth. I would recommend it as a good introduction to the world's textiles.