Textiles of China and Central Asia, Mariachiara Gasparini, Amy Heller, Eiren Shea, Jacqueline Simcox

In Textiles of China and Central Asia, the authors open a portal into cloth as culture: sumptuous silks, richly brocaded samites, and embroidered panels whose patterns map centuries of trade, belief, power and migration. The volume draws on a major private collection, bringing to light pieces never before published and of a quality usually found only in museum storerooms. From the opulence of imperial Ming and Qing court dress to the luminous embroideries of the Liao dynasty, and from the geometric extravagance of Central Asian samites to the intricate intersections of animal, vegetal and symbolic motifs, the book places textile in its many lives—as status, ritual, regional style, exchange object.

Visually and editorially, the book is crafted for slow-seeing: detailed photography that captures weave structure, stitch, embossing, dye bleed; essays that illuminate the technical and symbolic complexity behind what might at first glance seem simple decorative surfaces. Chronologically and geographically broad, yet attentive to the smallest detail, it balances the monumental (imperial robes, court textiles) with the fragmentary (samite panels, embroidered borders), reminding us that cloth is not passive ornament but active archive: a way cultures make visible their values, limits, exchanges.

About the Author
Mariachiara Gasparini is an art historian specialising in Chinese and Central Asian textile cultures, material art, and transcultural interactions. She is Assistant Professor of Chinese Art and Architectural History at the University of Oregon. She earned her PhD in Transcultural Studies: Global Art History at Heidelberg University; earlier, an MA at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and BA/Magister in Asian Languages and Civilisations from Naples “L’Orientale.” Her research spans textile as medium of transmission, wall painting, artist’s praxis, and the dynamics between Sino-Iranian and Turko-Mongol visual cultures.

The book is co-authored / edited with Amy Heller, Eiren Shea, and Jacqueline Simcox. Amy Heller is a Tibetologist tied to the University of Bern and the Centre for Research on East Asian Civilisations, skilled in parsing religious, visual, and material culture across regions. Eiren Shea teaches pre-modern Asia art history at Grinnell College. Jacqueline Simcox is a London-based textile dealer and scholar, deeply versed in both the market and material scholarship of Chinese & Central Asian textiles.

Publication date: 2025
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9783791377544