Textiles of India, Helmut and Heidi Neumann

This book invite the readers into a sumptuous, slow-weave odyssey through the subcontinent’s vast tapestry of cloth. More than an aesthetic survey, the book is a sensory excavation: from luminous Patola silks of Gujarat whose double weaves shimmer like stained glass, to the dense brocade lampas preserved in Himalayan monasteries, to the finely embroidered cottons of Bengal and the perfect drape of a Murshidabad silk sari. Each fabric becomes a palimpsest of region, ritual, and craft—natural dyes, resist-techniques, weave structures, motifs, all rendered in such detail that you can almost feel the warp tension and smell mordants, as befits a book that honours the material with reverence.

This is not just a collector’s compendium, but a cultural anthropology of thread. This book contextualise textiles as living artifacts: dowry pieces, devotional cloths, courtly finery, everyday domestic weaves. Accompanying essays link design with meaning—how motifs travel, mutate, and survive; how techniques hinge on geography, belief, climate; how cloth both shapes and reflects identity across caste, ritual, and social life. Gorgeous photography (multiple angles, detailed shots) allows slow‐seeing: the frayed selvedges, the uneven dye pools, the tension in every pleat. A book to linger with, page by page, pattern by pattern.

About the Author
Helmut and Heidi Neumann are longtime collectors and scholars of textiles, especially in South Asia and the Himalayas. Beginning their work in the 1970s, they have travelled extensively through India, building a collection distinguished not just by aesthetic beauty but by its depth, rarity, and ethnographic integrity.

Publication date: 2020
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
Pages: 384
ISBN: 9783791386850