World Textiles (World of Art), Mary Schoeser

In World Textiles, the cloth becomes a thread through time—a tactile arch spanning 25,000 years of human making. From the earliest bone needles to contemporary “smart” fibres, Mary Schoeser guides us through a material history in which textiles are far more than decoration: they are technology, identity, trade and environment. In true Selvedge spirit, the book asks you to slow down: to notice weave structure, dye residue, urban versus rural production, the global migration of motifs and fibres. The narrative leaps from silks of China to cottons of India, from Flemish tapestries to Andean dyes, always with the awareness that textiles are as vital to human ingenuity as any tool or weapon.

Visually and conceptually generous, the volume treats cloth as both archive and design object. Illustrations abound (234 colour illustrations in the new edition) so that the reader can trace patterns, surfaces and textures with the eye—or imagine doing so with the fingers. Essays organise the material by technology, trade, style and meaning: cotton, linen, silk; loom and non-loom techniques; dye age and digital age; trade and identity; and the “art” of textiles post-1850. For someone with a textile-aware gaze, the book is a map of how material culture interlaces with global systems, how the loop of warp and weft is the same loop that binds maker to market, village to fashion, ecology to economy.

About the Author
Mary Schoeser is a distinguished textile historian and scholar who has advised major institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Trust in London. Her field is wide-ranging—covering prehistoric fibres, dye techniques, textile trade, craft revival and smart materials—yet always rooted in material evidence and close looking.

Publication date: 2022
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9780500204856